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

Ross, Lori E.

Toner, Brenda

English

Applying a Biopsychosocial Model to Research on Maternal Health

Boyd, Susan B.

Demonizing Mothers: Fathers' Rights Discourses in Child Custody Law Reform Processes

Avishai, Orit

At the Pump

Maher, JaneMaree

Skills, Not Attributes: Rethinking Mothering as Work

Lee, Monika

Book Reviews 
-with the "psychological moment"-which cannot be assessed? 
By observing the two teachers in their studentlteacher conferences, readers 
gain an appreciation for the delicate balance that exists between encouraging 
narrative depth and expression while offering technical writing tips. In her 
classroom, "Helena" uses a social constructionist approach that is suited to the 
socio-political topics chosen for student narratives. As a result, she finds herself 
addressing differing politicalviews on issues ofhomelessness and race. "Debby" 
adheres more closely to expressionism and enters the private psycho-social 
domain of her students. She must strike a balance between entering into a 
psychodrama and addressing technical issues such as grammar. 
I Writing is a thoughtful study it offers teachers who use narrative in the 
classroom useful ways to critiques students' work. One issue that Paley raises 
is how to grade or assess narrative essays. Due to the highly subjective nature 
of the work, which often touches on personal trauma, teachers are compelled 
to walk an ethical line between honouring student disclosure and applying the 
contract that exists between "teacher as grader" and "student as learner." More 
guidance from Paley on how to navigate this potential conflict would have been 
helpful. 
Paley's writing style engages readers. For the most part, her discussion is 
passionate, informed, and theoretically grounded. She challenges teachers who 
bring personal narrative into their classrooms to employ high ethical standards, 
and to do so with the compassion necessary to encourage students to write of 
their lives with honesty and depth. 
Assignation at Vanishing Point 
Jane Satterfield 
Denver, CO: El i i r  Press, 2003 
Reviewed by Monika Lee 
The photo on the front cover of electrical lines extending vertically into space 
is an apt metaphor for a collection of poems whose direction is consistent and 
endless. These poems, with their clean density, their elliptical messages, and 
their exploration of time as linear space reflect an intellect steeped in art, 
literature, popular culture, and philosophy. The literary echo is pervasive, but 
not intrusive. The words of Charlotte Bronte, the Velvet Underground, 
Wittgenstein, Sartre, Baudelaire, de Quincey, and many others merge at the 
vanishing point of Satterfield's anticipative voice. The vanishing point is 
paradoxical, assigned and yet forever reaching into an unattainable hture or lost 
("Archaeology"or "Stanton Moor") in an irrecuperable past. 
The poems in the first section of the volume lean backward in time. The 
voice is courageous, honest, and pondering. The purpose of the book declares 
Journal oftbe Association for Research on Mothering 1 191 
Book Reviews 
itself as "-not only to get somewhere but to know / where you have been-" 
("Fugue"). The poems in the second section balance themselves precariously in 
a risky present-dangerous because it slips away from "the shattered histories 
you love so muchn ("Ordnance Map") and because "this interval" exposes us 
frighteningly and beautifully "where everything and I am open" ("Erotica"). In 
the third section, the poeticvoice, ever lucid and always contingent, speaks both 
sceptically and longingly of destiny and desires: "I came here / with my eyes 
open, not by some hazard of fate" ("Letter from Exile: On This Transitory 
World'). 
Satterfield is at her best when she allows emotion to crack through 
abstraction. "Double Exposure," one of the finest poems in the book, locates 
a Wittgensteinian thought about utterance and silence in the metaphor of the 
frustration of an unexplored kiss-the kiss of clouds passing silently in the sky 
and the desire that urges a language embedded in silence: ' W e  madden with 
what we cannot speak." Similarly, the elegiac tone of "Late Letter, Tidmarsh 
Mill, 19" beseeches a lost lover (husband?) to "say you will remember it." In 
these poems, what is left unsaid, the elliptical moment ("yr power of altering 
me-"), usually marked with a dash, is painful and evocative. Such moments 
intensify and focus the abstruser musings of the poet/philosopher, as do the 
details of memory ("your eyes hazed jungle green / singed stars, lamps and 
blessings, your beautiful face"). 
The book ends with a superb homophonic translation of Baudelaire's "La 
Muse Venale," called "Mercenary Muse," a poem that merges body and 
anticipatory moment in a superbly erotic celebration. 
192 / Volume 6, Number 2 


