Grandmother

Grandmother

I.

"Woman, the Sex that Schlepps:

Why I want to Go to College."

My application.

I love my mother, but I don't want

to become my mother. Waiting

on people all day long, at work

and then again at home.

Her days numbered in dishes.

Becoming ever more like her mother

tough enough to wash milking machines

and grow all the family's food,

but self-sacrificing and self-effacing.

The men always come first. "Oh, I'm okay,

I'll just have a chicken wing."

II.

After a lifetime of serving her husband, Sam,

the most benevolent king of a household,

Grandma Eva was on her own.

"I took care of him like a baby."

"He was like my right arm."

The good mother became the rebellious senior.

Bereft of farm and family, she cultivated

her own spirit. Housed in Bethlehem Towers,

ten stories above the earth, she asked,

"What's the matter with all these old people?"

Eva, first woman, began to reshape her world

the garden, the exodus, the journey to Bethlehem.

She woke up those old ones, led them out again

into life. She taught kindergarten children

their aleph bet, taught Catholics about Passover.

She remembered and retold her childhood

escape in a chicken wagon.

And among the men!

Like Lilith, she no longer accepted

being on the bottom. She was the first woman

to daven in the minyan,

the group of ten men prescribed for prayer.

She spoke in her true voice. She was counted.

She had become visible.

Copyright Frontiers Publishing, Inc. 1999
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved