I’ve written a fair amount about life with my adult child. As I plod ever so slowly towards creating a book about the journey, it occurs to me that the pace at which I’m working on that is in sync with the overall pace and rhythm of our life together. Bink will turn 28 this weekend. I’m not one to fixate on the differences between her development and that of a “typical” young adult, but the anniversary of her birth seems to stir things up for me. From that churn this poem arose.
The View from Here
You say
you just caught glimpses
of your child
as he sped past toddlerhood,
towards those labels
that mean everything
and nothing: child, tween,
teen, young adult.
Glimpses, you say,
as if it all tornadoed past you
while I stood stupefied,
hands in pockets,
by the side of some dusty cow path,
a perpetual look of dull
surprise on my unremarkable face.
Truth is,
over here our lives
are nothing like that.
We have plodded along
like turtles in the too-hot sun,
she and I,
pausing every few feet
to rest, to allow her
a few attempts at integrating
the latest sensory assault,
which could have been a wind
shaking the branches too fast,
or the distant sound
of a jake brake on a downhill semi
from a highway half a mile away.
Her needs are special,
which means our shimmy
is your slow dance,
our milestones
seem like simple addition
to your kid’s calculus.
I’m used to it,
adept at appreciating
the kinds of beauty
that decorate this life
that chose me, and her.
It’s not the pace of it all
that leaves me sweaty
and gasping for breath.
It’s my head spinning
as your children date
and learn to drive,
go to college,
get married,
have babies,
buy a house,
flying so far from your nest
you can’t squint enough
to make out the tiny dot
their bodies make
as they soar onward,
commanding the skies.
–Melinda Coppola