Assignation at Vanishing Point

Dunlop, Rishma

Editor's Notes 
In this issue of the ARM Folio I am pleased to present the poetry of Priscila 
Uppal. In her powerful long poem sequence titled "Poem for a Runaway 
Mother," Uppal explores the loss ofa motherwho is not described as aparticular 
mother, for no actual description is given of the mother. Rather, the poems 
explore the nature of invention as a consolation for grief "Poem for a Runaway 
Mother" is a detective story; the daughter narrator rehses to be "tricked by 
memory, and invents her own physical evidence ofher mother's existence. She 
invents her mother's character and her familial identity, to the point of 
imagining siblings. So much has been destroyed in this daughter's life, there- 
fore everything must be created and imagined. The narrator's travels to hunt 
down her runaway mother occur not by the aid of memory, but through the 
imagination, in "the last place she knows you will look." These poems are 
beautifully crafted, haunting and poignant. They evoke in the reader a deep 
sense of mourning, made all the more surprising sometimes in the face of the 
unflinching voice of the narrator. Eloquently articulated, these poems demon- 
strate Uppal's skill as a poet in her attention to spareness and a measured 
precision of language, poems in which every word carries its weight. Priscila 
Uppal's "Poem for a Runaway Mother" is fascinating in its response to the loss 
of the mother, a provocative exploration of the roleof the imagination in the 
face of grief. 
-Rishma Dunlop 
Journal oftbe Association for Research on Mothering 1 163 


