Am I My Mother's Daughter?: Part Two

So there I was, sleepless in my bedroom, night after night, with my childhood nemesis, MOTHER’S JEWELRY, at the foot of my bed. I felt that I was under a curse, all caused by that heavy metal still in the pillowcases, still in that storage ottoman. What would it take to break the curse?

A reverse spell, I thought. Words. I was good with words. I was also good with rhymes. I could write a poem!

Verses began appearing in my mind at various ungodly hours between 2 and 4 am. “Fleeing the castle, like a thief in the night.” Even more apropos: “Words on the paper, story all told, all the base metal turns into gold.” There. There was my reverse incantation. So now, I had an end, and a beginning. What, oh what, would be in the middle?”

Most writers know that endings and beginnings are easy. It’s middles that suck. Take the most famous trilogy, ever, “The Lord of the Rings.” Who doesn’t get stuck during The Two Towers?

Why are we diddling around so long in Rohan? We want to hear about Frodo, and Mordor, and the Ring!!!

Coincidentally, around this time, Peter Jackson’s second installment of the second cinematic Tolkien trilogy, The Desolation of Smaug, had just been released. And there he was. Smaug, the Dragon, sitting on his huge hoard of gold and gloating at everyone who tried to take it from him. Just what I needed to finish the poem. My mother, my own personal Dragon, hoarding her jewelry and pouring all the gem-studded stories into my ears for over fifty years.

Shortly afterwards, my mother’s younger sister, my crazy but still lovable Aunt Betty, died at the age of 92. My mother wanted to go to the funeral. A reasonable request – and with the help of my dear friend and local caretaker, Clara Custer, I got her there. I’d driven three and a half hours, gotten her to the church, sat through a difficult funeral, all on an empty stomach (no chance to eat) and was anxious to get her back to the nursing facility, adjourn to my hotel room, grab a bite and rest. But no. Mom wanted to go to the house. And I knew what she wanted most – to check on her jewelry. Which wasn’t there.

Clara and I took her back to the house and for the next two hours watched her rummage through what was left of her jewelry. I had only taken the best pieces back to Chicago. Still, she found plenty to paw through and tell stories about. Fortunately, the house looked pretty much as she’d left it. Finally, Clara and I got her back and I headed to my hotel room. Where I spent a sleepless night writing a poem I dedicated to Aunt Betty, and struggling with the realization that the day’s sad events were going to come out as a second “Heavy Metal” poem. Oh well. At least it would be a short one!

Christmas was coming, and while I dreaded the next visit, at least the weather was better. We had an amazing Christmas warmup that year and temperatures were in the 50’s. During this visit, Mom insisted I take one of her rings as a Christmas present. The last thing I wanted, of course. She told me during this visit that she had decided she was going to collect rings until she had one with each known gemstone. While she’d already gotten a good start, with stones I’d never even heard of, those days were over. When I got back to Chicago, I picked one with a light green stone which I later found out was tourmaline. News to me. I couldn’t even look at it, let alone wear it. And, uh, oh, I could feel another poem coming on. What the heck? What was happening here? God forbid, was I in the process of creating another book?