Are You My Mother?
by Lori Levy

Who is this woman who no longer remembers
who her grandchildren are or what she did today?
Like the little bird in the children’s story
searching for her mother, I, too, want to ask:
Are you my mother?
Blank stares. Silence. She begins a sentence
and stops in the middle, as if she’s forgotten
what she meant to say.

She is drowsy today, weak from pneumonia,
struggling to breathe. I tell her it’s okay to complain,
we have to know if something hurts her.
What good will that do? she asks.
I smile at this question–finally, finally a glimpse
of my mother, never a complainer.

No news is good news, she says,
though a war is raging in Gaza,
40 minutes from her kibbutz.

So much is gone–
but she still laughs when we say something funny,
and old songs from her childhood spill out with ease,
along with Robert Frost lines she had to memorize in school.
She might not know who’s sitting beside her
at the kitchen table–but she never forgets to say,
We have a wonderful family.

Are you my mother? Not the absence of what was,
but this solid core of sweetness–indestructible,
undeniable, beaming through the fog.



 

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