I am……
• from Amelia and Don, stay-at-home mom and blue-collar worker • named after my grandmother, Bertha Louise • grew up in Pennsylvania in a farmhouse with six sisters and two brothers • yearning for a friend (or even just a place) close enough to bike to • picking wild strawberries for 5 cents a pint •walking through tall cornfields to swim in the creek • dying to be in the Girl Scouts; 4-H instead • coming home from the bus stop in the fall to my mother canning • girls cleaning every Saturday morning • wanting to play on a team before Title IX; cheerleading the only option • education “wasted on girls” • a nurse (like my mother wanted to be)…but different than what was expected or could have ever been imagined: LPN. BSN. FNP. DNP? • celebrating Catholicism St. Matthew’s in the Woods catechism bus every Saturday morning with altar boys who turned their eyelids inside out nightly Advent prayers with pink and purple candles; May altar with fresh violets; kneeling barefoot in PJs and a communion veil saying evening prayers • German • salting layers of cabbage for sauerkraut and dumplings • Gut en Himmel!; Quit fressing! • desserts after every supper • a baker who ventured into German Chocolate Cake once; now 100’s of times • pound cake. cinnamon rolls. polka dot cheesecake. Buche Noel • goodbye, sweet potato pie • now mother of a beautiful, feisty 21 year old curly headed daughter • now TWO spit fire girls •feeling good things are coming…just around the corner •hoping for a new place of energized peacefulness
-exploring…
-expanding…
-sailing…
-maybe even soaring!
This is my mother, and that was her poem. I loved it. She did it for her PhD course- the entire class wrote them to introduce themselves. I think I will ask both my grandmothers and dad to write one, too. Who we are and what we come from. I love her.
