December 8, 2008
Monday

Where is she now, the child
who made this house her own dominion?
How easily she has closed the door
on the props of ritual afternoons  . . .
[I} wake to the whippoorwill calling her name,
mine, outside the cold casement. . . .
Again the whippoorwill calls,
And again it does.
But the child is gone.
The house stands empty.
           — Elizabeth Spires, b. 1952
               American poet

I am headed later to Washington, D.C. for the Folger Shakespeare Library’s annual Emily Dickinson birthday tribute. I first undertook this trip, which I describe here as “essentially my family’s Christmas present to me,” in 1999. The speaker then was Elizabeth Spires, and it is she who will appear again tonight. My trip this year is not so much a desire to celebrate Emily Dickinson’s birthday as it is to see Elizabeth Spires again.

I made the decision to go this year in October, when I received the Folger’s announcement of the season’s lineup, in particular the ED tribute poet. In 1999 I really didn’t know much about Elizabeth Spires. I said that I was drawn to her work from her inclusion in a book of poetry writing exercises I was using at the time, although I do not now remember the exercise nor anything that might have proceeded from it.

We arrived at the Folger together about forty minutes before the program, and she introduced herself on the steps. She must have walked from the Metro station, and there was no one from the sponsoring organization to greet her. There was something about Elizabeth Spires the person that really affected me. Her voice, her demeanor, the content of her work, all combined to make me want to be just like her. I decided during her reading that I would make 2000 the Year of Writing Seriously. I attended my first writing workshop in ten years a month later, and I’ve been moving forward (if slowly) ever since.

Since making the reservations for this event in October I reread the collection I bought in 1999. Worldling is dedicated to the poet’s daughter, Celia Dovell, who was born in January of 1991. Spires was almost thirty-nine, about the same age I was when Lynn was born, and in her poetry I find the same sense of joy and heartbreak I have known as I raised Lynn. Spires puts into words what every mother must learn: you carry your child first as a seed, then as a fetus that grows inside you until she has to break forth and start moving away from you. You wonder, especially if you are the mother of an only child, why this one, why the union of of that sperm with this egg and not the ones that might have met the month before or the month after, How of all the million millions it is you, you who are with me and not another. Celia Dovell was four years old when her mother wrote the poems. Lynn was fourteen when I read them the first time.

Part of my fascination with Chloe yesterday in church was the way she reminded me of Lynn at that age — the hair caught back in a band, the knit dress, the leggings, the solemn attention to both the liturgy and the letter she was writing to her teacher. Lynn is twenty-three now, and later I will go into her room, where I keep my overnight bag. It is empty of her but not the props of so much of her former life. Celia Dovell is about to turn eighteen. I expect we’ll hear some new work born of her mother’s continuing process of letting her go.

*********

A year ago, I attended a Christmas Open House and Carol Sing at the public library in Story, Wyoming.

Two years ago, I attended a harp concert.

Three years ago, I whined about attending a holiday event I wasn’t assertive enough to say no to.

Four years ago, a leaky pipe caused a big hole in the ceiling of the kitchen four days before my party, and I thought it would be amusing to stick a Santa boot in it, that’s how relaxed I was.

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