Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)

Camara, Kathleen

194         Volume 9, Number 1
I had a first chance at being a mom.
It was hard and painful to get him into this world;
Now he’s here and I can’t ask for anything more.
He makes me proud to be a mom for the first time.
His big beautiful eyes make me smile
He is everything I ever wanted, and he is mine.
I have been blessed to have him,
But I have been even more blessed.
I have been given a second chance to be a mother
to a beautiful, healthy baby girl
She smells just like a freshly bloomed flower
and looks as beautiful as a rose.
She is everything I ever wanted, and she is mine.
    
            —Dedicated to Julian and Caroline
Kathleen Camara
Second Chance


English

Second Chance

Arcana, Judith

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering      219 
Jocasta Interviewed in Hell
Well, naturally I blamed myself – blamed myself for giving up my baby – we all do, 
even when we say we don’t. Being queen of Thebes was no compensation, though 
Laius insisted it would be. I don’t say he made me do it, though being king he made 
me understand he could have. Laius was a bully anyway, and a bit dull, as many bullies 
are. If he thought he could confound the oracle, if he really believed he could defeat the 
old ones, why did I have to make that choice? Why did I have to send my child away?
Later I understood how great his fear had been. But when we argued, while 
we argued, I had no idea. I was so young then, still crying over my loose belly, 
still soaked in milk – I had set down my own power, and he was the king. He 
said, Send the child away; turn it out. And I did that. I did what he asked.
 
And so the queen of Corinth raised my son. Her servants and tutors grew him 
into a strong one who left home on a tide of fear, fearfilled love for his parents 
– love for his parents! But then, like an animal with instinct for its birth blood, 
he came back to be my suitor, my mysterious lover, the savior of my city.
You people always ask why I didn’t recognize him, but have you ever seen a newborn? 
Or even a dear six month infant? Do you think I have the gift, the eye of the Graiae? Do 
you? Can you look at such children and imagine who they’ll be at 18, standing in front 
of you? I think not. When you look down at them in their baskets, wrapped in soft cloth, 
rooting for the nipple under your gown, pursing their tiny budlipped mouths toward the 
smell of you, their eyes still fogged, still changing? How could I have recognized him?


Jocasta Interviewed in Hell

Nemzoff, Ruth

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         245 
Book Reviews
lives for themselves and their children, place high value on education. Children 
of immigrants tend to pursue professional, technical, and business degrees, 
which allows them to pursue careers that are linked to high incomes and which 
increase their chances for better life styles.
In chapter seven, Lundberg and Rose examine the impact of gender on 
raising children. Fathers, for example, tend to be more involved with their 
sons, and research indicates that households with sons spend more money on 
family expenditures than households with daughters. 
Each chapter in Family Investments in Children’s Potential introduces im-
portant issues that require further investigation, issues such as the influence 
of gender, disability status, and public policy pertaining to families on the 
outcomes of children.
I Wanna be Sedated is an uneven collection of tales about parenting emerging 
adults—i.e., teenagers. The pieces vary from the trivial to the poignant. On the 
one hand, Jeff Wallace reveals his horror at having to deal with his daughter’s 
first period. This reader felt like telling Wallace to “Grow up Dad!” On the 
other hand, Barbara Kingsolver is especially apt in her musings on the roots 
of parents’ worry as they help their children apply to college: “will we ever find 
a place that will hold her and love her as well as I do?” (151).
If one ignores its stereotypic notion of the teenage years as an abhorrent 
time when parents are totally confused, this book offers some insights. Joyce 
Maynard confronts us with societal and personal ambivalence about sex; Gail 
Hudson explores the complexity of the college application process; Peter 
Applebome forces liberals to reconsider the worth of the boy scouts; and Debra 
Gwartney writes with passion and detail about a truly difficult situation. The 
collection even includes an article by Flor Fernandez Barrios about “other 
mothering.” And, as always, Anna Quindlen writes about mothering with 
humour and penetrating honesty.
However, nowhere does this collection confront the myth that teenagers 
must be difficult. Nor does it ask why parents would want to be sedated during 
adolescence, a time that is endlessly fascinating as both children and parents 
grow and change. Nonetheless, I Wanna Be Sedated is worth reading—if one 
reads selectively and applies critical thinking. 
I Wanna Be Sedated
Faith Conlone and Gail Hudson, eds.  
Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2005.
Reviewed by Ruth Nemzoff


