Thank you! At first I was going to skip this prompt because I thought oh I have nothing to say about that one, but early morning insomnia somehow put words together!
Thank you! 🙏 My father was estranged from his family, my mother ran away from hers, I did not have children of my own, so I struggle to feel connected in ways most people are. I just read Elissa Altman’s comment on her Substack about how nature is the original parent, and that has definitely been true for me.
They are present in the birds, aren’t they? Sometimes working their thawing magic in ways they couldn’t before. What a stirring glimpse into a moment, Barbara.
Memories of sitting on her lap in the garden hearing her talk
I was so young then and I have so many questions now
Stories, please tell me stories Nana.
Her mom died when she was one and she went to live with grandma Dooley. Her other 5 sisters went to the orphanage, her oldest sister was 13 and went to work as a maid. Her father had to work across the bay at the shipyard. Nana was so young.
I want to hear from her about the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco when she was 10 and the rats and fires everywhere. Was she afraid? What was it like? The '89 quake here was terrifying. I can only imagine.
What was it like living with grandma Dooley? The photos show Grandma Dooley holding a potato in her lap. Did she ever tell my nana about leaving Ireland during the famine alone sailing across the sea? She was so young.
I look at my Nana's photos and see my cheeks and my eyes.
Her rosary beads hang over the frame.
Her faith was strong, going to church saying her prayers while her children played on the steps and waited outside.
Faithfulness, determination and strength are in the photos of her and the few stories I've heard from our ancestors.
Kaitlin, I'm so grateful to be learning these words through you. Thank you for bringing them into our vocabulary and our practice. The dried flower petals on your head, a crown - LOVE this! The liminality of dreaming and waking, everywhere and nowhere, marking time in ways we cannot understand.
Grandmother
All I know about grandmothers
is that my father was young when he lost his mother,
which is why I write “paternal grandmother” and “colon cancer” on those medical history forms.
He told me I have her eyes.
I wonder if her gut was as wounded as mine.
And my maternal grandmother was left behind in the country my mother ran away from,
haunted and unable to escape becoming an abuser herself.
All I know about grandmothers came from storybooks and movies.
I am old enough to be one—recently at the park a darling three year old confused me with her Nana—
but I am not.
My eldering reaches farther back than family,
when I pick up the fossil turtle femur I found in the Montana badlands in my younger decades
and feel the 65 million year old weight of ancient earth history,
a piece of Turtle Island heavy in my palm
from a time when dinosaurs ruled and turtles were enormous.
My ancestors are rock and moon,
stars and trees;
my lifespan diminished yet preserved into significance,
lovingly linked and held by the fullness of time.
I love the story you weave with the imagery, and the ending "lovingly linked"
Thank you! At first I was going to skip this prompt because I thought oh I have nothing to say about that one, but early morning insomnia somehow put words together!
The scope of this is powerful, from the most intimate wounded gut to connection with the time when turtles were enormous.
Your "but I am not" hit me. I feel that.
Thank you! 🙏 My father was estranged from his family, my mother ran away from hers, I did not have children of my own, so I struggle to feel connected in ways most people are. I just read Elissa Altman’s comment on her Substack about how nature is the original parent, and that has definitely been true for me.
Nature as parent is true for me, too, Jeanette.
And nature teaches us so much more about that creative power we all have.
Yesss!
Three rivers connect me with my grandmothers
Situated on the Allegheny, I am a bridge
between my paternal and maternal grandmothers.
My paternal grandmother flows north
to meet me. The Monogahela.
Together we converge with the Ohio, drifting
through states to reach my maternal grandmother
Of Kentucky’s western rim.
I’m a nesting doll carried through the ages
Stitched within contained, shadowed spaces
The needle plunges through the connected cloth
Dipping below where I cannot see
Maintaining the line through age– a labyrinthine lineage.
I imagine the threads that stretch
In these unseen places between us
Are frayed and tangled, yet bound up in each other.
A net emerges that catches much in the rivers of life.
A testament to how much women carry.
Tethered, anchored, holding still.
So fine image: “A net emerges that catches much in the rivers of life.
A testament to how much women carry.”
Karen is great
At 68
My wife of forty three years.
But one year as gee-gee
& i can see her
Re-clicking on all her gears.
I appreciate the perspective shift. Thank you for sharing
The cards all speak of lovers this morning
Eros has made coffee and wants to stretch beside me
Tease me to a new awakening within this well-known room
I’m in a sweatshirt that belonged to my mother
I’ve got Nanna’s blanket to keep off the chill
I’m wearing the sort of underpants that a woman’s meant to bleed in
Oracle, take your diamond, swans, and curved hips
Leave me to my lost mother lost grandmother dreams
But no… The earth is unfolding with a trillion parted lips
Tree passions parted to drink May morning sun
Grandmother comfort
Grandmother eros
Grandmother time
Get dressed
But first, get undressed
Come play
The earth is unfolding with a trillion parted lips! This is rich in kind of words we are meant to bleed in. Thank you.
