What Mother Taught Me
by Judy Lorenzen

It was the last night at our house on the hill
in Malcolm, Nebraska, the place my nine-year-old heart loved.
Dad’s truck was loaded and ready to leave in the morning–
we girls would ride in the old white station wagon with Mom.
That evening, I sat under the mulberry tree
at the end of the sidewalk and cried,
looking up through my tears at the stars,
a hundred thousand points of light in the soft violet sky.
Mother found me and asked what was wrong.
“Look at my trees I love,
smell the fragrance of these green grasses,
listen to the crickets’ last song for me,
and look, look at those stars–
I’m losing everything!”
My kitty seemed to understand and comforted me,
bumping her head on my chin to pet me and herself.
We were taking her with us,
along with our German shepherd.
I remember Mom saying,
“We’ll take your sky with us.
Who could leave this weight of starry glory behind?
Tomorrow night, you’ll see.”
And my stars were there the next night,
radiating like her promise over our tiny house.
But that same night, my kitty left
to return 99 miles to Malcolm all by herself,
and I cried, surely, as many tears as stars in the sky.

We found my kitty, now a cat, the next spring
when we returned to the old house
to drive by and see it–there she was.
“Leave her here,” Mom said.
She was right–I couldn’t take her home with me,
not because she had turned a little wild,
but because I knew exactly how she felt.
I wanted to stay, too.
That day, Mother taught me
how to let my wounds become my radiance
as she had done so beautifully her whole life.



 

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