I Wanna Be Sedated

Feijo
					, Shell

Mothering, Mending Metal and My Son: A Response to the Work of Amira de la Garza

Silva, Dorsía Smith

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         241 
Book Reviews
and “wade” becomes “chiefly, to go through a tedious task, a long or uninter-
esting book.”
Mostly, though, Arcana evokes the gut-wrenching paradox that women 
love their bodies and their babies with every fibre of their being; that this 
unwavering love for the growing fetus forces them to make hard decisions 
because when the circumstances are not right for mothering, mothers turn to 
murder. No woman wants to be a Medea.
Renee Norman’s poems in True Confessions cover a range of experience, from 
her complex relationship with her mother to the daily struggles of woman-
hood. Her poems are bound together by the various experiences of women as 
daughters, mothers, grandmothers, and poets. The end result is a fresh, appealing 
collection that balances love, nostalgia, humour, fear, and anger.
Norman opens the first section, “This is How It Begins,” with “Chop.” 
The poem describes a parenting role-reversal, in which the speaker affection-
ately helps her mother undress like she does her “youngest child / when her 
head is stuck.” The tone quickly changes in “Repairing Damage” when the 
daughter starts to “break / and fight back” with her mother for lecturing her 
“children / who should have known better.” Mother-daughter tension also 
resonates in “Mother’s Madness,” as the daughter once again disapproves 
of her mother’s commands to her children: “is this what you want them to 
remember? / stop running up and down the stairs / stop teasing your sister.” 
Norman returns to the intimate bond between mothers and daughters in 
“For Sara at Twelve.” The mother here tenderly recognizes her connection to 
her daughter: “the same knots tangle / your hair and mine / we both squint 
through / glasses spotted with breath.” These moving poems best illustrate 
the profound emotions shared by mothers and daughters.
In the second and third sections, “If I Call Myself ” and “When Geese Fly,” 
Norman reflects upon the strength of women and the domestic responsibilities 
of mothers. With “On the Tongue,” she describes how women come together 
to share pain: “when Nicaraguan poet Daisy Zamora recites / a poem about her 
mother / when mature students read personal narratives aloud / one mother’s 
lost child is each particular sadness.” In the poem “In the Bathroom Thou Shalt 
Eat Stones,” Zamora reappears as a symbol of brave women who fearlessly “eat 
True Confessions
Renee Norman
Toronto: Inanna Publications, 2005.
Reviewed by Dorsía Smith Silva
242         Volume 9, Number  1
Book Reviews
stones” while others prefer the easy life of eating “bonbons.” Also of note are 
the poems “Woman Flees,” “The Queen of Between,” and the choreo-styled 
“Sex Secretaries in Search of a Poet,” which examine the constant struggle of 
mothers working outside and inside the home to find time for themselves. 
In the final section, “Giving Thanks,” Norman returns to her role as a 
daughter—to both mother and father—and granddaughter. Although these 
poems evoke the speaker’s warmth for her family, they border on trite senti-
mentality. Lines such as “for weeks I have been talking to my father / through 
my mother / inserting care and concern in the phone lines / passing by the 
heart” (“My Father, Driving”) lack the emotional poignancy found in some 
of the poems in the earlier sections. Nonetheless, Norman’s collection is a 
pleasure to read and paints a wide landscape of the lives of women.
In a society where we often hear about large numbers of youth suffering from 
moral and ethical apathy, lacking a clear sense of orientation with regard to 
their own individual future and the future of the world at large, making poor 
choices when it comes to drugs and sex, and where parenting and parental 
involvement are areas of increasing interest to scholars and the general public, a 
book dealing with the decision-making practices and patterns among children 
and adolescents is welcome news. 
This collection of ten essays seeks to elucidate the social, contextual, and 
cognitive aspects of judgment and decision-making. The rationale for the 
book comes from a perceived dearth of developmental research concerning 
the cognitive, emotional, and contextual processes underlying the develop-
ment of judgment. While most traditional theories of cognitive development 
regard it as a “unidirectional progression from either intuitive thinking to 
logical, scientific reasoning … or from states of limited understanding and 
complexity to more advanced understanding and computational complexity,” 
the essays hope to serve as a starting point for those interested in new models 
of thinking about the development of judgment that include a “broader array 
of explanatory variables and contexts” (xii). Thus, part one presents three de-
velopmental models offering different explanations of “what develops” and the 
relative importance of various cognitive and contextual components important 
The Development of Judgment and Decision
Making in Children and Adolescents 
Janis E. Jacobs and Paul A. Klaczynski, eds.  
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005. 
Reviewed by Tatjana Chorney


True Confessions

Kelly, Deirdre M.