Editor's Notes

Verbian, Channa

Book Reviews 
think we should be discussing instead?"; "Is there anythlng I should be doing 
differently?" The psychoanalytical treatment, as we learn from The Therapist? 
Notebook, is a client-informed enterprise, a suggestive collaboration designed to 
soften hostility. Sometimes therapy is a matter of listening to clients express 
their ideas and emphasize their strengths. 
Bertolino and Schultheis also explore alternatives if solutions are not 
available: "ifwe offer an exercise and a parent does not believe in going home 
and trying it, then we would shifi our approach." Family members may "have 
great ideas and we ought to attend to their voices whenever possible." In 
formulating such approaches, the authors suggest that words as pervasive as 
"always," "never," "nobody," or "all the time" imply that problems stay with us 
forever and give us little incentive to change negative behaviour. Focused 
qualifiers, such as "recently," "in the last while," and "in the past month," 
however, suggest that problems are temporary. Thus, rather than furing our 
attention on problems, the book cleverly refocuses on positive changes in our 
families. We  learn to write down the various things that help us recharge our 
batteries, to notice when children engage in behaviours that meet our approval, 
and to acknowledge others' points of view. Acknowledgement also means, as 
the authors suggest, that we pay attention to the words used by others to identify 
patterns that maintain problems. I t  is necessary to explore the patterns 
surrounding problems - a small change is often all that is needed to break 
unhelpful patterns. In fact, small changes are necessary, since these lead to 
further changes and solutions soon appear on the horizon. When they identify 
interim solutions, clients notice that they are making progress and further 
change occurs. This is an important therapeutic stage since ofien we become 
frustrated, anxious, or disinterested if we do not recognize progress. 
The authors teach us to regard experiences as learning opportunities. Ifyou 
knew that the world was to end tomorrow, what are three things you would do? 
What was the most meaningful thing you did in the past? What could you do 
in the nearest future that would move you toward becoming who you want to 
be? This is a change-promoting book: it helps identify the context of a problem 
and to sustain change once it has been achieved. 
Psychological Trauma and the Developing Brain 
Phyllis T. Stein and Joshua Kendall 
Binghamton, NY: HMTP Press, 2004 
Reviewed by Channa Verbian 
In Psychological Trauma and t6e Developing Brain, Phyllis Stein and Joshua 
Kendall study the intimate connection between experience and genetics in 
understanding and treating the effects of trauma on children. The authors 
Journal oftbe Associafionfor Research on Mothering 1 189 
Book Reviews 
ground their study in new psychological models of child development and the 
neurobiology of attachment. They show how early relational trauma and 
disturbed attachment can alter brain development, disturb emotion regulation 
and cognitive processing, and cause relational difficulties. Through a three- 
phase model of intervention that addresses safety/stabilization, symptom 
reductionlmemory work, and developmental skills, the authors offer an alter- 
native to drug therapy for children who suffer from the complex effects of 
trauma, abuse, and neglect. 
Stein and Kendall emphasize that troubled children must develop emo- 
tional intelligence and problem-solving skills as tools for coping with and 
overcoming the effects of trauma. They also discuss the need for adequate 
public health policies and resources that challenge mental health professionals 
to look beyond chiildren and their families to find innovative solutions to the 
legacy of psychological trauma and childhood abuse. 
Psychological Trauma and the Developing Brain is a useful resource for 
professionals working in the field of children's mental health. 
I Writing: The Politics and Practice of Teaching 
First-Person Writing 
Karen Surman Paley 
Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 2001 
Reviewed by Kate Connolly 
Certified to teach English, and having served as Director of Freshman English 
and Writing at Loyola Maryrnount University in Los Angeles, Karen Surman 
Paley reports on an ethnographic study in the classrooms of two English 
composition professors. The author challenges the common perspective of 
"expressivist pedagogy as nalve, modernist, self-centered, apolitical and aso- 
cial" (139). Throughout Paley's book, the reader has the unique opportunity 
to "observen two teachers assist students in their efforts to write personal 
narratives. Through transcripts of one-to-one studendteacher conferences, 
classroom discussions, and interviews with faculty and students, Paley demon- 
strates that personal narrative courses are much more complicated and politi- 
cized than they are typically understood to be. 
Paley's main thesis is that students who are allowed to write about their 
lives make significant contributions to the culture of the academy. Through 
autobiographical narratives, persuasive discussions of social issues, and descrip- 
tive essays, private discourse can become public discourse. The key research 
question guiding Paley's ethnographic study is: how do faculty teach personal 
narrative without crossing the boundary into psychotherapy? In other words, 
how do writing teachers balance the "textual moment"-which can be assessed 
190 1 Volume 6, Number 2 


Psychological Trauma and the Developing Brain

Carney, Kelly C. Walter

Motherhood and Management

Gerber, Nancy F.

