One of my earliest memories involves my mother, sitting in the screened porch between our kitchen and the carport. I might have been four or five, and she would have been in her early 30s. She had her legs drawn up under her, and she was holding a handkerchief, crying. I ask her why, and she said she was just feeling sad.
Decades later, when she was reaching the end of her life, and I asked her if she remembered that. She did, and she was 89. She said she felt terrible that I had found her crying, but she had been deeply unhappy. I had unexpectedly walked in on it. She said that, at the time, she was realizing that her life was turning into something entirely different from what she had imagined when she was younger, and she felt like it was losing a dream.
Sadness is a word I associate with her. It’s a condition that can come from many sources – disappointment, loss, health setbacks, family upheavals, or sometimes no reason at all, to mention only a few. It’s a very human condition, something we’ve all experienced to varying degrees.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.
Some Tuesday Readings
There I Go Again: On pessimism and the poetry of Stevie Smith – Alexander Fayne.
Two Cities and Two Men – poem by Cody Ilardo at Power & Glory.
Pilgrim Verse – poem by Jody Lee Collins.
“L. The Snow,” poem by Emily Dickinson – Every Day Poems.
“The Bells,” poem by Edgar Allen Poe – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.