Young Mothers, Agency and Collective Action: Issues and Challenges

Gold
					, reviewed by Marion

284        Volume 9, Number 2
Book Reviews
As parents, we sometimes celebrate our children’s achievements as if they 
were our own. That privilege of ownership is withdrawn, however, when our 
children reach adulthood and their successes and failures belong to them. In 
fact, the parent-adult child relationship can be difficult. Often adult children 
misinterpret our best parenting practices, or do not appreciate our thoughtful 
parenting; sometimes parents go astray and become the enemy. Not everyone 
who reaches adulthood can say with equanimity, as Gloria Steinem declares 
in her memoirs, that as long as parents are not deliberately harming their 
children, they should be forgiven for their behaviour. In truth, the connection 
between parents and adult children is based upon memories of past experi-
ences that, over time, are restructured.
Sondra Zeidenstein, editor of Family Reunion: Poems About Parenting 
Grown Children, has done parents of adult daughters and sons a great service 
in offering us a forum in which to engage our thoughts on the evolving nature 
of our relationships. Many of us already enmeshed in the complex web of 
adult-to-adult child love and friendship have discovered that the path toward 
mutual acceptance is fraught with the distortion of the past. Within the pages 
of Family Reunion we can engage in dialogue with many poets and perhaps 
ease our angst over perceived injustices. Here we read Myra Patterson’s words 
in “Mother’s Day, no children,” for example. Patterson writes: “Truth is, my 
kids are living their lives, all grown. I have only to sit, to walk, to lie down, 
to eat fresh strawberries, breathe, love, and let go.” We all should try to let go 
graciously, in fact.
In her introductory remarks entitled “Notes toward a Conversation in 
Poetry,” Zeidenstein admits that she has always learned much about herself 
through literature, and especially through poetry. She poses questions in these 
“Notes”: “Why shouldn’t I expect to find poems that express the extraordinary 
sorrow and rage I felt when my daughter was finally determined to separate 
from me? Are there so few poets, particularly women, with adult children? Are 
so few of us moved to write about these relationships, these emotions?”
Parents engage in conversation with others from time to time, exchange 
confidences usually on a one-to-one basis, and often feel isolated and inadequate, 
particularly during the formative years of our children’s lives. It is not surprising, 
then, that we are even more reticent to discuss the quality of our relationships 
with our adult daughters and sons. Family Reunion, however, can inspire us to 
muse, to discuss in groups, and to write poetry about the multiplicity of emotions 
Family Reunion:
Poems About Parenting Grown Children
Sondra Zeidenstein, ed. 
Goshen, Connecticut: Chicory Blue Press, 2003.
Reviewed by Marion Gold
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering        285 
Book Reviews
that refract from a parent’s heart to an adult child and back again.
In Letters to Virginia Woolf, a non-fiction work of 43 letters, Woolf scholar 
Lisa Williams focuses on mothering and violence and probes the significance 
of Woolf ’s life and writing. Williams is at her best in those letters that de-
scribe birthing and raising her son, the miscarriages she suffered before hav-
ing him, and the fertility treatments she underwent in order to conceive. Her 
experience of mothering gives her a deeper understanding of and apprecia-
tion for her own mother. When describing great joy or great pain, Williams’s 
prose is eloquent and direct; her first letter moves from a sunny fall day with 
her son in a New York City park to the devastating events that happened 
that very day, 11 September 2001. This letter opens with a quotation from 
Woolf, as do several letters, and Woolf ’s rumination on war and life from 
Three Guineas inspires Williams even as it enriches her insight into her own 
responses to the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. The last letters circle back 
to where the book begins as they discuss the first anniversary of what we now 
know as 9-11 and draw from Woolf ’s writings on war to make clear that 
Woolf, and Williams, are connected to history and life, disconnected from 
nationalism and war.
Letters to Virginia Woolf is not consistently successful, however. The letters 
are divided into six parts that do not cohere and the whole seems fragmented. 
Williams’s ruminations—on 9-11, her body, and her child; her adolescence 
and the Vietnam War; her parents and their divorce; and her Woolf scholar-
ship—cover a good deal of her life, and the divisions seem arbitrary and un-
enlightening. Further, I expected a scholar who has spent a good deal of her 
adulthood immersed in Woolf ’s writing to have more acuity with language. 
Woolf is generally a model of concision; Williams has a tendency to repeat im-
ages, words, and phrases, including clichés. How many times does one need to 
pause over a mother’s beehive hairdo; how many times does one need to “revisit 
the landscape of my childhood”? Woolf ’s descriptions are cogent; Williams’s 
prose is overwrought at times. A sun, for example, “seemed to stretch her arms 
languorously over hills and streams,” and a mother’s “hair splintered into many 
threads while the evening light hovered round her.” When not weighted down 
with descriptions, Williams’s prose soars and the two short poems she includes 
show a sharp acuity often lacking in this book. I will be sure to seek out her 
poetry on the strength of those poems alone.
Letters to Virginia Woolf
Lisa Williams.
Lanham, MD: Hamilton, 2005.
Reviewed by Roxanne Harde


