Sometimes a moment in time sticks with you for decades, and this poem pays homage to one of those moments.
What’s Missing Now
I know very well that great-grandma was missing
much of one leg. She liked to sit me there
on her wheel chair’s foot rest and take me
for a spin about the house, the small circuit
of kitchen, hallway, living room, dining room
then through the two doors of the powder room
to end up back by the refrigerator’s hum.
It seemed larger then and has shrunk
through the years: our not-so-smooth race track
with four sills and three doorknobs to navigate,
the grooved footrest she flipped down for my seat,
her good leg I clung to as she seemingly
zoomed around corners, spun her chair in circles
on the kitchen linoleum until I was dizzy.
Then I’d get up, hands out, and spin some more,
like a ballerina or ice skater, until I was a blur,
and fell, and we laughed and laughed.
It’s what happens when you’re an early baby
she’d say: your skinny little bottom
fits right there, no bigger than my shoe.
All those Thanksgiving dinners at our place,
so many generations together, and now gone,
she made me sit beside her long after dinner
had turned to apple pie and coffee,
putting bits of fruitcake, slices of orange,
chips of red-striped ribbon candy on my plate.
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