As though photographed and printed,
as though seared upon my brain,
I see my own reflection and I almost feel the pain
of the weary, tired, exhausted picture of dejection
that became, somehow, a part of me.
The image of the moment still haunts my memory.
She was lumpy as the sagging cot
upon which she was sitting.
Worn out with years of living,
from too much work and too much giving,
of troubles unremitting;
of too much woe, too little good
and drained of dreams she understood
there’s such a thing as much too much of motherhood.
I stopped in to say good-bye
and let my neighbor know
I’d be leaving soon. I’d be seeing her no more.
As I stepped through the kitchen door
and viewed the sad tableau:
the ever, endless drudgery that was by birth, her legacy
has since then, been troubling me.
I’ve often wished that picture would
vanish like the dew that disappears when morning sun
mounts the eastern skies.
Like cataracts that blur the view,
despair had dimmed my neighbor’s eyes
and rendered dull by helplessness
and lack of hope and happiness,
she looked up and I still see myself upon that sagging cot.
I see the toddler’s chamber pot
filled to overflowing, while stacks of dirty dishes, sooty pots and pans
waited vainly in the sink.
Piles of clothing with the stink
of unbathed bodies, now in bed, lay strewn upon the floor.
I yearned to leave but sat instead
to chat a while and wish her well
and tell her I would miss her.
I’ve one regret and now I wish
I would have thought to take her hand
and let her understand that I would always be her friend
and then, before I left, I should have bent to kiss her.
One evening, late summer, 1960, I stopped to say good-bye to a neighboring farmwife who was raising several small grandchildren. Uneducated, a victim of the era into which she was born and worn out by years of drudgery and despair, she sat at though posed for the artist Jean Francois Millet to set up his easel and paint a companion subject for his masterpiece, The Man With The Hoe.
Quite unwillingly, I was following my husband to yet another farm, his third attempt at farming for a living. For an agonizing moment, I was certain I saw my future-self sitting on that worn-out, sagging daybed.
Meander With Me 