Thank you for helping me feel into this line even more vividly, Margaret
Yessss!! 🌀🌀🪶🪶
This week has a THEME! So grateful for this chance to see and feel it from yet another angle.
Being new here is a fabulous wonder. You all stir up so much in me. Thank you!!
Wow. Thank you for sharing.
I really appreciate the subtle intertwining of life life and loss. Birth and death are never mentioned but I can feel them present with your words.
Grandmother
After Pappy died they sold the cows.
Taking the dairy out of dairy farm.
Mamie lived alone in the big yellow farmhouse
A short dumpy woman with rheumy hazel eyes,
her gray hair netted into an untidy bun.
We went for Christmas the year after he died,
Just my parents and I
(my sister and the kids were in Rhode Island
with in-laws).
I didn’t want to be there,
resented missing friends
and joyous Christmases past.
Instead, I had a sad metal tabletop Christmas tree,
no presents beneath it
and a crusty grandmother I was half afraid of.
Pappy, with warm sun-browned skin and twinkling eyes
and smelling of Redman tobacco,
had been my favorite—beloved grandparent of choice.
Christmas Eve brought high clouds
drifting past a full moon.
It had snowed lightly.
The old barn, familiar like a friend, drew me,
and I asked Mamie to go with me.
It was almost midnight.
We bundled up in coats and scarves
and started across the icy path.
I put my arm around her
to keep us both from falling.
We were a sad pair,
both longing for things that were not there.
We reached the barn.
I pulled back the rusty latch and
opened the splintered wooden door
and we stepped into the darkness.
The sweet smell of hay hung in the still air
holding the memories of hay forts built
as children, and the gentle mooing of the cows.
I felt tears on my face
and turned to see her weeping too.
Unexpectedly, a high fluttering sound.
We looked up together
and a barn owl soared slowly, quietly
across the space under the high rafters.
I clutched the stiff wool of her coat.
Something thawed between us.
Such a blessing when hearts thaw. I’m glad you had that moment.
They are present in the birds, aren’t they? Sometimes working their thawing magic in ways they couldn’t before. What a stirring glimpse into a moment, Barbara.
Thank you for seeing this important moment in my life, Margaret.
"We have an invisible string between us,"
I told the stranger in the grocery store
when he remarked about how close we were;
always connected.
You're still here, but it's been years
since my hand has been in yours.
I'm still not sure whether it would be more
painful to see you again only
to lose you, or to go on
feeling this incessant pull.
That invisible string and pull is so very real and tangible. Thank you for illuminating the pain of its tug.
Eda means stories/grandmothers in the Old Language.
My Oma is now with the Edas.
They hold me as I let myself sink
Into their roots
into their hands.
For the first time I understand
Home.
Land.
Belonging.
Something within me that was broken remembers itself
I am whole again.
Grandmother Moon
Lights a path
Across the water.
Who will go?
Grandma
Grandma in the singular, I had two
One in a city and one in the country.
They were not known as Grandmas
But Nana.
The one in the country was brisk and deaf
She kept chickens and lived in a railway carriage
Her loo was a place of intense fascination
A plank with two holes across a stream.
It was an eternity of buses, trains more buses and a long walk.
I felt I was going back in time to a place
Where children were seen and not heard.
The one in the city was arthritic and on her own
She had lost brothers and husband during the war.
Nana was idiosyncratic and loved markets to pick up junk.
She was what my mother called ‘a card’.
Her loo, too was a place too intense fascination.
She lived in the fifth floor flat in a building that was old
But she had an outside loo!
It was across the open space with a veranda
On the right only connected to that space.
I was going back in time again
Where children were seen, heard but
Did not understand the adults.
Nanas, in the plural
Both odd and Victorian
Difficult to be with
One in the city and one in the country.
FJT 3.5.26
My Nana
Oh to know her now and to learn from her
Memories of sitting on her lap in the garden hearing her talk
I was so young then and I have so many questions now
Stories, please tell me stories Nana.
Her mom died when she was one and she went to live with grandma Dooley. Her other 5 sisters went to the orphanage, her oldest sister was 13 and went to work as a maid. Her father had to work across the bay at the shipyard. Nana was so young.
I want to hear from her about the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco when she was 10 and the rats and fires everywhere. Was she afraid? What was it like? The '89 quake here was terrifying. I can only imagine.
What was it like living with grandma Dooley? The photos show Grandma Dooley holding a potato in her lap. Did she ever tell my nana about leaving Ireland during the famine alone sailing across the sea? She was so young.
I look at my Nana's photos and see my cheeks and my eyes.
