Tag: mother

Mother’s Day 2025

This photo from almost eight years ago is three generations of mothers in my family, Nana and me with daughter E holding baby ABC, my first grandchild and Nana’s first great-gandchild.

This Mother’s Day is without Nana, who passed away in May 2019, and with E and ABC living in London, where Mother’s Day was celebrated a couple of months ago.

Here, B baked squash maple muffins for breakfast and is planning a special dinner, chicken and artichokes over artichoke ravioli with a yet-to-be-revealed-to me dessert. Daughter T is here with us, which is a blessing.

Still, if feels strange to not be with any of the other mothers in my family, except in spirit.

I am wearing a shirt that was my mother’s, a gift from our friend Angie, who passed away twenty years ago.

Mother’s Day began as a call for peace. (That post contains Julia Ward Howe’s original proclamation, still well worth reading in our current war-torn world.) Today, I wish peace to all, especially to all who have mothered others, whether still living or deceased.

Love and compassion bring peace.

Reblog: Poem by Deborah Marshall

I had to share this heart-breaking poem from fellow Boiler House Poets Collective member Deborah Marshall in the Silver Birch Press ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER series. Anyone who has been a care-giver for a loved one with dementia will likely find resonance with this achingly real scene.

Day 15, Bed 201B, Granger 2 by Deborah Marshall (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)


This has been one of the longest-running series for Silver Birch Press. You can find my post about my own entry here.

One-Liner Wednesday: “First Grandchild” on Silver Birch Press

Sharing that my poem about my mom, “First Grandchild,” is now part of the ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER series on Silver Birch Press; my blog post about it is here.

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/05/22/one-liner-wednesday-let-the-confusion-commence/ (Check the link to learn about “up commas”!)

“First Grandchild” on Silver Birch Press

I am honored that my poem “First Grandchild” from my chapbook Hearts (Kelsay Books, 2023) is featured today by Silver Birch Press as part of their ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER series. Many thanks to Melanie and the Silver Birch Press team for including me in this series!

The first grandchild in the title is my daughter E, shown in the photo above holding baby ABC with my mother, known here at Top of JC’s Mind as Nana, and me.

You can read a bit more about the writing of the poem in the author’s note at the link above.

Having this appear at this time is especially poignant. May 16th would have been my mother’s 92nd birthday.

Tomorrow, May 22nd, will be the fifth anniversary of her death.

It’s a good day to remember the immense love and care that she showed for all of us for so many years.

Her love lives on.

(a different) Mother’s Day

In the US, we are observing Mother’s Day today. While its origin was in a call for peace after the Civil War, today it is celebrated as a tribute to mothers of all types and ages.

Since the death of my mother in May, 2019, Mother’s Day has felt bittersweet to me, as it brings back that time when, within two May weeks, there was my mom’s last Mother’s Day, birthday, and the date of her death. It’s complicated further by having daughter E and granddaughters ABC and JG five time zones away.

This year has brought the additional worry of a family member’s upcoming surgery and the possibility of an underlying disorder yet to be diagnosed.

Then, there is the general upheaval in the US and so many other places in the world, war, hunger, the climate crisis, disasters, and I will end the list here, but we know it is much longer.

It’s a lot with which to contend and I’m not coping very well.

I mentioned in a Stream of Consciousness Saturday post in mid-April that I was hearing a sound in my left ear. This, along with some additional symptoms, has led to several primary care visits, a diagnosis of tinnitus, some attempts at treatment, and, on Friday, a decision to order an MRI to rule out various tumors or other abnormalities.

Of course, there is the possibility of not “ruling out” but discovering.

I admit that I’m struggling. I’m practiced with blocking things out or setting them aside to concentrate on caring for family members. Part of my problem right now is that the timing is unfortunate as I am the main driver and errand-runner and don’t want to be out of commission when I’m needed to help with surgical recovery and follow-on medical appointments. I know spouse B will drop everything at work to take care of things but I also know that his project is in a critical phase right now.

I need humility, trust, and the grace to step aside and let others take over the work I should or have been doing and put other things aside for a while, but it’s hard and I’m worried and tired.

Maybe they will examine my head and not find anything.

Wait. That doesn’t sound right.

Maybe they won’t find anything dangerous.

Maybe, I can get a grip when the MRI is actually scheduled and on my calendar. After all, this is not my first rodeo with medical mystery ailments. Some of them have even been mine. I’m just more annoyed with my own. I know I need to channel some of the compassion I have toward others and apply it to myself.

And maybe take a nap.

It’s been helpful to write this down. I am questioning whether or not it is wise to post it, but have decided to do so because authenticity is part of the charm? hallmark? conceit? of Top of JC’s Mind.

And, yes, it’s Mother’s Day and B is making lamb spiedies and grilled asparagus with his homemade tiramisu for dessert.

And there have been sweet cards and a present.

And the lilies of the valley are starting to bloom.

They were my mother’s birth flower and a favorite of hers.

The photo is from my mother’s 87th and last birthday, lilies of the valley from our yard and cards from my father and their artist-friend Jim.

Miss you today, Mom.

Hearts is available!

