Struggle and Strive

STRUGGLE&STRIVE: Red Book

*Prose Poem*

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Children write about Daddy in the blue book every holiday, saying "Thank you, Daddy, for loving me," "Happy Birthday, Daddy--I love you," and "Father's Day wouldn't be the same without you."

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Mother sits and watches as on each Mother's Day there are flowers and each birthday there's is a new jewel, but Mother doesn't have a blue book. A daughter would give her a red book, but she would say it's stained. She'd say she doesn't mean it. And maybe, sometimes, the daughter doesn't. Maybe every "I appreciate you" falls short and each "thank you" isn't always full-hearted.

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But Mother was never a child. She grew up like lightning shooting down from the sky on a clear day and never looked back. Mother means everything she says, so how can she understand that sometimes children don't know how to say what they really mean in words or pictures or acts?

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Daddy doesn't seem to mind that blue books sometimes lie, but Mother notices every breath taken and released to write each word and craft each drawing. "They love Daddy more," she tells herself because pearls and petunias will disappear with time. The children couldn't have started loving Daddy without Mother.

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Yes, sometimes the daughter's hair comes out in clumps and her voice dries out from screaming, but she wouldn't take the effort to do any of those things if she didn't care. She's always loved Mother, with a bulging, bloody, oozing, convulsing, pulsing heart, and she's already written Mother a red book, whether she'll accept it or not.

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It's full of tears and shouts and this little sixteen year old child sobbing with her head on Mother's knees, and Mother weeping into her hair. There's the moment, when Mother told her daughter she could die and the daughter regretted every word she'd said against Mother. Mother doesn't know how sorry her daughter was.

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How could daughter lose Mother, too? How many countless others had threatened to the daughter what Mother was threatening then? And some had gone through with it.

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Mother, your daughter just couldn't take the chance.

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Yet, the red book depicts blank faces the next day and two people back to the routine and the daughter draws another ocean-filled balloon in Daddy's blue book but all she's really thinking about is how the crimson voices spat splotches at each other before. She's forgotten the darkness Mother revealed, the sadness.

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There are a million moments in my red book of fights that seem as though they will never be resolved but are always forgotten in two day's time. If it's any consolation, Mother, your daughter will remember all of my red book moments longer than the pearls and petunias could ever last. And every blue book happy happening will be long forgotten before each startling, scarlet memory I have with you. Mother, you are not forgotten or forsaken by these children of yours who did not give you a blue book like Daddy.

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Because without a doubt, Mommy, my red book will remember you more than a blue book ever will.