Extraordinary Sunshine Weaver

This poem is in my first poetry book, Three-Penny Memories: A Poetic Memoir.

Woman
      for Mom

      Woman, how you portray
      your complex essence and ambiguity.
You are a study of light
cast on the walls of your Self.
      Shadows border your brilliance.
Your portrait is askew with flavors
that you offer to guests
      enamored by your mystery
      as you gaze into obscurity.

This poem first appeared in Well Versed: A Collection of Poetry and Prose (2020). It won 3rd place in a summer flash fiction contest (2019).

© Barbara Leonhard

The premise of my book Three-Penny Memories: A Poetic Memoir is based on my Uncle Bill's question,"Do you love your mother?" He wanted me to consider the responsibility ahead of me. (See the photo below of Uncle Bill and Mom.)

Tending to my mother as she navigated Alzheimer's. Like most mothers and daughters, Mom and I were in a dance and sometimes in flight. We each suffered conditions that affected our brain health. Hers, Alzheimer's; mine, encephalitis. We each had secret pregnancies. Hers from a mistake in her freshman year in the mid 1940s, leading to an abortion; mine, a miscarriage due to the effects of a prescription drug Mom took when I was in vitro: diethylstilbestrol (DES). The drug made me infertile and caused several cancer scares. While Mom had seven children, I was able to have none. 

That mother wound was difficult to heal. Mom scolded me for being childless. "Only selfish people don't have children." Even though my being childless wasn't my fault, she would say hurtful things - even in the years before Alzheimer's set in and even after she had learned I was a DES baby. Perhaps it was too difficult for her to accept the unwitting role she played in damaging my reproductive organs. She followed the doctor's orders but claimed she didn't take much of the medicine. Maybe things would have been worse. My uterus was t-shaped and unable to hold an embryo. Even if I had decided to do hormone treatments daily at the doctor's office, have my uterus tied off to prevent a miscarriage, and spent thousands of dollars, my baby's reproductive organs would have also been damaged. Thousands of DES babies and their offspring, both males and females, are still suffering the consequences.

In my book, I take a hard look at myself and my failings. While Mom had me to guard over her, I realized I had no daughter to help me through my aging years. How selfish, right? But our relationship had many shades of light, and Mom trusted me to swaddle and comfort her like she did for me when I was growing up. To make the right decisions. To be with her when she died.

Cover Collage

Center: Mom.

1:00 and 3:00, me.

5:00, 7:00 and 9:00, Mom.

11:00, my parents and myself.