Book Reviews 
also include Julia Kristeva and Jacques Derrida. At times challenging in its 
dense philosophical analysis, the chapter entitled 'Writing (as) a Feminist 
Ethics" teases out the intricate conceptual links between the theorists in 
question, and demonstrates how Lkvinas's challenge to metaphysical ontology 
and his ethics of alterity finds resonance in Ricoeur's relational ethics and 
Irigaray's ethics of sexual difference. 
With this frameworkin place, Carriere embarks on sophisticated readings 
of her poets' works, beginning with the concept of the maternal and mother- 
daughter relations in Brossard and Brandt. The maternal implies not just 
motherhoodperse, but a signiflmg and socializing space where differentiation 
between same and other first takes place, the starting point for a model of 
relational ethics based on intersubjectivity. Writings in the feminine go beyond 
the essentialism of biology and show the constructed nature of the body in its 
socialized materiality. Carrikre achieves a rare balance here between patient, 
close readings ofpoetic texts and a constant awareness ofthe larger implications 
of these works in the political and social, but also literary historical arena. 
Significantly, the author recognizes the importance of "respecting the 
undecidability and openness of texts," and resists the temptation to tie up the 
loose ends her poets have so carefully left dangling. 
Other chapters treat the themes of hysteria, mimicry, language, and 
corporeality, but Carribre is perhaps at her best in the final chapter entitled "An 
Ethics of Love," where Brandt's, MourC's, and Brossard's poetry affords an 
opportunity to ponder love, friendship, and spirituality as part of an ethical 
experiment. While this foray into the mystical nature ofbonds between women 
is arguably the most inspiring toward a feminist ethics, this is where Carriere 
is most concerned to question the utopianism of her poets' endeavours. She 
stresses the "material possibility" ofethical exchange (quoting Jessica Benjamin) 
but cautions against predetermined realization. Recognition of the other is 
where ethics starts, but this recognition should include the notion of break- 
down. The failure of relationships, be they mother-daughter bonds, friend- 
ships, or other relations, is inevitable. What is important, says Carriere, is that 
in spite of these tensions, conflicts, and disappointments we dare to wish for a 
veritable ethics. 
Mothering the Self: 
Mothers. Daughters, Subjects 
Steph Lawler 
New York: Routledge, 2000 
Reviewed by Nancy Gerber 
In Mothering the Set$ Steph Lawler poses the following questions: What does 
198 / Volume 6, Number I 
Book Reviews 
it mean, in late twentieth century early twenty-first century Euroamerican 
societies, to be a mother? To  be a daughter? How are maternal and daughterly 
selves produced? To address these issues, Lawler, a lecturer in sociology at the 
University of Durham, examines the first person accounts of 14 white working- 
class and middle-class women whom she interviewed individually and collec- 
tively in 1992 and 1993. 
Lawler contextualizes her argument at the intersection of several debates 
on the social construction ofselves in Western culture. Noting that the Western 
"self' is understood as unique, bounded, rational, autonomous, and stable-a 
model inscribing the male-gendered subject-Lawler observes how psycho- 
logical discourse has defined the self as that which is produced by the mother's 
mothering, and the social order as an entity composed of"well-adjusted selves." 
Thus, the figure of the mother is overdetermined in her embodiment as 
producer and guarantor ofthe ideal democracy, an argument familiar to readers 
of Democracy in the Kitrhen by Valerie Walkerdine and Helen Lucey (1989). 
Lawler's work also refers to D. W. Winnicott and Nancy Chodorow. In 
contrast to Freud and Melanie Klein, Winnicott focused on the mother of an 
infant's lived environment rather than on an intrapsychic projection. Winnicott 
believed that the mother is innately, uniquely equipped to meet her developing 
infant's physical, emotional, and cognitive needs. Lawler points out that while 
his concept ofthe "good-enough mothern appears attainable, it is predicated on 
the insistence that the mother be completely attuned to, and absorbed by, the 
