For Diana

On April 4th, I drove my father to the storage unit to take a look at the things that were left to be sorted and cleared out, stopped by our business in which he had invested "sweat equity" (as well as the more tangible kind) to greet the employees, and shopped for a card and some birthday dinner for my mother from the hot food bar at Wegman's.  On April 9th he was gone. 
It's been four years, which should feel like a longer time.  I wanted to write about him, to honor him.  I composed mental word sketches, rearranging adjectives and memories.  He was larger-than-life and the pieces or the impact of him won't fade away.  But thinking of him has led me to thoughts of my mother, who was always eclipsed in my heart by his emotional expansiveness.  

My mother wasn't the one who impulsively took me shopping two days before the Junior/Senior banquet to buy a multi-layered gauzy frock that was edged with seed pearls and worthy of a wedding party.  But she paid the tuition for twelve years of private school out of the precariously waxing and waning bank account of a small business owner.   My mother didn't pile everyone into the car for a spontaneous trip to New York City, but she stood in line for the half-priced Broadway tickets while my father plied us with roasted chestnuts and dirty water dogs.  I remember his exasperation with her and the papers that had to be cleared off the kitchen table each night before we could set the plates for supper, and the macaroni and cheese or lasagna or crepes we could only eat if he was away.  Now I realize the stress represented by all those stacks of mail, as well as the daily strain of a dinner containing meat, starch and vegetable -- all while she held a full-time job that provided us with health insurance.

My mother has always been beautiful, in face and manner.  At the same time, she is the only one of my grandmother's seven children who tested in the genius range when the school administered IQ evaluations (a story my grandmother often related to the chagrin of the three engineers, lawyer, chef and musician who did not score so highly).  Growing up under such a standard of well-rounded excellence effectively removed any doubt in my mind that women were at least the equal of men.  Her husband would often remark that he wouldn't have amounted to anything without her.  I think it's probably true -- at least regarding the good parts.

Once she asked why I never wrote a poem about her.  Grumpily, I assured her that I would, some day; these things aren't supposed to be requested.  Ever practical, she assured me that if I waited until she died she wouldn't get to read it.

I've often squirmed under her affinity for schedules and plans and the minutiae of details.  Her careful record-keeping is so at odds with the careless manner of winging it I inherited from my father.  Exuberance is greeted with wariness, more often than not.  But as I think of my father, I imagine the years of trying to pick up and pull together all the fragments he left lying about.  She gave the best of herself to him, and our lives had security and stability because of it. 
That is the kind of love that certainly deserves a poem -- of epic proportions. 
Or perhaps, at the very least, an essay...
xo