Family Reunion: Poems About Parenting Grown Children

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering      225 
They told me everything the day I left the hospital; they spread the papers 
out in front of me and I signed, but I never read them. I pretty much knew 
what they said. They explained the rules, about how I would never see her 
again, how I would never know who got her. Just like when it happened, I 
did what I was told. See, I was never a complainer; I was the kind that even 
if I fell down and hurt myself, I’d get right back up and keep walking. He 
lived on my block, we went out a few times; he seemed ok. We went to a 
movie and had ice cream after, but when we cut through the alley on the way 
home, he pushed me up against the back of a building. I saw him a lot on the 
street after that but I never talked to him. And I never told what happened, 
even when I knew I was pregnant. I dropped out of school and moved into 
the Home when it started to show. We sang hymns after supper every night, 
played cards every afternoon; we did a lot of laundry. They advised us to give 
them away; there wasn’t much talk about taking care of babies. They always 
said the babies would be better off with their new parents; their new parents 
would give them good homes, send them to college. Once I was out of there, 
I hardly ever thought about it. That’s the truth. I didn’t cry when I saw babies, 
or wonder what she looked like; it was gone from me, like she was gone from 
me. It was erased, wiped out of my mind for years. Then one day I saw in the 
newspaper about some people who were adopted searching for their birth 
mothers. I’d never heard the expression before – birth mother. I started to cry. 
Picture this, I’m on the train, I don’t have any Kleenex or anything, and I can’t 
stop crying. I mean, sobbing. I got off before my stop, I was so embarrassed. 
Two days later, like I was hypnotized, I picked up the phone book, found 
the agency that handled the adoption, and called. While I was picking out 
the numbers on the phone pad, my head started buzzing – literally buzzing; 
I could hear this buzz behind my eyes. It stopped the second they answered. 
The second they picked up the phone, there was a clear silence, like a sheet of 
window glass, clear silence hanging in my head where the buzzing had been. 
Then the person on the other end said Hello. Hello? and I started to talk. I 
told them if she ever came looking, I wanted to be found. I gave them my 
home number and address, my number and address at the gallery, my email 
and cell phone – I would have given driving directions, the buses and trains 
that stop near me, or my social security number and my blood type – but they 
Noreen’s phone calls, 1999
226         Volume 9, Number 1
Judith Arcana
already had that. I didn’t search on my own, hire a detective like some do. I 
only wanted to make myself available; in case she ever wanted to know, she 
could find me. And what they did was, they sent her a letter, saying if she 
wanted to meet her birth mother, they had the information. I didn’t know 
it could work that way, but that’s what happened. After a long time (she 
thought about it nearly a year) she called me. And when the phone rang – I 
swear to god this is true – when the phone rang, I knew before I picked it up 
that it was her.


