I boarded a plane with you, nervous flyer, though you’d flown across the world more times than I ever will,
to go get the girl, deep in China, who became your daughter, waiting for the one she would call Mama.
That 7-year-old in the too-small wheelchair, the one you’d held as a palsied infant in the orphanage, not expected to live, but who did,
the girl with the infectious smile, is a much bigger teen now, about to start high school, rolls through the world in a snazzier chair,
is good with numbers, even if she can’t speak. She is, you and I agree, a marvel, but so are you, my friend, we two taking a much simpler trip
this week, driving north to an Oregon town to see plays, your girl at home with her beloved caregiver, each of you having a bit of vacation before school
starts. You, too, the marvel. You, too, with an equally winning smile, related—as you are to her, as we are to each other—
by far more than blood, these slender threads of devotion stitching you to her, her to you, both of you to lucky, lucky me.
•••
(For Nikki and Annie)
Nikki Cardoza in Ashland, Oregon, eager to see six plays in four days. (Photo / Jan Haag)
(In memory of the sprinkler king, our father, Roger, who art in heaven, born this day in 1930.)
Did you hear my prayers, Daddy, as Donna knelt in supplication in my front yard, her capable hands manipulating the plastic bits that pass for sprinklers these days?
Nothing like the seriously steel Rain Birds you installed outside our childhood home after you denuded the yard of all manner of thigh-high weeds and thriving poison oak.
You made a fine place for little girls to play, studded with old oaks unintentionally watered to death as the lawn grew— the best back yard ever—two rope swings, the playhouse you and Grandpa built for us, my reading and writing tree with its two horizontal arms supporting a long pipe between them for us to hang from.
Of course, Donna became the Chief Lawn Mower and Sprinkler Queen, tutored at your kingly knee. Mom and I would often see the two of you outside, crouched in prayer over a fussy squirter on a Sunday morning— you, who liked to say that you didn’t need church, that you could pray just fine mowing the lawn.
But my finicky citified irrigation mystified the Sprinkler Queen—not for lack of trying but for lack of water pressure—which not even the two of you could fix, despite her best efforts, your spiritual intercession and my fervent prayers.
Never mind, I thought, hand watering later that afternoon. I’ve got the guy who installed it coming soon to figure it out.
Because look: The poppies are still popping in my front yard, the little purple geraniums growing their little hearts out to keep up with their big pink cousins, and the gangly lemon thyme—don’t get me started on the rambunctious lemon thyme— makes nice tea when coupled with some overly enthusiastic mint.
Most of all, I got to spend the morning with the best sister you could have given me, silently thanking you for everything— so much of everything—you gave us, not least your great heart that beats in us, too.
Donna explains sprinkler parts to Jan / Photos: Dick Schmidt
But if I tell you that this window also looked out on an isolated peninsula where people were sent to die,
you might think otherwise. Condemned with a fatal disease, thousands were sent here and, yes, died here.
Parents had their children taken from them lest they become lepers, too. Husbands and wives separated, unless the one not sick wanted to come, too.
And yet. And yet. In this place of so much sorrow, so much joy, so much gratitude for new friends who became family, for untold blessings that could not
have arrived in any other place. Which is how I carry my appreciation for your serendipitous appearance in my orbit and mine in yours.
Which is to say I hold you in gratitude, among my many blessings, for which I say, again and again, thank you so very much.
•••
In memory of the people of Kalaupapa on the island of Molokai, where approximately 8,000 patients with leprosy (now known as Hansen’s Disease) were banished between 1866 and 1969.
•••
On this day after celebrating another birthday, I am grateful to all of you who read these poems, who like and comment on them, as well as those who simply take them in.
This daily practice, inspired by poets who’ve been doing this far longer than I (thank you to the late William Stafford and his son Kim Stafford, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, James Crews and others), has helped me exercise the writing muscle in wonderful ways.
To paraphrase Rosemerry, the day’s poem doesn’t have to be good; it just has to be true. It is, to borrow her phrase, a reflection of how I meet the world. And even when the poems contain fictional elements, as they sometimes do, they are the truest things I write each day.
Kalaupapa National Historical Park store / Photo: Jan Haag
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