needs of the child. This stance of "sensitive mothering" demonizes working 
class mothers, who have neither time nor resources to devote to it. Lawler then 
turns to Nancy Chodorow, who theorizes that mothers tend to see their sons 
as more separate and their daughters as more alike. The mother's different 
reaction reproduces gendered personalities in which boys learn to value 
autonomy, fear connection, and seek dominance. Girls yearn for the early sense 
of unity experienced with their mothers, which they can attain only by 
mothering daughters. Lawler observes that Chodorow's argument has been 
read by many feminists to pathologize mothers, who project their unsatisfied 
sexual desire onto their sons, and to privilege fathers, who are necessary to 
disrupt the mother-child dyad. 
The book considers mothers and daughters rather than mothers and sons, 
not because mothers are insignificant in the lives of sons, but because mothers 
and daughters are understood to share a closer social and emotional identifica- 
tion, and because a woman may simultaneously occupy the "mother" and 
"daughter" positions. Lawler wonders whether mother and daughter inhabit 
the same body andwhether they are the same person, speakingwith two voices, 
a question also raised by Marianne Hirsch in The Motherrnaughterplot (1 989). 
Lawler's contribution lies in her contrapuntal use of mothers' first-person 
accounts. The 14 working-class and middle-class women interviewed range in 
age from 38 to 55. In response to a question about the usefulness of baby care 
books, one mother responds, "I was quite annoyed and amazed at this image [of 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering ( 199 
Book Reviews 
maternity] they were putting forth ... of the pretty little cottage and this 
glorious experience." When asked about identity, another mother responds, 
"You've got to be able to provide yourselfwith some kind of nurturing . . . so that 
you can get refreshed." As I suspected, feminist maternal theory emerges from 
maternal scholars' openness to mothers' voices, because the dominant culture 
has turned a deaf ear to what mothers have to say. 
The Bitch in the House 
Cathi Hanauer, ed. 
New York: Morrow, 2002 
Reviewed by Michele Pridmore-Brown 
The Bitch in the House presents an eloquent barometer of professionallwriting 
women's domestic lives at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Editor 
Cathi Hanauer writes in her preface that the book is born of anger (hence the 
title), but anger seems largely absent from this collection of essays by 26 highly 
successful women writers, including New York Times best-selling authors and 
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists. Aside from the science writer Natalie 
Angier, a self-described feminist warrior, the tone is postfeminist: musing 
rather than strident; resendul at times, rueful at others; sometimes sassy 
sometimes revelatory; often rationalizing as in the case of an anonymous writer 
who meticulously tallies the costs and benefits of an open marriage. 
Perhaps this constitutes its radicalism: the singular angel of the house 
identified by Virginia Woolf as the sine qua non of Victorian patriarchal culture 
has not so much been transmuted into a bitch but into a cacophony of voices 
that, in disparate ways, muse over the burden and promise offreedom frompre- 
scripted lives and pre-scripted gender roles. Cynthia Kling, for instance, 
describes the antithetical pulls of the marriage contract and eroticism. Some 
contributors lament their romantic choices-CO-habitating with laid-back 
spongers, for instance-while others praise the enabling qualities of long- 
distance relationships. The writer Daphne Merkin ultimately opts for the risks 
of loneliness over those of intimacy. Twice-divorced Karen Karbo points out 
the risks of entering uncharted territory: of being "not just the cow with the 
milk, but also the farmerwith the money to buy it." Helen Schulmanpoignantly 
describes being caught between the equally visceral demands of ageing parents 
and young children, her husband tellingly relegated to a spectral role in this 
conflicted drama. At best, the women have a modicum of control over the 
messiness of their lives, over the competing claims ofwork, love, and family. 
None, however, would exchange the mess for the domestic straitjacket of their 
foremothers. 
200 1 Volume 6, Number 1 