I’m excited to announce that my first chapbook, Hearts, is now available from my publisher, Kelsay Books, here or from Amazon here.

For local folks, I will also be selling copies myself after my shipment arrives in 2-3 weeks.

For those who might be wondering, a chapbook is a short book, usually centered on a single topic. Hearts is a chapbook of poems that revolve around my mother, including her last years living with heart disease. Long-time readers of Top of JC’s Mind may remember reading posts about my mother, known here as Nana.

I completed the first draft of Hearts in December, 2017, in response to a chapbook contest prompt from QuillsEdge Press. The prompt was “In Transition” and my mother interpretation of that prompt to write about my mother, who was under hospice care. (We didn’t know at the time that her decline would be more prolonged than expected, as she was with us until May, 2019.) Although I didn’t win the contest, I was among the finalists and my poem, “Sixteen Hours,” was included in an anthology of the finalists’ work along with the winning chapbook, Skin Gin, by Rose Maria Woodson.

Given how busy and emotional those next two years were, I didn’t have the wherewithal to send out a new version of the chapbook until spring of 2020. I had continued to write poems during Nana’s continuing struggles and expanded the manuscript with those poems in the months after her death. I benefited from a manuscript review with some of the Grapevine Poets, local poets who meet every other week to workshop individual poems and as needed for manuscript reviews. They were able to offer guidance on ordering the poems and they identified a couple of places where new poems would be helpful to flesh out my mother’s story.

I continued to send Hearts to publishers and contests over the next two years. During that time, I did more revisions, incorporating comments from poet-friends as I went along. In August of 2022, encouraged by Grapevine Poets Jessica Dubey and Burt Myers who had had books accepted by Kelsay Books, I submitted there and received a publication offer from them on September 2nd.

Karen Kelsay and the whole team at Kelsay Books have been amazing! They made the publication process, which was a mystery to me, straightforward. They also were able to move up the publication date, which I had originally thought would be in late summer/early fall.

When I went to the first Tupelo Press/MASS MoCA workshop-in-residence in November of 2015, I had thought that I might be able to put together a chapbook of poem about the North Adams area and my family’s connections there. I set a goal of age 60 to have that book published.

Of course, life events intervened.

That original chapbook idea is now a full-length collection that is being submitted to publishers, unsuccessfully so far.

Now, at age 62, I’m grateful that Hearts is my first published book because it is about my mother, who made my life possible and loving. She was always a strong support for me, whatever the endeavor. It feels right that my first book has her as its heart.

four years

Today is the fourth anniversary of my mother’s death.

As often happens with these dates, sometimes it seems that it couldn’t have been that long and other times it seems longer ago. This warping of time is even more prominent because of the pandemic. I remain grateful that my mother died before we were all faced with the impossible prospect of not being able to visit her in the nursing home where she spent her final months. That would have been a particularly heavy burden for my father, with whom she had celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary a few weeks before she died.

This year feels especially poignant for me as I await the publication of my first chapbook of poetry, Hearts, from Kelsay Books, most likely in June or July. The poems center on my mother with a particular emphasis on her last years dealing with heart failure. She appreciated my writing and I think she would be pleased to know she is the focus of my first book.

She didn’t enjoy having her picture taken, so I will share a photo, taken four years ago in her final days, of one of her favorite flowers, lily-of-the-valley, which was also her birth flower.

Lily of the valley, with Paco’s card to Nana and birthday card made by artist-friend Jim


Love you, Mom. Miss you. Still cry every once in a while…

final edits on a special day

Yesterday, the proof book for my chapbook, Hearts, arrived.

It’s amazing to hold my book for the first time!

My immediate job is to review it and send final edits to Kelsay. The corrections I had sent in the first round had all been addressed, so there was not much to comment on.

I sent the email today, on what would have been my mom’s 91st birthday.

She is the center of Hearts. ❤ ❤ ❤

One-Liner Wednesday: 69

Today would have been my parents’ 69th wedding anniversary.

This (bonus) One-Liner Wednesday comes to you as part of Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday series. Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2023/04/19/one-liner-wednesday-a-battle-to-the-finish/

Sweets by Wendy Stewart (ONE GOOD MEMORY Series)

Another poem from a fellow Grapevine and Boiler House Poets Collective friend as part of the Silver Birch Press ONE GOOD MEMORY series! Enjoy “Sweets” by Wendy Stewart, especially those of you who enjoy marzipan treats for Christmas.

silverbirchpress's avatarSilver Birch Press

fieryphoenixSweets
by Wendy Stewart

For Christmas we make marzipan fruits.
They are as big as my thumbs.

Apples are round and red,
like apples. I get it.

Plums are purple like plums.
I like them best.
Bananas are yellow and long.

I say grapes and she laughs.
I get it. They’d be so little.

Once she says Oh! That one
I thought must be a real plum.

She puts them on the glass tray.
They stay set on the cold porch.

When company comes,
we offer them our candies.
She holds the tray.

I tell how my mum
was fooled by my plum:
That one.

PHOTO:Marzipan fruits by Fiery Phoenix.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I wrote “Sweets” when my daughter was little, perhaps littler than I was in this poem, and I was missing my mother. It is a fond memory. It struck me that you don’t know what’s…

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