a graduation

a graduation      (for Heather)

   

The moon has been your guide in the land of the rising sun
   and your companion on the shores of human genesis.
In Hiroshima, you didn't filter the far-off echoes of a once-withered earth
   before turning to walk with the ghosts,
   or begging to hear from slaves, scholars, and immigrant children.

A pilgrim, you’ve learned to listen to their stories
  and shamelessly tell your own, 

  drafted with sacrificial goats, political rallies,

  and volcanic hikes to views shared with the gods.
You understand not many can speak of finding serenity
while finding cracked, thirsty lips
  on the dying brown people, in the cracked thirsty earth
  of a dying brown desert.

You’ve learned about oppression and depression and life
  from books filtered through your experiences,
  and from life filtered through nothing but its living
  and your passion.

As you speak of this, they will declare you learn’ed.
And though I'll photograph the moment
  through the lenses of my unearned pride,
  my contentment will be in knowing

  you've also learned that love finds the music,
  magic weaves the forest canopy,
  and a rhyme can feel alive.

I believe you’ve discovered people needn’t be taught fantasy,
  though all dreams must be encouraged;

  and finding a child who believes in unicorns
  will excite your hopes in hesitant times.

Woman, my child, that you also understand
  how travelers must be brave yet humble

  and getting lost can mean a new route home;
  that the luxury of having can’t compare to the riches of giving,
  and that in exchange for loving passionately
   your word can call an army to encircle you;

That you understand means you are ready.

   Humbled, so am I.

Love,
Mom
———-


The intro, moved down here based on feedback :)

In a few weeks, my daughter will graduate college. She has an impressive resume: she's been playing the violin and cello since she was in elementary school, she earned her black belt in Karate her senior year of high school and then left immediately to re-do that senior year as a Rotary exchange student. She learned Japanese from her classmates in a public Japanese high school and followed that up a few years later with learning Wolof from her Senegalese exchange family while she improved her French as a student at the university there. She spent school vacations teaching a college course to male inmates at the Washington State Penitentiary, working as a maid in Yellowstone, doing a senate internship in Washington DC, and sunburning as she left water and food in the Arizona desert when she worked and camped on with a border humanitarian group. And of course, she spent the academic years working with ESL students in an elementary school while carrying  full course loads and writing for her college newspaper.

That she has experienced so much of life thrills me. But it's who she is that makes me proud. I'm proud of her for seeking out the experiences, for grabbing life by the horns and riding it like a wild bull. I'm proud of her for being able to love with all of herself and for leaping into the unknown as though she was a 500 pound sumo wrestler and not a 5'4" waif. And the relationship she has with her sister and three brothers makes me choke up every Christmas when they're all home. Her experiences throughout her college years have definitely helped mold her into a strong and capable woman, but she has been a force of pure stubborn joy since the day she was born.

If you're reading this Heather, congratulations on all that you've achieved so far. I'll see you soon. You'll be able to spot me in the crowd pretty easily, I'll be the one sitting with a ghost beside me and we'll both be beaming while watching the woman you've become. Enjoy the next few weeks; they will be both an ending and a beginning.

It's true. You've only just begun.

With all my love,
Mom
----------

-
One Shot Wednesday: A poetic flashmob.

Mother & daughter, a dialogue in poetry

Mari and Heather - June, 2006

5/14/2011: Update, in response to reader feedback:  

I received an email that suggested this would be richer with some context. I appreciate the feedback! As requested/suggested: when I wrote this, the deaths in our immediate family included two infant sons and Heather's dad. When she was 7-years-old,  he made me a widow and left behind our gaggle of half-orphaned little ones. Heather is my second eldest child.

---------

This started when I posted a poem as Facebook note in early 2010. Heather, my talented and beautiful daughter, responded with comments that were much more than comments. Her responses are in blue.

On the Anniversary of a Death in the Family

~Mari Nichols-Haining

You have asked:
     And where are the people?

    Where is the rhythm of hands and feet

    pounding life and beating holes into your words?
You have asked,

although you did not speak those words.

And I have answered with a mumbling sadness

that crescendos into the corners

and fills the spaces between the breaths.

I have answered:

   They have fallen into the face of the leathered ocean,

   swallowed by the different symphony of the desert.

   They died with the lilacs and geraniums and

   conversations laced with caffeine.

I have mentioned the romance of poverty then,

the salt-white Bakersfield heat a painted backdrop

for barefoot towheads, shirtless in overalls.

I haven't told you of the drowning though,

as words rose up into a monumental wave

and swallowed the poets and artists

and lovers. Always the lovers.

But you have asked.

A response:

Heather Nichols-Haining

Mother,

my scarred knees are tired

of pleading to God Almighty

at swollen geranium-covered graves

of too many friends

after maybe too much coffee.

That golden whiteness fills my memories

of the meaningful days

and I swallow your romantic poverty

as if I was starving

(and what if I am?!).

The lovers weep and the children grow

and the poverty disappears

and in the end all we can do is ask:

Where did everyone go, Mom?

The devil raids our innards

as if he's got any right to be here

and even that's better than the alternative,

because at least he pisses us off.

But I've always loved the beach,

(and haven't you taught me that?)

despite and because of the crude waves

and the fierceness of their eternity.

~Heather Nichols-Haining

My response to your response...

 ...my lovely daughter  
                          ~mnh

Oh sweet woman-child,

I haven’t forgotten how to bandage up your skinned knees,

and with more than muscle memory and love

I can kiss away the scars and blood and pain

but leave the grains of sand

embedded

in your memories.

That is where they belong.

Where did they go? My child,

they went to where the whiteness turns to gold

and to a place where little children learn to roar

but never forget to dance.

They walk with you along the shore

and they whisper through the seashells

urgently. Urgently

reminding you

to tell me about eternity.

There, on that beach and in that forever,

the lovers never really weep

although the children always grow.

And every day is meaningful.

Where did they go? My sweet,

they never really left.

We stayed up too late too many nights

to learn this by rote and heart.

But don't you remember?

  (and haven't I taught you this):

they carry your heart with them.^*

~Mom

A response to your response to my response to your beautiful piece of art:

As we wander the golden globe in search of them,

our restless feet munching the ground beneath,

a generation and maybe eternity

between the two of us,

what've we got

besides mocking seashells

and anxious seaside dances?

Of course, there is that golden dust, .^*

that sand stuck in my hair

despite the work of your tireless fingers.

And of course we've got all those hearts,

and the persistent lovers,

the stories told way past bedtime,

the people breathing white geraniums.

I cling to the stories now,

as my scalp once clung to golden sand.

They're dirty, gross, gritty

but I like the feel of your fingers

kneading through my scalp.

I even like the grit.

These are my stories

and my sand

and even the calling of the seashells

lends flight to my soul.

We dance with the beating waves.

~Heather

To Heather (who is one of my most beautiful pieces of art) 

I’ve wondered how it is that we can take
a generation of our time, squeeze it through a sight of thumb and forefinger
to make it small
  -as long as we are one eye blind -

yet still the words, and all that is the story,
overflow these thimble memories.

I love you,  ~Mom

^* Heather and I spent many of her childhood nights reading poetry to each other. Here, I referred to one of my favorites, ee cummings' ' "I carry your heart with me "; Heather recalled  Robert Frost's  "A Peck of Gold."