Mothering the Self: Mothers, Daughters, Subjects

Uppal, Priscila

Priscila Uppal 
Poem for a Runaway Mother 
Runaway Mother 
I hack you in my sleep, a rearview face 
Your back a long road sleek with rain. 
From town to town it seems you turn 
Once a tree, a stop sign, the main exit, 
Your hair the last banner to take the curve 
And a barrage of dust to stun me. 
Underground days, at night I pick up the trail 
Wonder what you will change into next: 
A lark, a border, a highway motel, 
The reckless fawn I just ran over with my heart. 
Migrant 
You left in November, not like the leaves 
But like the birds: 
You flew 
From the nest built by instinct 
Journal oftbe Associationfor Research on Mothering 1 165 
A trail of feathers to follow 
Like storm clouds, floating. 
My arms 
The nervous grass, stiff 
And unrelenting, charted clear shifts 
In pattern, bent towards the wind, 
Withstood 
The atmosphere. Recent death, blizzard 
Warnings, the season's chill: scent 
Of absence. Whiie below 
The equator water continues to breed, 
Trees refuse to age. You make a new home 
Wlth all the native birds I had come to 
Rely on. 
Unlike the Dead 
Unlike the dead, your flesh gets thicker. 
This year I could spin it like wool 
On my lap, your hands embroidered 
Into mittens, your remembered back 
Tatted into a fine tablecloth. 
I could lay you out like a tree trunk 
Count the years you've been away 
Nail the hard wood to a stand 
And watch your distance grow 
Steadily as moss. 
You plump up in the winter, hibernate 
In closets and picture frames, make 
A nest in the hollow of the pillows 
You once fluffed. Even trees are jealous 
Of your survival techniques. 
I could carve a tiny family 
Out of the timeline of our parting. 
I could wrap you up like a large blanket. 
I could use your legs for firewood. 
166 1 Volume 6, Number 2 
Poem for a Runaway Mother 
By Thanksgiving, I could stuff you, 
Feast on this grief, and still have leftovers. 
Grave Robbers 
Underground we went 
The basement littered with your papers. 
Your things. 
W e  opened an old wooden chest. 
Your body was scarred 
And staining the corners. 
The smell of mould 
Astonished us. 
Air thick with dead flowers 
I crouched in the shadows, included myself 
In the company of ghosts. 
It was my brother's hands that excavated. 
His lap stocked with red dresses 
And cheap costume jewelry, 
The dust like lice, crawling 
Over his skin. 
Dig in, he encouraged. 
No harm can be done 
to a skeleton. 
Mistaken Identity 
The last time 
I went home to see your husband, 
My father, 
He  greeted me at the white door 
And staggered. 
A tired man's guilt 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 167 
Shocked by 
A woman's figure and long 
Dark hair. 
I remembered his voice once 
On a cold 
Afternoon, telling me better 
To have been 
Left at the altar than aftter ten 
Years, better 
To have her runj-orn the church 
Than me. 
Pauses like wilted flowers 
Hanging over 
The children that wouldn't be. 
The last time 
I went home to see your husband 
The yellow 
Wallpaper shone a bright hope 
And over 
The scuffed threshold I stood 
Both of us 
Sobbing for the blushing bride. 
Hints My Father Gave Me to Your Whereabouts 
The backyard would be the first place to go: 
Pick up the scattered seeds of radishes 
The broken ribs of autumn's rhododendrons 
Skim the shell of the pool until it dries. 
With these in your pockets check the cellar 
The starved bottles of better anniversaries 
168 1 Volume 6, Number 2 
Poem for a Runaway Mother 
The withered boxes of apologetic love letters 
Store the finds in a sunny place. 
If nothing materializes, raid the laundry 
Air out the stained sheets of your childhood 
The grey hairs of last year's lint bags. 
The washing machine rumbles like her tongue. 
I wouldn't bother to travel. Trust me 
She lives not in our bedroom, but is not 
Far from home. Do not be tricked. 
A needle in a haystack is not her style. 
Preserve anything resembling a body. 
Denial 
When asked about his mother 
My brother claims her death: 
Sometimes to avoid questions 
Sometimes because he believes it 
Sometimes as a pick-up line 
For women who love tragedy. 
He  wraps you up in white satin 
And hundreds of yellow daffodils 
Spell your name. He insists 
We  do the best to honour 
Our fading memories: even if 
They print in black-and-white 
Even if our minds flash on 
And off like movement sensors. 
Still after the lonely women leave 
His bed, there are nights he calls 
For advice about funerals: 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 169 
Priscila Uppal 
Who should read a eulogy 
And whether or not God ought 
