I’ve been a lot of things in my life: daughter, sister, girlfriend, wife, mother, student, and teacher, just to name a few. Add poet, writer, and crazy cat lady. Now I can add mother-in-law! I hope I won’t be like that one in the old Herman’s Hermits song (“the worst person I know”).
My son and his fiancée got hitched over the weekend, thus giving me a beautiful new daughter. The ceremony was in Laguna Beach, California, with most of the wedding-goers digging their toes in the beach sand.
As you can imagine, I #amnotwriting, but have been #traveling and #celebrating.
I try to be stoic or to keep it light when I can, so I was unprepared for the tears and the joy I felt at my son’s transformation into a married man and at gaining such a lovely and thoughtful daughter.
My new daughter and my son had asked me to write a poem for the “memorial table” she had planned for the celebration. They framed photographs of the grandparents who have passed away, including my father and both my in-laws. I asked for information about her grandparents so I could incorporate them into the poem.
Before Us
Those who have come and gone
before us
leave their imprint
in the details. Oil paint
and canvas, camera
always at hand
to memorize those they care for,
the stacks of photo albums,
offerings left behind.
Daily steak dinners for
beloved pets. Advice
offered with grace. Wartime
service, a sense
of humor and a sense
of duty born of justice.
Born of freedom.
Born of love.
All this, and so much more,
from those who have come
And gone before us.
I was thrilled when my new daughter gave me a necklace and a card with a poem for me that she had written.
How my father would have loved to be at the wedding!
