Reflections on A Child Named Sylvia Mary On the Occasion of a Birthday Spent Apart ( 20 poems, 20 birthdays)

Happy Birthday To A Twenty Year Old Daughter

An exquisite kind of memory was brought to me
Today as your cousin posted her family's
Photograph of happy girls taken when we last
Blinked our eyes, visiting there, it was just before
Time crept up, to now take you away to your adulthood.
And this is your twentieth trip around the sun, my daughter
Happy Birthdays wave at you, across the country
To your window seat on the nation's capitol
Where you are roaming and wandering in the days
Of your youth, and here I try on the shoes of my echoing feet,
As the day that changed me forever is celebrated
By my first child.

Cool waters

When your dad tells the tale, he says you "drank a little water"
At Carla's pool and "gave up swimming for a few years."
I recall you on the bottom needing to be hauled up
Completely unseen there, and just two years old.
There seems to be that kind of difference in our parent
Learning to swim memories.
That difference is hard on you, I know.
But I do remember you swimming with joy when you were
Invited to a pool party with some happy dancers and your first dance
Teacher in Salinas, (and I remember a hauling of
Another boy child out of the pool, not a dissimilar story
When he was seen, just there, on the bottom.
But I was also trying to kind of keep you focused elsewhere.)
The parents were having wine coolers. I wasn't.
Never could ignore the kids running around a pool.

Do you remember the frog in the pool in Temecula?
The one my mom decided to go get thinking she could save him?
Then she got too cold and had trouble getting out of the pool?
She said to me later, (that water was probably 75 degrees that day in the winter)
She said she probably hadn't been in a pool since she was a kid
Did they have pools when she was a kid, no seriously, I asked her that?
I never saw her swim or get in water, even at the beach
I don't think it even saved the frog. I think I had to fish him out,
Later with that net thing we used to have.
I loved that we had a pool if only for awhile though.
Pools were both fun and just a little bit representative
Of how I drive you, my daughter, a bit crazy.
You want to say, go, enjoy, try things, swim child
And then you turn around thinking about that day when.....

It's a good thing your Dad can ameliorate this with his versions.

Harriet Potter

Even though
I want to say
You are so Hermione
here in my flash of memory,
Of life after we moved again
You look
so cute
You did the costume
just right
I always think
of how I sent Luca
To school
In the right wing
of Temecula
before this move,
Unknowing

As Harry Potter

So cute in his plastic
Glasses
With an Owl on his
Shoulder
And he was sent home
For
Indoctrination
"There will be no Potter here"
While three fully
Sprouted devils
Were cheered
As was dracula.
Welcome to our school

Who knew?

You were incredible
As your heroine
Fully ready to go off
To your world of
School
just like
That Hogwarts's

I knew
when you saw,
Cal-tech,
With those students
building that
hot-tub
In that room,
A bedroom
no less,

You'd found your
equivalent
castle.

Portrait

Why is it in water
the best portraits are framed?

Do we crawl still from watery
depths onto land to grow our legs and swim?

What joy is floating and swimming
on a summers day in returning home?

How is it that the greatest adventure
for our children come in our pools learning to sail?

When I wonder of our time together,
will it be held in a droplet, pool, or an ocean?

And I was the Official Photographer

You've seen them at the games
Or covering an event
With a camera and a silent watching.
This was how too much I went
Once I got a better camera,

In our days
afraid to let
Anything get by
Afraid for missing the moment
That best said
It all.

Like these.

Toujours Gai

Were you dressing for a food day
In French class?
Or International food day
Was this when we made the cream puffs?
Did we make cream puffs?
Ok did grandmom make cream puffs?
I think we made cream puffs
And used canned chocolate sauce.
Sent in the can.
Or was this trying on a present from a relative time
So we could make a picture album?
Were you writing a report
As a young American in Paris?

I forget, it's vague, but I remember the chapeau
That you have on here Syl
It was one I wore daily en college
Recall us in the kitchen too,
Can see pictures mentally
With different color backgrounds
As the best days, the days of energy and love.
I recall in images.
But lost in the haze was
What trip we were on
In that time of our life.
I was sitting in the alcove
And inputting some kind of school data I think

You were so much the little
Happy one that
Seemed to me Le Petite french girl
Ah, Sylvie, tout le Monde is not
So fair of face, but in your heart
I always see the world.

I have a student this year
She kind of tilts her head
In a familiar way
Wearing her glasses
Trying to find my line
Happily going in with her class
I'm reminded by that tilt
Of my daughter.

Butterfly

She made a chart for my class and taught the stages
The life-cycle of the butterfly
In a unit where we made books
Designed lots of connections in science and literature
And unraveled the joy of spring
Coming to this good Earth again

Your Face
You learn the face of your child like no other face
It is probably the most beautiful thing you ever know
The eyes, smile, feelings, joys, sadness
All are like your home
So much of your being rests there.

I know a face that has given me so much joy
Wonder, amusement,
Times I'm utterly not sure what to say or do
Challenged me into questioning everything I do
One I have been so blessed to have beheld.

A Poem About Dad And You

A poem about a father
should be written by daughter and dad
Told in the actions of their days
Footballs tossed
Charades
Running wildly through the livingroom
Tackles
And sitting to watch the game
Or snuggled up napping.

A story of support
And care for a kid
That knew he had the answers
To her questions, mostly
The first thing I can remember
About School is
you both doing a report
One night when you woke up
In your top bunk
Recalling a butterfly report
Due the next day
As I slept on.
I hear your Dad
and you
Typing away, Monarchs,
As he got it done.
And you got it done
With references.
( He says he waited
To see what grade he got)

Or that big chart listing
all the colleges you applied to
And eventually got into
As your Dad
Got the job done
Or sitting watching all of you
Play out on the sand
Or on bikes
skates,
Ramps
Or over in the grass a game of ball
Those days of being with
Your father
Were the ones I see now thinking of you both
Your Dad getting things done.

