My mother would have been 100 today.
Two, two two two two two she tittered
when asked her birthday. Back then,
all eight of us misbehaved in all directions:
Peter tortured Claudia’s hair with scissors;
Frogs from the creek found their way into bedsheets;
Strangers, reading dog tags momma
made Jack wear, returned our wanderer
from the last remaining barn In Northwood.
Sometimes, strap in hand, face pink as
our backyard peonies, she’d grab the nearest,
perhaps one with fanny prophylactically
padded with philosophy books from
the living room shelves. She laughed,
trying not to, yet sometimes happy thunder
struck, and she could not stop,
her laughter winding up
like an outboard motor, round and round
the circular pond of threadbare chairs
until no voice remained, only her breath,
like Precious Pup the cartoon dog
we watched on Saturday mornings,
her laugh went round and round until
we were all whirled up in a tornado of mirth,
all of us thrown to the floor and holding bellies
aching with joy, my brothers rolling around
like pups in their punishment of glee.
I got that way too, caught by fun,
laughing so hard I lost the sound
or, worse yet, sent out waves
of cackle that pulled my students
into a merry whirlwind. Out of control,
I imagined the other teachers said of my class,
out of control, such a frivolous fit.
I know mom sat with me then,
her laughing ghost in my teachers’ chair,
as close to me as breathing.
I like to think that some child
I taught grows up and laughs so hard
that she, in turn, catches her children
in a lasso of merriment and all
fall out of control for the good of joy.
And in the years ahead,
another all-grown-up child releases her
always-ready laughter two hundred years after
my mother’s two two two two two birth.
She will be there, and I with her,
in our legacy of laughter,
now nameless and faceless,
moving through the years
like love.
Memorizing the Laws of Gravity 