Reflections on my Mother Becoming a Grandmother

I can feel her aging

her eyes wrinkled with crows feet

years of experience:

raising children,

opening businesses,

breaking horses and men alike.

The black birds walking across her face

with every smile

every rush to crisis resolution

every word of affirmation

every “love you, see you, bye”

squeezed into mud rooms and parking lots

my mother; she raised a rebel

a wordsmith, on accident

—she didn’t believe in soap

I often wonder, how the absence

of soap suds on my tongue

might have shaped

my desire to write

travel, learn, soak in endless knowledge

or choose

even my own bed partners

She smells differently these days,

my mother.

the sweat of labor

soaked into her pores

bursting bubbles of bath water

the scent of

constant breadwinning,

struggling to give her children

more than she ever had

is different now

A wave of saltwater

crashing against a breath of fresh air

she has done it—

every mother’s dream—

watching her daughters

marry, succeed, adopt careers, aspirations:

a grandchild growing

in my sister’s round belly.

No doubt,

she will continue to etch

those lines of wisdom

across her tender cheek

reassuring me that

aging is just another form of

maternal metamorphosis.