Note: I wrote this rhyme a couple years after my divorce, while raising my youngest daughter on my own. Since I had my youngest when I was 41, I was already “middle-aged” when I wrote this. I put in a laundry photo, since I have many, and because I refer to it in the middle of the poem, where I am placing the photo.

Midlife Musings of a Single Mom
(1994)

Movies for a quarter, dill pickles, and egg creams;

45 records spinning, hearing I’ll See You in My Dreams.

Bicycles at one speed, Fibber McGee & Molly;

10 inch Black & White TV, my non-talking Dolly.

French fries on the Boardwalk, Steel Pier feats of daring;

Swapping clothes and jewelry, a sisterly kind of sharing.

Pin clips in my stick-straight hair, Nair smeared above my lip;

Being cool in pegged pants and Bucks, a 50s kind of hip.

Hours on the telephone, kissing in the park;

Spin-the-bottle innocence, initials carved in bark.

Double feature movies, drive-ins with a date;

Mom’s laundry on the line, a key to fix my skate.

 

Woolen leggings, itching; galoshes all in black;

Hand-me-downs from relatives and Don’t step on the crack.

Building puzzles with my brother, Daddy fixing cars;

Summer in the Catskills, dark nights filled with stars.

Stumbling through my childhood, armed with fork and knife;

Suddenly I was grown..and someone else’s wife.

Giving birth to children, oh, the labor pains;

Watching them become adults, the joy is what remains.

Then giving birth to myself, after my divorce;

Labor pains twice as hard to chart a different course.

Mem’ries that I conjure and some that never fade;

Good with bad, they’re all mixed in, ’cause that’s how Life is made.

P.S. I am posting this on May 15th, which is the anniversary of my first marriage. Doing it today helps to replace that memory with the bigger picture of memories that are happier.

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