Interview by George Sandifer-Smith
There are so many ways we “speak” as humans even when we don’t utter a sound.
Showering my mother on her 60th wedding anniversary
She eyes me cautiously, shivering as she steps on the cold tiles. I move as I might in a forest when watching a bird, knowing the smallest shudder could change everything. It’s okay, Mom, I say quietly, It’s okay. Water begins to trickle over her shoulders, dampen her bare skin and I sponge her inch by inch: her arms, her stomach, her legs, then work light suds into her scalp, and a clearing opens ahead of us, the splash of children behind us. I hear her laugh and I laugh with her, and how is it I feel vulnerable, here with my soaked shirtsleeves, my bare feet beside hers, washing this woman I know so well and yet hardly know at all, this woman who nursed me, scolded me, set me alight in the Rites of Childhood, she who bestowed the kaleidoscope Rules of Motherhood. Hallowed be all the States: Anger, Kindness, Defiance. Compassion. Confusion. Love. Her arms tremble as she pushes me away. Who are you? Why are you here? What are you doing? I stop the water and pause. Slowly, tenderly, I wrap her in a towel in the way I once wrapped my own children when they emerged shivering from a bath. My mother’s face is damp and red and warm and how beautiful she looks as I smooth lotion on her skin, pull up her undergarments, slip the lilac dress she wore this day a decade ago over her head. I kneel at her feet, help her with her socks and shoes, and then I feel it: her small hand on my shoulder and then at my elbow, my mother helping me stand. She searches my face the way she once did when I’d return home with rocks in my pockets, my hat lost, my socks torn. She leans forward to touch my face and eye to eye through blurred vision, I brush her hair, touch her favourite coral colour to her lips, and as quickly, she moves to the forest’s edge. I reach forward, place her invisible crown back on her head, and let her go. I watch her descend the oak stairs and take the hand of a man who looks up and smiles, a man who has waited all morning for her as he did this day six decades ago, and it is a diamond they hold, my mother laughing with this man she no longer recognises.
‘place her invisible crown back on her head, and let her go’ This beautiful poem is both sad and celebratory – do you find your work often looks at the multiple facets of your subjects?
Life is full of conflicting feelings and emotions that are not either/or but both/and. This is something I think about a great deal as I’m writing. Poetry is particularly good at accommodating multiple facets of feelings and viewpoints although my work in other media/genres often tries to capture these shifting perspectives too.
In the case of this poem—and I’m only seeing this more clearly now—I hover between emotions but also between my mother’s view of me and mine of her—as well as between our lives past and present. When my mother’s memories began to fade I tried hard to understand the frustration she often experienced when not knowing what was going on, or why something was “suddenly” happening, or why she was feeling safe and unsafe in quick succession. The shifts are constant and disconcerting, but sometimes they are also warm and reassuring.
It is hard seeing one’s own mother forgetting who you are. But there is much to learn from her in the way she lives in the present moment. Just as there is growing attention on reframing how illness and disability (both seen and unseen) are perceived by normative society, I believe Alzheimer’s and dementia need to be reframed in similar ways. Rarely if ever is the disease seen in anything but a negative light in literature and films. There are certainly current examples in films that seem to say it’s “a life not worth living,” which is upsetting and one-sided. When a loved one’s memories fade, it can feel devastating to all. But it also offers an opportunity for growth and change, as life’s great challenges so often do. And who’s to say that living in the present moment is not without its gifts? It is a hard time, and a time of loss. But we have no choice but accept our loved ones for who they are now, accept change as our new reality. My dad is great at doing this. And this is what I try to do in the poem—and what I hope I do when I’m with my mother. Capture her laughter even in the difficult times. I want to be a part of her present life rather than attempting to mould her narrative into the one she (we) once had—or even the one we thought we’d have.
‘She searches my face the way she once did when I’d return home’ This poem is one long verse, rather than breaking up into smaller verses – do you find that this enables the story-like (almost prose poetry) content to roll together and create a more striking whole?
The first thing that comes to mind here is—well, let’s just say I was sometimes a source of great frustration to my mother when I was young—losing things, breaking things, forgetting things, hiding the many things I’d find on my way to school in my pockets. The number of times she’d pull rocks out of the washing machine and give me her ‘look’! As I look closer at the poem, I realise it captures the way we know each other in a way that reaches far beyond language, in the intimacy that comes from decades of shared experience. Communication happens between us beyond words, now more than ever, and there is a kind of blurring of our thoughts and needs, emotions and frustrations. I’m reminded here of the ways people communicate when someone speaks another language or the way we “speak” with babies and very young children. There are so many ways we “speak” as humans even when we don’t utter a sound.
Though subconscious, I think I was trying to create the larger narrative of who we are together, mirroring the way communication, intimacy, and even time unfolds with my mother. In this case, it meant not breaking the poem into stanzas for example. There is no longer a strategy for putting memories or moments into boxes to be taken out again with my mother, as if looking through an old photo album, and the structure of the poem is a necessary reflection of this. Although, thinking about it, perhaps what I’ve tried with this poem and the others I now have about my mother is attempt to capture what we share—memories and moment, present and past—and put them into poem-like boxes in case they disappear altogether. Poetry is a unique—and adaptable—vessel for holding those places in our lives.
‘it is a diamond/they hold’ The final lines of this piece are excellent – do you find ending poems difficult or that they come to a natural stopping point?
That means a lot—thank you. I feel the ending of any poem is critical, and is often how a poet can judge whether to keep all the lines and images that come before. I play around a lot with endings but this one did have a natural stopping point right off the bat. I knew I would always hold that image of my mother walking downstairs to take the hand of this ‘man she no longer recognises,’ words I held in my mind all that day. The first scribbled version of the poem, with those words at the end, happened in the middle of the night at my parents’ house after our quiet day of celebrations, the last we’d have in their home. It was a difficult, challenging time, not least of all because it was during the pandemic, a time when the social isolation became a challenge to my parents in a way none of us ever imagined.
Thank you so much for inviting me to talk about this poem. The poem was longlisted for the National Poetry Competition in April 2022 and I’m delighted it’s found a home online at Poetry Wales. The poem wasn’t easy to write and it feels strange in a way sharing such a personal moment online. But I know our family is not alone in dealing with the far-reaching effects of this disease. I hope the words will offer comfort, hope and celebration of our loved ones even as they change and can no longer remember us. The poem is the centrepiece of a new collection of poems I’m working on about loss of various kinds—and what we find inside that loss.