Wedding Gifts

A poem about the objects that represent us, plus a story about poultry and how we will be remembered

“Please, Mom, can you help? You’re good with poultry!”

This from my daughter, perhaps ten years old at the time, the younger of my two children, and designated pleader when parental persuasion is required. A strange epitaph, perhaps, but for just a moment I imagined a gravestone carved with her desperate flattery, “Good with Poultry.” A shake of my head and a weary mother’s sigh and I was stepping out of my warm, dry car and into an all-out downpour.

Full disclosure, my only real poultry related accomplishment occurred on a snowy Thanksgiving morning when a very cold hen emerged from her shelter beneath our deck. I scooped up the chilly girl, who was only too happy to snuggle up to my down vest, and tromped though the snow to the neighbors up the hill. “One of yours?” I asked the lady of the house-of-fashionable-backyard-chickens “Oh, you found her!” she exclaimed. I pushed my new feathered friend into her chest, wished her a happy holiday, and headed for home.

This time, my children were minding another neighbor’s ducks, who spent their days in a fenced enclosure with a makeshift pond, but in the evening returned to a wood and wire coop of sorts, protection from the foxes and coyotes who roamed the neighborhood by night. It was this return to shelter that was proving difficult.

“They won't go in,” my son explained when my daughter led me into the backyard. “They keep running around the side.” The coop was set into an alcove along the back side of the house. The kids had herded the ducks toward the door but in a moment of rebellion, they had veered into the narrow space between coop and house.

It was raining buckets. Wiping water from my eyes, I tried to recall lessons from the sheepdog demos at the Common Ground Fair. With three of us working together, I thought we could herd them in, but first we had to get them out of their self-imposed dead end. I spied an old window screen laid across the top of the coop and a strategy took shape.

“Girlie, you block that corner,” I said, pointing to the far side of the little pond.” I positioned my son in front of the gate. I picked up the screen and slammed it hard on the top of the coop. The ducks exploded from their hiding place. I dashed behind them and used the screen to block their return.

“Okay, guys, get low, spread your arms, and walk toward me.” I backed up toward the corner of the alcove, hoping not to spook the frightened quackers. I even managed not to shriek when a cascade of rainwater from the overflowing gutter ran straight down my back. It worked like a charm and we were soon clambering into the car.

“Mom, how did you know how to do that?” my daughter asked.

“I guess I’m just ‘Good with Poultry.’” I said.  Or maybe it’s teamwork. Regardless, it’s a better epitaph than “Outwitted by Ducks.”

The poem below is another of the pieces I started soon after my mother’s death at the end of July. Thinking about how I wanted to remember her naturally made me think about how my children will remember me. I wonder if my kids will recall our adventure herding ducks, maybe share it with their own children someday. Often it’s objects that trigger memories, so I also wonder what are the small, tangible things that will remind them of me? Today’s poem sprang from a moment in my own bathroom, when an item so familiar I often don’t even see it grabbed my attention shortly after my mother’s death.

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Wedding Gifts

In a symbolic dream 
of my parents' wedding
I imagine them each arriving 
at the altar with a votive offering,
his a tall, brown bottle
hers a square green tin

His vessel given him by 
his eldest sister-
a mother, in truth,
when their own died young,
Father John's Medicine-
Cod liver oil 
with the face of a priest
The Irish Catholic anodyne,
the remedy for all 
that ailed you because 
there was no money 
for another cure
Two spoonfuls,
tasting of licorice and fish,
a hurried Hail Mary
and you’d be on your way

From the farm 
she brought Bag Balm,
a thick paste with 
a thicker odor,
the reason 
her hardworking 
father's hands 
were not chapped, 
the cure for sore udders, 
the source of happy cows
and the sweet milk they make

They brought much 
to their marriage-
the baggage of past lives,
old insecurities and griefs 
But from their childhoods, 
for the children 
they would have,
they brought 
a brown bottle, 
and a green tin

We would run
when our father
would come with
bottle and spoon
to quiet a cough,
hiding under beds,
or in closets to escape,
the taste so vile
we would risk 
his anger to get away
That’s how you know,
he said, that’s how 
you know it works,
which is perhaps
a distillation of 
his worldview
more potent
that any patent
medication 

And in the bathroom
of my childhood home,
atop a counter 
strewn with clutter, 
the green tin sat stalwart
My mother would prise off
the tight fitting lid,
dip a finger inside,
and with words like
Don’t make a fuss,
For heaven’s sake,
Hold still,
she would apply 
that balm to all our ills
and we would slink,
sulky and stinking, 
to our beds 
where we would 
stick to the sheets,
and awaken healed

Father John is long gone,
his name still used, 
but his formula changed
to match every other
cough medicine 
on the shelf and described 
now as pleasant tasting,
so we know it has no power

But a green tin rests
even now
on a shelf in this house,
a pretty cow
ringed with red flowers,
her healthy udder
no longer appearing 
on the side of the tin 
since I don’t know when
But the substance inside
is thick and the smell
even thicker and still
it cures what ails us

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How about you? Are there any objects so familiar, so deeply associated with someone or something, that they have become a kind of talisman? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

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If this post spoke to you, here are few more that might be of interest:

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Thanks for reading, everyone!