Entry #16
My home is empty now, a bereft nest.
As empty as my aging womb.
Rooms once full of life are now empty ruins.
knick knacks scattered on dusty furniture
toppled over onto floors.
hanging plants, dead
dust bunnies
little piles of dog hair
linger in the rooms
a stagnant smell of old skin cells
Stinky stale gym shoes
shuttered windows.
Polaroid pictures hang haphazardly on the wall.
Death comes to mind.
I grieve.
The little deaths of motherhood are many. Little purple bodies leave your womb, and you
experience a grief so extreme that you writhe with a pain sharper than any from labor.
You accept the fact that this little being breathes on its own and may now act upon its own free
will. You set the baby in its car seat, in the back seat, facing backward, away from you, and you grieve. Out of your room and into its own, you grieve. These children sneak into your bed in the wee hours of the morning escaping their fears, and then they don’t, and you grieve. They graduate from your arms to the floor, you grieve. The first time you drop them to kindergarten, then turn around to say something to them, then realize they aren’t in the car running errands with you, you grieve.
They come home from school talking and smelling like their teacher instead of you, you
grieve. You peek into their rooms on your way to bed just to see them one more time that day, their hands tucked under their heads, their elbows resting on the pillow, a dark fuzz at their pits, and you shake your head, re-adjusting your memories from past to the present, and you grieve.
They start dating, they express their sexuality, your own sense of self, along with your own sensuality slithers away, and you grieve. They graduate from high school, from college, you grieve.
They move out, you grieve.
They move back in, you grieve.
They move out for good,you think, you hope, and you grieve.
I thought I had prepared well for the empty rooms
the quiet dinners
I grieve
I am not yet Crone but I am no longer Mother
In Donata's Kitchen 
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