This poem, about a visit to see my mother in the Alzheimer's Care unit, earned honors for the 2021 Vivian Shipley Award and the Prime 53 Poetry Competition. It's included in my poetry chapbook, The Brook in the Woods Behind Our Old House.
Are You My Mother?
They are already
in the circle when I come in.
I spot her right off,
tucked between two old ladies –
one’s perplexed gaze
wandering the room, the other,
lost in another dimension.
And Mom, alert, attentive, like
a well-behaved student
awaiting the start of class.
An aide sidles up
to me.
That’s my mother. I say her name.
She won’t know me.
I just want to see her.
To watch for a
while. Please. Don’t. Say. Anything.
It will upset her.
(And
me).
I sit beside an
old nun; she reaches over and takes
my hand. Center
stage, a different aide explains
the Plan for the
Day. The one I spoke to, not
a moment ago, taps
Mom’s shoulder from behind
and points. Loud
whisper: That’s your daughter.
I cringe. At the
words, the confused look on my mother’s
face, the
white-hot pain searing my heart. All eyes on me
now – curious,
suspicious. In this alternate dimension,
where long ago is the
present, and the present is soon forgotten,
daughters are
four-feet tall and eight years old.
When I was small,
Mummy read aloud, Are You My Mother?
In which, the baby
bird, fallen from the nest, wanders off,
asking this question
of everyone it meets. Now Mom stares
at me intently,
brow furrowed. My cheeks burn; pleading eyes ask,
Are you my mother?
She flashes a
polite, awkward smile, like one you’d give
someone who
accidentally bumped you, to show
there are no hard
feelings, shakes her head and says,
just like the
animals in the story,
I am not your
mother.
I throw murderous
eyes at the aide and force
a smile filled
with gritted teeth. My voice piercing
the stillness sounds
high and hollow:
Don’t mind her. She’s
got it wrong.
Mercifully,
someone asks, What’s for lunch?
The grace of short
memory spans –
they all lose
interest in me, and fast.
Shepherd’s Pie, the aide says.
Someone: What’s
that?
The aide’s mouth
opens, but
Mom’s voice is already
in the air:
You don’t know
what Shepherd’s Pie is?
I choke back a
laugh. Now that sounds
like my mother.
Let me tell her!
And then, my
mother, who does not know
that it’s fall, or
that we’ve sold the house, or
that Daddy is just
across the way in long-term care,
or that she once
sailed down the Nile past
the Valley of the
Kings, who does not know
that she is the
mother of the gray-haired
woman sitting
beside the nun, explains,
in a clear and
dearly familiar voice,
and in exquisite
detail, how to make
a Shepherd’s Pie.
