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Hi there. 🙂 If you don’t know me already (and even if you do), let me introduce myself.
I’m L.L. Barkat. Author, dreamer, tea lover.
I am also, quite deeply, a mom.
Yes, my heart has been stolen by two girls who I’ve raised now for quite a few years. Sometimes it’s been crazy fun. Sometimes it’s been crazy hard. But always, it’s presented me with a challenge: to keep a jewel-like part of myself alive, even as I help them shine.
Eventually, I turned to poetry for the simplest sparkle I could find.
That did not come out of nowhere.
Every day before the school bus came, my own mother, who was, to me, the smartest and funniest and most beautiful woman in the world—this woman, she gathered my sister and I to her side on the golden couch and read poems to us while we waited.
The golden couch was hers, in its way.
She had picked it out.
She loved it.
It was one of the few things that made her hard life lovely.
I really don’t know (I have not asked her) what inspired this daily before-school reading ritual. But I believe it changed the trajectory of my life. Not right away. (Isn’t that how mothering goes? It can take a long time, sometimes, to see our best influences come to light in our children.)
A few years back, I returned the poetry favor, in a small way, to my mom.
In my bag, I carried a hard but lovely collection called Why the House Is Made of Gingerbread.
She had had a silent heart attack and only just discovered it by accident. Days after the discovery, she’d gone into the hospital for a quintuple bypass surgery. I took the long trip north, with my poetry book secreted away in my bag, and I went to be by my mother’s side.
She was completely still when I walked into the room. There were machines beeping and voices hush-talking. I touched her hand. It was cold as ice.
Eventually, she woke from her anesthetic slumber. I told her I loved her. I pulled a blanket up for her. I gave her, one by one, ice chips for her parched lips. The next day, I knew, I would read her poetry, but I did not mention this at the time. The next day, as it turned out, she would tell me about the golden retriever who was bringing solace to those in recovery, room by room.
And so, when the following day came, I did read her some poetry. In this atmosphere of tiny talk, I also learned things I never knew about my mom, like that she had grown up on a farm (how could I have missed this?). The poems had become a small gathering—of her to my side, and me to hers.
Years later, I have now begun tucking poems into my heart and mind by memorizing them.
From solace to laughter, these poems have served as grist and gatherings, as I relate to my growing-up daughters. Someday, I hope, if my girls are ever by my side, pulling a blanket up to warm me, the poems will be there, in my mind or theirs, to gather us to each other and bring some kind of golden light to our hearts, even as the poems now give us ways to celebrate together, laugh, and just do life.
This is my story. Or, a very small part of it.
It’s a bit of why I invite you, if you aren’t already, to become a poetic mom. Or, a mom on poetry. I want something golden, something gathering, for your life. Something lustrous but simple that, in its way, is just yours, unless you decide to share it.
Come, be a mom—on poetry.
With quiet sparkle,
L.L. Barkat
daughter, mom
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