Noreen's phonecalls, 1999

Brannen
					, reviewed by Cyndi

272        Volume 9, Number 2
Book Reviews
the first Canadian-born Black to graduate as a medical doctor from the Uni-
versity of Toronto, and her reunion with “lost” Black relations in the United 
States. This is a story of a mixed-descent Black family which exemplifies the 
ancestry of many who have “passed” for white.
Although she has known for thirty years of her multi-racial heritage, 
Slaney insists she is white and continues to “pass.” She tells of attending a 
workshop for women writers of colour where the presenter mistook her for 
white; henceforth she felt unaccepted by people of colour. At the same time, 
she recounts that white people repeatedly ask why she is dark-skinned. When 
she attributes her skin colour to a fallacious Spanish great-grandmother, she 
fails to recognize this rejection of her whiteness. In another instance, she visits 
a church of light-skinned Blacks in Detroit. When the congregants assume she 
is Black, she believes they are mistaken and clings steadfastly to her desire to 
be white, despite all indications to the contrary. At every juncture, Slaney fails 
to prove that she is not a light-skinned Black woman passing for white. 
Slaney’s unwillingness to interrogate her own identity is disappointing. 
She wants to be proud of her ancestry but is unwilling to embrace her com-
plex identity as a woman who is part Black. In fact, she claims the “one drop 
rule” —that Blackness is determined by one drop of Black blood—no longer 
exists. Regrettably, Slaney misses an important opportunity to celebrate her 
multi-cultural identity, and to serve as an example for others of mixed-racial 
heritage. It is especially unfortunate that she chooses instead to deny her Black 
heritage and proclaim her whiteness.
In The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter, Katherine Ellison 
provides neurological evidence to help women justify their decision to be-
come a mother and demonstrates how mothers often realign their full-time 
career goals once their heightened intelligence takes over their previously 
selfish—and sluggish—brains. Ellison herself was once a globetrotting re-
porter who shifted her career focus in order to write from home while raising 
her children. The result, obviously, is The Mommy Brain. Given her position 
The Mommy Brain: 
How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter
Katherine Ellison.
Jackson, Tennessee: Basic Books, 2005.
Reviewed by Cyndi Brannen
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering        273 
Book Reviews
of privilege—she can, after all, stay at home and write books—it is not sur-
prising that she has a very positive outlook on motherhood. This perspective 
guides her review of studies on how motherhood enhances the brain. 
She opens the book by exploring the pervasive belief that motherhood 
makes women stupid, that we become hyper-focused on our offspring to the 
detriment of our co-workers and non-parents everywhere. From this point 
forward, Ellison works diligently to counter the “placenta dementia” view. 
She does an excellent job of summarizing complex neurophysiological stud-
ies in ways that are accessible to others like her—women who are university 
educated and highly literate. 
My criticism of the book lies in Ellison’s position that motherhood is 
universally beneficial for women. Yes, it is true that studies have found that 
mothers have higher levels of certain neurochemicals, namely oxytocin, and 
that there are increased areas of activity in mother’s brains in certain situations. 
However, most of these studies are based on comparative analyses with animal 
experiments. Arguably, human mothers have more complex environments to 
deal with than a rat mom faced with the challenge of retrieving a fruit loop 
for her offspring. Ellison almost entirely ignores the complexity of human 
motherhood throughout the book. For example, she ignores the differential 
impacts of breastfeeding and formula feeding on a mother’s hormone and 
stress levels (see Groer, 2005).
When she is not summarizing studies, Ellison uses profiles to support 
her view of the brain-boosting impact of motherhood. Almost exclusively, 
these stories focus on highly successful professional women, many of whom 
engaged in major career downsizing after having children. There are a couple 
of examples of less privileged women who demonstrate “mommy brain,” but 
there is no discussion at all of women who may not benefit from motherhood 
and the ensuing negative outcomes that they and their offspring face. Animal 
and human studies clearly indicate that maternal stress or social disadvantage, 
such as alcoholism or a lack of resources, can have negative neurophysiological 
impacts on both mother and child (for a review of prenatal stress impacts, see 
Ruiz and Avant, 2005).
Without a discussion of how socially and economically excluded mothers 
might be frustrated and stressed by mothering—and how these experiences can 
actually negate the neurological benefits of motherhood—The Mommy Brain 
stands as another well-written book helping middle-class women justify their 
decision to have children. However, Ellison does a solid job of summarizing 
the science behind her position, and I would highly recommend reading the 
book to gain insight into this fascinating area of research.