Her rosary beads hang over the frame.
Her faith was strong, going to church saying her prayers while her children played on the steps and waited outside.
Faithfulness, determination and strength are in the photos of her and the few stories I've heard from our ancestors.
I'm Thankful for what was shared
but Nana,
I want to hear more stories.
MAY 3, 2026
GRANDMOTHER
Five sons and four daughters
Birthed in an old farm house
On the prairie of Nebraska
A German from Russia
She was settled, yet flustered,
Stubborn, stern, and determined.
Her hair coiled everyday in a bun
With an apron worn always atop her house dress,
And with hands work-worn with large swollen knuckles
She prepared plates brimming with potatoes
Mashed, fried, boiled and raw
To temper the hunger of the Great Depression
Clothes scrubbed by hand in a tub in the basement
Were rolled flat through the wringer
Then hung outdoors to dry in the sun.
Little energy was left by the end of the day
To answer unending questions from her granddaughter come to stay.
Bony knuckles she rapped on top of my head
“You chatter too much, sweetie. Please stop!!”
My grandmother said.
Placed in a casket early in a cold February,
Five sons and four daughters gathered round.
Each mourned and wept at her passing.
My tiny black leather shoes
Sank into the deep, white snow
When we laid her to rest before I turned six.
I celebrate this mother of nine,
Who tended family and farm,
Regretting the small time she had left for grandmothering.
Grandmother
She keeps saying she is old
And keeps apologizing that
She doesn’t do much
Anymore.
First of all, she is incorrect
About not doing anything
Anymore.
What about that amazing
Dinner last night.
And, what’s really a big deal,
She doesn’t fully realize, as
Much as she loves and adores
Them and knows they love and
Adore her, that she is the ground
Beneath her grandchildren’s feet.
She is the skip in their hop, the light
In their eyes, the peace in their storms.
That’s not nothing. That’s life
Being renewed and rooted
In love.
That’s grandmother nurture of
roots for trees
To blossom.
That’s, well, a lot,
Don’t you think?
I do think! Beautiful.
I do think. Being the ground and the roots is a mighty something.
Zipped the jacket up to my chin
Wound the cabled scarf around my neck
A tender embrace of stitches fashioned just the way you taught me
(looking in a mirror because I was a south-paw)
-
Out I set to find you, peeking through the ripples of evening clouds
that remind me of the softness of your wrinkles
flooding your face with waves of compassion.
Others by my side in the designated time and place
to walk and honor
walk and observe
walk and chat
walk and chant
walk and welcome your flowery fullness.
-
But you guarded your riches
dissipated in the foggy eve
lest we melt like Semele in the purity of your divinity.
And we basked in your gentler, numinous gaze.
-
Home. Home. To put the kettle on.
Your practice ringing in my ears.
Settled in my window seat for a quick cuppa
and a read before the deep dreams of sleep.
I reach to pull the blinds -
and there you are.
In all the brightness of your heart.
Just for me.
-
And like the secrets that we shared
in summer nighttime giggles in the bed
you whispered in my ear:
all is well.
A lovely gift:
I reach to pull the blinds -
and there you are.
In all the brightness of your heart.
Just for me.
Thanks, Brenda!
If I called you answered
even in Walmart while you tried
to find the Ginko Biloba to help you
not forget
On the ride home from the airport
wide left turn with a truck in our way
you missed him barely exclaiming
"left shoulder isn't working so great"
"Three dollars for an avocado is highway robbery!"
you announced loudly in the store
I bought 2
and was declared the best chef ever at dinner.
I was states away when you died
I received the text and thought it was maybe a joke
Mom didn't know either
silence and worry it took time to find out
there was no service
there was no eulogies
there was no gathering
it got complicated
Your namesake, my daughter
Carries your sass and your beauty
but little girl me sure could use your advice
your humor and the way you made space feel kind
I saved your voicemails of you complaining
I wasn't home, doing things with out you
Probably causing trouble, buying yummy food
sleeping in late or just ignoring you
I laugh now when I listen
shared them with mom and she
always says afterwards
we were so lucky to have you as ours.
Kaitlin, I'm so grateful to be learning these words through you. Thank you for bringing them into our vocabulary and our practice. The dried flower petals on your head, a crown - LOVE this! The liminality of dreaming and waking, everywhere and nowhere, marking time in ways we cannot understand.
I have become the grandmother I didn't have.
When the grandchildren are born, it's like watching your own again.
The joy of the love and the memory of your own is shockingly unimaginable.
I am so grateful for our grandchildren
We have 5,3 girls and two boys
And they are the joys of my life.
It amazes me,the love that is so deep within our hearts, for them.
I've heard it said "why didn't we have grandchildren first"
And I'm so grateful that I had my children first so that I can really enjoy our grandchildren.