How I Know I've Done Something Right

A poem about getting it right when it matters, and some thoughts on motherhood and old t-shirts

When cleaning out closets and the basement recently, we came across a treasure trove of old t-shirts. What a time capsule! My husband has a stack of Grateful Dead concert shirts from college days. I’ve got a couple of shirts from the archaeology field camp I attended in high school. They transport me back to my first solo adventure as an almost-adult.

The shirt above, however, is my favorite of all. It made me laugh back in college. And it seemed to tweak the noses of the early childhood ed majors (so serious!), and the girls who'd already picked out the names of their future children. It went perfectly with my chunky boots, low-slung jeans, and buzz cut.

It wasn't that I was determined to never have kids, although it certainly wasn't a foregone conclusion. But I just wasn’t thinking about kids, or marriage, or anything that smacked of settled, adult life. Which I still think is not such a bad idea in college.

But here I am now, a whole bunch of years later, happily married to my college boyfriend, and mom to two grown kids. And the t-shirt still makes me chuckle.

Mothers don’t start out as mothers. First we’re older and younger siblings, daughters, class clowns, pranksters. Sometimes it feels like we pull on the mantle of motherhood over everything else that we are and the world stops seeing us for our intellect, our humor, our creativity and we become simply Mother, Mom, Mommy. But the rest of us is still there, underneath.

The wit you sharpened on siblings and classmates doesn't go away. The debate skill that won you every argument in college. The voice of reason your friends both resented and relied on. I was always a bit too honest, my sense of humor too dark for most. I assumed those things were somehow antithetical to motherhood. Turns out I was wrong.

Motherhood shouldn't feel like a costume, something that obscures. It’s just another endeavor to which we apply all our strengths, one that also teaches us daily about our weaknesses.

The poem below grew from two different quotes from my daughter, written down in a notebook at separate times, and eventually finding a connection, like a couple of magnets that get just close enough to snick together with that satisfying click.

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How I know I’ve Done Something Right

My daughter says I am deaf
I tell her she mumbles

Sometimes I know 
what she’s saying
but I respond 
as though I don’t
which amuses me but
makes her angry

I speak clearly, 
she fumes, and yet you hear 
electric foot-in-the-ass jungle
Which to my mind 
is a very funny thing to hear
So when I’ve stopped 
laughing, I write it 
on the whiteboard 
in the mudroom
so I won't forget

This also makes her mad

But today she sat
at the kitchen island
Fear, uncertainty, anxiety 
lapping at her shore
She doesn’t always want 
to be hugged
But I decide to chance it, 
wrapping my arms 
around her 
from the side
 
A moment's hesitation
the briefest contraction
and then her head leans 
into my chest, 
my chin comes 
to rest on her hair 
And she says 

You are so comfortable 
I could go to sleep 
right now

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We’re writing poems based on lines from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Travel” over at The Public Domain Poetry Project. People are sharing the best stuff in the comments! Join us!

Week One

Thanks for reading, everyone!