The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter

Proulx-Turner
					, Sharron

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         43 
I had a hysterectomy at twenty-six. on april fools day. I had to go in the night 
before & I woke up the next morning with a little stuffed dog by my ice chip 
cup. the dog looked like a coyote & said something like, thought it was your 
birthday, eh? well, the weather’s going to change & you’d better head for the 
hills before you lose count of your marbles.
it was a while before I realized I was dreaming or in & out of a drug-induced 
fog & when I did wake up, the little stuffed dog was gone but her eyes were 
still there, hovering next to the ice chips. I ignored them & got up to pee.
their yellow eyes
like the yellow of their lives
settling on the backs of the hills
their voices magnified
by their songs
ancient & profound
& always 
always
far 
too short
try writing that kind of silence onto a page, said those eyes as I was rolled to 
the operating room that day. 
before the hysterectomy, I’d gone through five months of constant illness after 
baby steven was born. d&c after three months – placenta left behind. staph 
Sharron Proulx-Turner
her sleep, her dreams still in her speech
44         Volume , Number 2
Sharron Proulx-Turner
infection on top of the one I already had & my uterus got eaten from the 
inside out. my body formed myself around my bones & as the infection faded 
& the colour returned to my life, there I sat in a hospital room on april fools 
morning – coyote’s eyes still on me – all drugged & waiting for a room full of 
masked strangers to make me into an old lady.
empty spaces between the words
their longing for another time
another moment alone
inside blood & bones
& odours of my own
four moontimes
hush little baby
grandmother’s
wisdom’s
song
where will my sleepy moon be? 
under the covers or lost by a tree? 
how will I know? 
where will I go?
where will my weepy moon be?
will she visit at dawn by the water?
will she help wipe my tears in the spring?
& my angry moon?
where will she be?
will she orbit me now, 
her new moon side
showing her face 
in the night of my days,
chilling my bones
& my light?
& what of my creative moon?
where will she be?
will she still wait for me
under a tree?
will she visit my dreams
& my quiet at home?
will she call me granddaughter
me?
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         45 
her sleep, her dreams still in her speech
& I was reminded of a time long before. by twenty-six, lying on that hospital 
bed, I felt old – certainly older than twenty-one, when I was faced with the 
decision to end a pregnancy.
the funny thing was, everything started up on april fools day that time too. 
a woman I’d worked with was getting married – out of town & chinooking. 
warm. sunny. & a brother of hers who thought I looked like a dream come 
true. my dark hair. my blue eyes.
I don’t remember what he looked like, but when he invited me into the back 
of his stationwagon, the sun shining in on us like honey & dew – after years 
of no sex, what could a young woman do?
a couple weeks later, this strange man showed up where I worked. stood at the 
counter & bellowed out my name between his blonde moustache & beard & 
before I reached the counter he said, we believe you have contracted gonorrhoea 
& we’ll need the names of all your sexual partners for the past six months. 
right in front of everyone – in front of the old scottish ladys I worked with 
– ladys in their fifties!
no one spoke to me about it. not me or anyone else. I simply walked through 
the returning cold and snow – every lunch hour – the sixteen blocks, then back, 
to press a button twice for venereal disease & I waited my turn for a needle 
in the butt the size of a juice glass. days down the road I encountered my first 
penicillin-fertile yeast infection.
movement in my belly
holding on to life
with a touch so soft
so tender
& creator’s tiniest babes
their sacrifices 
grandmothering manys a young woman
into blossoms
grieving their losses
alone
as spring unfolded herself around my womb, I found out I was carrying another 
child, my fertile body’s simple joy forming her features into my pores, my body’s 
odour a flower waiting to open around herself in the middle of a tree.
but none of this was meant to be. there were complications. there were signs 
& a d&c was ordered & there I sat in a hospital room remembering april fools 
46         Volume , Number 2
Sharron Proulx-Turner
afternoon & a chinook arch that pulled the prairie to the depths of my me.
had grandma joan known she may have disowned me. but I didn’t tell her. I 
couldn’t, & grandma joan ended up nursing me. she knew I’d had a d&c, like 
the others I’d have down the road, but an abortion? 
& coyote was right there on the bed
her yellow eyes resting on the edge 
of my pillow
licking the salt from my tears
a comic irony, she said
as grandma joan brought tea biscuits & tea 
& changed the pillow case 
under my grief-stained & watery head
