I'm thinking about mothers.
Crazy mothers, and sane mothers. (All four.)
Mothers making their children crazy, because they themselves are being driven there.
It's a bipolar, schizophrenic, multiple-personality re-ordering of the mind; you're always
mentally pregnant.
Thinking for two.
Is he cold, tired, hungry, happy, Buddha, broken?
I'm thinking about my mother, wondering if she felt (feels?) the same way.
Is that why she does those loving little things that make me insane?
And what about her mother, and her mother--who loved babies so much
and had four of her own.
She would have loved my boy.
"You have to keep yourself healthy," my mother says. "He's counting on you.
You're the most important person in his life."
But it's crazy to be the most important person in some one's life.
Because it means I can't leave him.
But I can't not die.
I'm thinking about mothers.
The women who will give birth today.
(I hope they do something special for the mothers of babies born in the hospital today.)
The soon-to-be mothers I know,
and the one I don't, balanced on a stool, too spherical to stand.
The mother with the double-wide double stroller and the no make-up in front of the cafe.
I'm thinking about the mothers who don't know it yet.
They'll get pregnant today, some by accident, some on purpose
or accidentally on purpose.
Finally, so soon, not now, not again.
I'm thinking about mothers.
Crazy with love, crazy with loneliness.
Mothers opening their chests to expose home-shaped hearts.
Trying to quiet the wandering elephant-trunk, monkey-tail mind that worries, wonders,
grasps, holds on tight.
And never forgets.
