Grandmothers, O grandmothers
Flocking in pairs to the bingo halls
Flocking in pairs to the shopping malls
Flocking in pairs to the city hall
Nonna, abuela, babushka,
You are knowing, you are wise.
Fanciful grandmothers in fox
Fur coats, dripping diamonds
(such dreadful fakes!)
Dietrich eyebrows
Fussing over French lace and poodles in pink
Bow, gossiping between snatches
Of chatter
About another one’s beau
Raging grandmothers in camouflage
Shouting themselves hoarse
Dancing the can-can for Walbran
And showing far too much leg, of course!
Grandmothers in Nikes,
Doing the rounds of the discount stores
In stretch pants stretching
Their pensions as far as they will go
Then blowing the milk money on Lotto Ontario
Clipping cruises for Tokyo
Cuz somebody always wins dontcha know
Grandmothers matching powder puffs
Swapping perukes, swapping stories
About other grandmothers (clinking teaspoons
In time, measured time, defeating chins time,
Teaspoons gleaming with polish
Against porcelain blue like eyes
That still flash for the quadragenerian suitor
That still dares
To sail on the unpredictable seas
Of a woman’s typhoons, doldrums, and storms
And sirocco winds
Sailing off into a Tijuana sunset on a dream
In a jalopy
In leopard skin maybe an andante an
Opera a fool’s parade, on with the show
Grandmothers marching majestically
Down the Main Street of memory
In Packards unpacking boxes
Of memories wrapped in silk
That’s not so ancient it can still
Be savoured
Vintage memories whisked
Into nebulous clouds
By the imagination time
Is conquered time
Is conjured,
O the antique attics
The antique antics
Of grandmothers on
And on With the show…
Abuela,
Nonna,
Babushka
O grandmothers all
Around the world I
Salute you all.
Vancouver 1993
Catherine Bryson cares for her 90-year-old father, a poet who still writes, often in his sleep. She runs a group called ShareCraft where community members meet and teach each other crafts and journaling, is a blogger on a caregiving site called North Van Caregivers and lives in North Vancouver, British Columbia.
