My Mother in the New Fade, Part 10

is the story of my mother's life
a tale of heartbreak & triumph?

it seems that way

to me she was my mother
and then i discovered her
as a person
and that version of her
has come to dominate
my perception of her

she often confided in
her children
the winding path of her history
and while i have not retained
all the details
i have come to appreciate
it more and more
as the story of another
human being
who just happened to be
my mother

maybe that's not what
you're supposed to do
and maybe to most
other people it wouldn't
and will never be so
significant
and they will never understand
how it has come to define
the New Fade for me

how the more things change
the more they stay the same

(some cliches exist
because they're true)

even at an accelerated pace
change happens slowly

it's the cost of human perception

and as frustrating as life can be
it's also the only thing we've got

and that's enough reason
to cherish it
and those we share it with
even the ones we don't choose
but would even if we could

that's my mother in the New Fade

My Mother in the New Fade, Part 9

my mother is a contradiction

she is at once
one of the strongest people i knew
but also
one of the most vulnerable

i think i recognize in her
the same betrayal
i feel
from the world
in that i have so much faith
in it
but am constantly
wounded
by its failings

my mother's greatest wounds
came from her family
wanting it to stay strong
and yet it kept
falling apart

the first wounds came
from sisters who didn't
respect what my mother believed

the second wound came
from her mother's untimely
and mysterious death

the third wound came
from her father's timely
but still incomprehensible death
something that crept up on her
and came about just when it seemed
he'd live forever

the fourth wounds came
when her first two sons
rejected the faith she'd embraced
all her life
for variations
that the world represented
as faithful alternatives

the fifth came
when she was diagnosed
with cancer
far too late for effective treatment
and so only a series of pains
she did not want to endure

and so the sixth came
when she made the decision
to stop treatments
and to only inform her family
when they approached her

the seventh pain
will come in the end of all things,
an appropriate rest

My Mother in the New Fade, Part 8

as far as faith goes
my mother always had
an abundance

it's everyone else
who seemed to lack it

at church in our new home
of Lisbon Falls
she quickly discovered
that the motivation
most people had to
participate
had less to do with piety
and more to do with status

so they were always jockeying
and not minding
when they elbowed other people

and this was a pattern that
continued
for many years

she helped her children
enter into this kind of service
but i'm not sure any of us
were equal to her example

her daily prayers led
to the family rosary
and long after that ended
she continued to pray

her faith would serve her well
through unexpected trials

My Mother in the New Fade, Part 7

my mother quickly became a mother
after her wedding
and eventually had five children
all by c-section

one after the other
so close in age
and yet it seemed
like ages between us
while we grew up
unbridgeable gaps

she treated us and nurtured us
on equal terms
and perhaps that was galling

by the time we were grown up
we really were all the same
except small differences in age
still created great distances

maybe that's what siblings
are supposed to think
and maybe the wisdom of mothers
is not supposed to notice this
and that's something
you're supposed to learn
but don't
and that's your failing

she tried to make music of it
and sometimes all we were
was a cacaphony

My Mother in the New Fade, Part 6

anything and everything
is relevant when you're talking
about how things work themselves out

my mother met my father
as i said
many years after
they might've

in fact
my father's brother
met her before he did

it's that kind of world

but they met
square dancing
because that's what she
thought her father
might enjoy
to help get over
the death of her mother

and so yeah, that's
how my father met my mother

i heard this from her
many times
but there are always
new details worth savoring

so i can understand
how that kind of story
can be fascinating
for a long time

My Mother in the New Fade, Part 5

my mother held a variety of jobs
and she never seemed to have one
where she was entirely comfortable

in the New Fade, women have gained
a great deal of rights and equality

which means, yes, they are also
free to be miserable at work

My Mother in the New Fade, Part 4

my mother made a robe for Kennedy

it's part of what I like to consider
her mythology
since it seems somewhat
incomprehensible

i believe it and i doubt it
every time i think about it

she would have been about twenty
at the time
and that's also weird to think

my father can remember
exactly where he was
sitting on a wall
when he heard about
the assassination

and my mother used
to really be enamored
with Camelot

and yet now i sense
that she doesn't really care

we all forget our dying king
and yet i sense that it's
simply no longer important to her

all of that's important to the New Fade, too

My Mother in the New Fade, Part 3

to hear my mother tell it,
her sisters, both of whom were older,
didn't really like her

they crowded her when they
shared a bed and otherwise
ignored her until later years
when there were no more excuses

her two brothers were younger,
and she got along better with them;
after all, her favorite, who was like
her best friend, became my godfather,
and my family's favorite besides

it's always odd to think of the family
of your mother (or your father)
unless you grow up right next to them
but in the New Fade that's probably
less likely than ever before

it's my mother's family that I know best,
especially her father, whom we visited
frequently during the decade where
my life and his overlapped

we also shared the violin
and i think that was my mother's doing
and i'm not mad about that

he used to make them,
and i think he and she were more proud
of that than his barbering days,
or the years in the Woonsocket mills

he also spoke only French
and that made him just as peculiar
to me as his skinny mustache,
trademarks he shared with the devotion
to his favorite rocking chair
that sat next to the entrance
to a home that was so familiar to me,
with its sloping driveway and backyard path
to a park, and what used to be a skating rink
that defined a great deal of my mother's
early life

(those were the days when rollerskating
was still socially relevant, and not just
a place to throw kids and have them listen
to pop music for a few hours)

My Mother in the New Fade, Part 2

skipping around the narrative
a little, one of the key elements
of what can be called
my mother's mythology
ties into my father's as well:

both of them lost their mothers
before i was born

my father lost his in what became
the end of his tenure
with the Air Force

my mother lost hers in what became
for her
an equally impactful piece
of what helped shape her life
and brought my parents,
inevitably and finally,
together

she was still living at home
when her mother died
and could vividly recall
years later
the mystery the doctors
could not solve
and still baffled her years later,
the strange discolored legs,
and how she seemed to die,
just like that

so that my mother decided
to continue living at home
to help her father out

and it was this decision
that kept her in town long enough
to finally meet the man who had grown up
not so far away, a state but really just
a short walk away


it was a strange bit about family
that helped bring my family
together,
and a sad twist about mothers
that helped shape my mother's life
and then my own

My Mother in the New Fade, Part 1

i wish i had more to tell you
about the specifics of my mother's life
in the New Fade, but what follows
will have to suffice

at the start of it, there is a vast community
like many Americans
of immigrant descent
these particular ones
from French-speaking Canada
settling in New England
and finding home among their own kind
finding dignity in respectability
and forging a new life
of new possibility

there were war stories
barbershops
and mills
to be had
floating in the backdrop
and a love of the violin
all before my mother was born

it's easy to imagine that
no language but French
was spoken during all this time
and for someone who does not speak French now
that's a little startling to believe
because i'm only two generations removed...