To  be mentioned in pleasant company. 
The procession for your passing 
Slips by in every breath. 
He  insists he has no mother: 
Only the one we bury in conversation 
Thousands of feet underground. 
Prayer for the Return of a Runaway Mother 
Mother, if you art not in heaven, give me 
This evening a sign: a letter, a loose lock 
Of greying hair, a special stone you may have held 
In your palm. Tell me how to pronounce your 
Hallowed name so you will answer. Have you 
Traveled far in search of new cities? Where 
Does your present kingdom reign? 
For those who have no daily bread, even a crumb 
Would bear forgiveness. Come and trespass. 
Mirage 
For decades your face a fountain 
Denied. Dark plums of your eyes 
Berries of   our lips dried. Long 
Crevices of your mouth and cheeks 
Reservoirs of rain. 
There has been such drought 
In my country. 
I have tapped at the trunks 
Of mothers on subways 
Ladies in grocery stores 
170 1 Volume 6, Number 2 
Poem for a Runaway Mother 
Fast women on escalators skipping 
Stairs on their way 
For a few scarce drops to tame this thirst. 
I've become bloated on the idea of water. 
With burned eyes and stick-thin thighs 
I store my wares safely. 
In this desert 
If time is made of sand 
The day must be close at hand 
T o  turn camel. 
My many stomachs brought to your well 
Too deprived to drink. 
Forecast 
Precipitation is 
My memory. The weatherman promises 
This spring the humid air we circulate 
Threatens to break. 
Disappearing Act 
The house may be vacant 
Your sleeves without a trace 
Of silk scarves or high cards. 
And you eluded our sight 
Marvelously, like a star in daylight. 
Yet still magician, we know your name. 
White rabbit, white dove 
Black cape, black hat. 
All set symbols, all subjects speak 
To your second coming. 
The art of holding one's breath. 
But somewhere 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 171 
Underneath the wooden planks 
Of this house, the ground refuses 
To  be tricked, will sniff out 
Your secret compartment 
Drag you out by the hair 
In front of a stunned audience 
Whisper in your ear: 
Abracadabra 
Exposed 
It is not the photographs we preserve 
But the thin, delicate layers of film 
The negative markers of our halted love 
That we hold dear. 
Silent Auction 
The hall was stale. Price tags 
Like toe tags, short 
And to the point, hung 
On  fake silver hooks: 
Red satin nightgown. 
Beige leather suitcase. 
Three gold bracelets, and 
Hundreds of shoes. 
She left them all. 
The men wore black 
And drank martinis. The women 
Clutched each other's handbags 
Wedding themselves to calculators. 
This ought to be worth something. 
Don't touch, security reminded, 
Not unless you'regoing to  buy. 
172 1 Volume 6, Number 2 
Poem for a Runaway Mother 
No pen to claim the inheritance, 
The giil on the poster jumped 
Out into the hall, tore all the treasures 
From their hooks, ending the bidding. 
I'vepaid, she screamed. rvepaid 
Dearly for these already. 
A Message to any Half-Brothers or Sisters I May Have 
Sure, I've thought about you. Wondered. 
Asked myself a dozen questions, about where 
You might live, with whom, the type of climate, 
Which countries are stamped on your passports. 
Sure, I have. 
But don't be surprised if the day comes 
When the mail I receive goes 
Unanswered, when I refuse to unlatch the door, 
Or when I too turn from your well-meant longing 
a single trace or clue. 
Such a dominant gene, you understand, 
Must run in our family. 
Hide and Seek 
As the child who has spent too long 
In darkness panics, I ran from you. 
Searched the smallest places 
For shelter. Ones tight as stones 
And just as common, where movement 
would seem a trick of the eye. 
Hard statue I stood 
As you scored the land, befriended 
Insect, plant, rain. 
The sky became a magnlfylng glass 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 1 73 
And burned me. 
We began counting. F"ive addresses, 
Three cities, two continents, 
You picked out easily 
The tracks like badly forged documents. 
When I wished to give up 
Womanhood prevented me. 
The rest you know. 
Soon a dry darkness will be falling 
Below your hand 
Where I curled up once. 
Your little girl waits patiently, 
Almost stubbornly, 
In the last place 
She knows you will look. 
174 ( Volume 6, Number 2 
Poem for a Runaway Mother 
Dedication 
For you 
Whose absence 
Has made me messenger 
Of grief 
I beg 
For your blessing 
Over my door 
My memory 
Faint hand 
I have 
Felt frequently 
In mine 
Please sign 
These notes 
Previously 
Unclaimed. 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering / 175 


Poem for a Runaway Mother