Listen to Your Mother: In the Moment

It’s been a little over a week since I stood on stage at Milwaukee’s Listen to Your Mother Show. It was a day full of excitement and nerves and appreciation for the women around me. I’ll post a video of me reading my piece eventually. Until then, there’s this. 

Before

In a dance room turned dressing room, ladies lean over a barre towards mirrors. Primping. Preparing. Mascara and lipstick. Then me. And, my hair. Hot-rolled and set for too long, it hangs and then flips and threatens to behave all Medusa-like, minus the snaky tongues.

This would not be good for pictures.

I fall to the familiar pony tail and pity the photographer who tries hard with small talk to catch me unawares. He does not know my curse with the camera: sleepy eyes, ridiculous smile or none at all. Remember that family photo when I was fifteen? I do: heavy lids, drunken grin. My mother and sister and I never laughed so hard, that cathartic low-in-the-throat giggle that rose to guffaw then fell into tears. I think of this as I look away from the camera, try to summon that silliness, look back and smile again. It’s all I can do to ignore the click-click-click of the shutter.

He says he got a few good ones, I thank him and immediately text my sister, The worst is over. 

During

The curtain closed, we take our seats on stage and hear the audience taking theirs. Conversations rise in waves just beyond us; nothing is decipherable. I reapply lipstick I’ve smuggled in–once, twice, until finally I realize, like my hair, they won’t be studying my lips. They’ll be listening.

Then, as theater lights go down and stage lights go up, I think of my husband, my kids, the friend I have not seen for months. When my name is called, I am grateful I remember how to breathe, to walk, to read. I force myself to slow down. Because this moment, it’s important.

My mother, I say. My son. . . . my daughter. . . . and me.

After

Someone tells me that my husband beamed while I was on stage, and I feel a lump in my throat. I remember how my son’s chest puffed with pride in the moments after the show and my daughter looked at me with a new expression. Not because I was some superstar now, but because I, who am quiet and introspective much of the time, pushed aside the curtain for a moment and told my story about the time I caught my mother unawares, and how that stuck with me. That moment retold to family and friends and to that one woman whose feet must have tingled and heart surely pounded as she whispered, Yes. Me too

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Thanks to my friend Sarah Nielsen for taking these cool shots.

Anticipation (LTYM: Four Days and Counting)

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Listen To Your Mother Milwaukee Venue: Wehr Hall, Alverno College
(photo credit: Alexandra Rosas)

I’ll be wearing my mother’s jewelry on Sunday when I read my piece for Listen To Your Mother. Necklace, earrings, and a ring that reflects like a tiny disco ball (watch out), her jewelry is way outside my boundaries of glam; she always leaned towards the more fancy side of things. Still, it’s fitting.

Hope to see you there.

Listen To Your Mother Milwaukee
Alverno College’s Wehr Hall
4100 West Morgan Avenue
Milwaukee, WI 53215

Click here for Tickets, or purchase them at the door (cash only).

Poetry: In the thick of it.

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2014 Design: Chipp Kidd

Right now, we are in the thick of National Poetry MonthWhile I’m not much of a poet, I do love a good poem. And, I’ve come across some great reads in the last week that got me all fired up.

In Your Neighborhood.

Look around. There’s probably a poet near you doing an amazing project for National Poetry Month. Lisa Rivero has been on my radar; she writes how poetry “forces us to pay attention.”

Taking entries from her great-aunt Hattie’s diaries, she has been turning every-day details from life on the Great Plains in the 40’s and 50’s into beautiful poems and pairing them with images of the actual pages. I absolutely love this project.

Read two of my favorites:

In Your Inbox.

If you subscribe to The Writer’s Almanac, you can experience National Poetry Month every single day. I’d been on their list for a while then somehow stopped getting emails. I’m glad I signed up again, because this poem from April 13th did exactly what Lisa talks about: made me slow down and focus on the details.

Prairie Spring, by Willa Cather

Evening and the flat land,
Rich and sombre and always silent;
The miles of fresh-plowed soil,
Heavy and black, full of strength and harshness;
The growing wheat, the growing weeds,
The toiling horses, the tired men;
. . . .

Read it from beginning to end here. 

Your turn: favorite poem, this month or ever.