Sophia With An Orange Ball

When she bowls your sister makes me think of something so absurd
A marshmallow trying to hold up to an onslaught of graham crackers
But if you have to bowl, orange is definitely the way to go.

The day she chose this lovely matching 50 pound thing to spin
Into gutters and crawl its way toward those pins it sat
And chatted with them instead hanging around sharing
News of how things were going up by the shoes
Telling of what was hot on the grill today.

Sophia has such a gentle turn of wrist that one often wonders watching
If perhaps she may accidentally leave the ball
There on the line and instead slip herself down
The alley to knock away the standing guard.

It was All About The Sun

There was a light that day
That came through the skylight
Illuminating the stairs
The three of you
Decided to allow me to film
So I caught it flickering
Over a boy
Torturing two sisters
With every act of goofiness
His 12 year old mind
Could produce.

We Would Like The Filet

Dad proudly tells everyone
"She's no cheap date."
Ordering you a filet, with a joy about it
Making me laugh
The girl who ate only meat
The first twenty years
Pork chops, chicken, steaks,
Roasts, burgers, meatballs,
Broiled, fried, roasted
We've grilled and watched
You enjoy the delights of the carnivores.

Concerts

There have been concerts, festivals, music, shows
You have bowed a cello, played a sax,
Blown a horn, piped a piccolo
Marched with a flute, drumed a kit
Tingled a triangle, gonged, hauled, assisted
Marking your childhood with jazz, classical, standards
Chorales, at Christmas Concerts, Spring Medleys
And I've enjoyed each show as if I could hear only you
Above the rest, Sylvia, hear that I say
She's the one coming in right now
But I missed Carnegie Hall, how could I?
Guitar, I forgot guitar, that ties you to your Dad.
I hope that you find a way to keep this musical
You. Sylvical.

Look it's the future
Burning brightly
There beyond us
Waiting for you
With possibility
Problem
Hope and hurrah's
Every parent sees it in their
Child
Look carefully
You'll see it too.

Thank you
Thank you for the cheer
Thank you for the affirming
Thank you for days in sandboxes
Thank you for those tiny glasses
Thank you for all the books I loved, you loved
Thank you for the many hours listening
Thank you for little meaty bites
Thank you for a few secrets kept
Thank you for the wearing my hats
Thank you for all the work you did
Thank you for the wonder
Thank you for the best days of a life.

Christmases

Some say that Santa is a great lie
We bring to our children
So I'm a liar but the thing
That made it wonderful was
Knowing that you'd wake up
Finding all that treasure
To enjoy.

And she is saying "Can you believe she's taking another picture?"
And he is saying, "She's just trying to save time, just make it nice."
And that cracks everyone up because
A certain someone's not in this picture and she's
Just said something about how they've had it with the camera,
But what I was trying to capture, I did.
The love you had for one another.

The Rites

Of passage bring the girl
Into her own
To look out
On the world
Beautiful
And intelligent
Gracing her day
with a gentle presence
My child
Became a woman
Wrapped up
In the
Costume of
The lady
Going out to
Dance
And hold a hand.

Pistachio

She loves pistachio
But not gazpacho
She's big on pumpkin
(It's orange, you bumpkin)
She'll order something almond
Over a fancy diamond
Passes on fruits
Preferring chocoloot
Bubblegum hits her tum
She always said it was so awesome
Ice cream days
Are lost in haze
But Sylvia enjoyed her cones
Almost as much as her bones.

( I'm getting punchy)

The Big Hole
(He called a Sandcastle)

One of my earliest memories as a mom was the time
we went to the Beach with you as a baby
In Monterey over towards Marina, and you ate a little sand
Seemingly unperturbed by it with your dad finally laughing
About how every time we looked up you'd be face down.
We were such good parents we just set you back up
And off you'd crawl and be over and gritty in that hat.
Then there was the time we all met on a beach in Carmel
Tons of us, digging the deepest hole ever attempted
As I sat feeling sick that day, watching the baby
Laughing as you all approached China and we won a contest
Getting a cute wooden plaque, with a shell glue gunned on it
Our award for most something in the sandcastle building
We raised you at the water, by the beach, in sand
In San Diego, Monterey, Hueneme and up and down the coast
Of California.

The first thing you do when you go
Is say that you are going to build a sandcastle
And then you start digging deep holes
With lots and lots of buckets of sand being thrown into the air,
Not on the blanket I've said it a million times Luca.
Right at the waters edge because if you've timed it right
The tide will come in and turn this into a mighty
Thing your dad calls "a fort," now as you turn to face the onslaught
Sometimes you like to dig the tunnels away from this
Through the sand, I forget exactly why, I never got the concepts
But then action comes by carrying the hundreds of buckets
To watch the water run away
Down the ditches, through the channel and back to the sea

If you are raising a child an ocean is a mighty place
To find metaphors and meanings
Fun and days within the sun rotating around, taking you
The tides coming and going, you coming and going,
As you revolve again around the sun
An ocean can mark your happiest days
The relaxing, the currents of your thinking, marking time
It can wash away sorrows or listen to your agonies
The ocean can celebrate your finding a clutch of ducks
Even if no one will let you take them home
And an ocean can be the place you go
On your daughter's birthday to shout out
As wide as this is, as deep, as mysterious as it all is
Beautiful, and the life of our planet, I love you
More than these waves can ever know.
Happy Birthday!