Caroline at 69
VA Smith
I House and Garden
Waking me for today’s treatment,
coffee and cinnamon smells snake
upstairs to my bed.
Friends’ food floods our house.
Neighbors leave lemon bars, key lime pies lathered in whipped cream,
fruit, grain, vegetable and potato salads fill the fridge, quiches and casseroles
line the kitchen table. Pork tenderloins fat as forearms appear in foil pans,
marinating in our foyer. My sister roasts them as she folds our laundry,
It’s the South.
I am ravenous for it all.
Plant tasks soothe me.
Each week I lay three ice cubes
in the six orchids sent after my brain surgery.
These tropic lovelies dot the creamy parlor
with magenta moth wings. Is it strange,
though, to worry this hothouse care as I die,
glioblastoma gnawing quietly
on my brain?
II My Daughter’s Wedding--
The Play
Oh, Susannah, your nuptials’ drama
could have been staged at my Firehouse
Theatre before that Board of bored,
social climbing bitches kicked me
to the curb.
Think of the material:
scheduling, postponing safe dates
like shifting sand each month as COVID
policy loosened and tightened, then a tucked
in pop-up--a terminal mother of the bride,
fer Chrissake!
But who to script it?
Sarah Ruhl? Teresa Reback? Tom Stoppard!
Heady and a hoot, crushing the fourth wall,
you and your audience masked, doubling
as guests and bride, a wedding within a play
about a wedding that almost wasn’t. Then
The Real Thing: video sequences of me sacked out
after radiation days before the ceremony,
my oval face reframed on steroids,
looking like Miss Piggy in her pink tutu.
The actual marriage day’s more dark comedy:
bridesmaids robed in French Terry for the hair
and make-up bit, drinking Prosecca, slipping
soft rose petals into envelopes to toss
to the happy couple on departure, while upstairs your
dad dons the plastic gloves to slide chemo capsules
down my throat. I join you all for our under-eye masks,
and suggest Dippity Do for your hair, limp in Richmond
humidity. In your new, forced happy voice you scream:
“Mom, I don’t even, like, know what that is!”
III The Rappahannock River
On our cruiser the next Sunday,
Morrie’s on the wheel tacking
to a broad reach, then Trevor, our
middle child, a man with acres
of orchard to farm, a day job,
and two blond babies to raise,
finds my lap, his head resting
there, while I stroke his face,
touching the whisker-ey wet
of his cheeks.
When I close my eyes to the
sun and smile, my hairless head
and my round face rise as a pearl
moon, lighting a stream
of funeral food, West Elm wedding
gifts and money cards flying to refugees,
to Afghan women and children,
also dying and hungry for life.
VA Smith
I House and Garden
Waking me for today’s treatment,
coffee and cinnamon smells snake
upstairs to my bed.
Friends’ food floods our house.
Neighbors leave lemon bars, key lime pies lathered in whipped cream,
fruit, grain, vegetable and potato salads fill the fridge, quiches and casseroles
line the kitchen table. Pork tenderloins fat as forearms appear in foil pans,
marinating in our foyer. My sister roasts them as she folds our laundry,
It’s the South.
I am ravenous for it all.
Plant tasks soothe me.
Each week I lay three ice cubes
in the six orchids sent after my brain surgery.
These tropic lovelies dot the creamy parlor
with magenta moth wings. Is it strange,
though, to worry this hothouse care as I die,
glioblastoma gnawing quietly
on my brain?
II My Daughter’s Wedding--
The Play
Oh, Susannah, your nuptials’ drama
could have been staged at my Firehouse
Theatre before that Board of bored,
social climbing bitches kicked me
to the curb.
Think of the material:
scheduling, postponing safe dates
like shifting sand each month as COVID
policy loosened and tightened, then a tucked
in pop-up--a terminal mother of the bride,
fer Chrissake!
But who to script it?
Sarah Ruhl? Teresa Reback? Tom Stoppard!
Heady and a hoot, crushing the fourth wall,
you and your audience masked, doubling
as guests and bride, a wedding within a play
about a wedding that almost wasn’t. Then
The Real Thing: video sequences of me sacked out
after radiation days before the ceremony,
my oval face reframed on steroids,
looking like Miss Piggy in her pink tutu.
The actual marriage day’s more dark comedy:
bridesmaids robed in French Terry for the hair
and make-up bit, drinking Prosecca, slipping
soft rose petals into envelopes to toss
to the happy couple on departure, while upstairs your
dad dons the plastic gloves to slide chemo capsules
down my throat. I join you all for our under-eye masks,
and suggest Dippity Do for your hair, limp in Richmond
humidity. In your new, forced happy voice you scream:
“Mom, I don’t even, like, know what that is!”
III The Rappahannock River
On our cruiser the next Sunday,
Morrie’s on the wheel tacking
to a broad reach, then Trevor, our
middle child, a man with acres
of orchard to farm, a day job,
and two blond babies to raise,
finds my lap, his head resting
there, while I stroke his face,
touching the whisker-ey wet
of his cheeks.
When I close my eyes to the
sun and smile, my hairless head
and my round face rise as a pearl
moon, lighting a stream
of funeral food, West Elm wedding
gifts and money cards flying to refugees,
to Afghan women and children,
also dying and hungry for life.