Providing

Old poem, just now resurrected for no particular reason, maybe just the rage...:)

Providing                                                                        
January 24, 1998
                                                                     
when she drives home from the grocery store
and is just beginning to live a life
she’s not sure of
on a saturday evening
and cut off from the party-going
around her
outside the car windows
she envisions her next few steps
up the stairs to their apartment
load after heavy load
carried calmly in her hands
car stopped for a moment
in an illegal but convenient
spot and lights continually blinking
“hazard!”       “hazard!”
*** **      *****     *****     *****     *****
putting the cheese and milk
away in the refridgerator
the produce in the “crisper”
the cereal on the shelves
she envisions what she’d like to do
next: stop and turn with perfect
clarity of movement
to throw the frozen orange juice can
out the closed unsuspecting window
shattering
new-found domestic
haven of her beautiful kitchen
angry at the on-sale orange juice
and the emptied paper-in-plastic
bags - good for garbage and
recycling - angry at that careful forethought
that never seems to be reciprocated
and the loving hands that do dishes
and fold laundry and take care
of their lives, the boring      daily
destruction
of peace and order
*****     *****     *****     *****     *****     *****
in the grocery store
the first time she took a large cart
instead of the usual small basket,
the kind with a small seat in front for a child
wanting Lucky Charms
and Twinkies and Coca-Cola,
the kind that screams “family!”
and big grocery budget
to feed all the expectant ones back home,
she felt dislocated,
off-balance, wheeling the squeaky cart
down aisles the loomed into her vision,
lost from who she was
or who she thought she wanted to be
would be someday
someday
feeling like her mother
inevitably
and like she was crossing
into some unspoken territory
of consumerism and womanhood
and the strange thing was: it feel so
very natural
*****     *****     *****     *****     *****
she remembers when her mother
would come home from grocery
shopping and would park the minivan in the alley
honking the horn for the kids
to come running to help carry
the bags in - she remembers how her mother
would get angry when they dawdled
over the TV watching, the reading or drawing
and resenting the interrruption
she wonders how her mother resisted
the temptation to take them and shake them
and yell “don’t you see that this is all for you?!”
spreading tired hands out to show
them the giving, the hours of coupon-clipping,
the organization of dozens of tiny
slips of paper in the small filebox
like the one for recipes
the time spent at stores
wheeling carts down aisle after aisle
after aisle
and thinking of others
who would never notice
any of this, as long as she was there
and simply providing