Author: Grace Mattern

Grace Mattern is a poet, writer, artist, mother, grandmother, partner, friend, community activist, gardener, triathlete, hiker and for 30 years was the Executive Director of the NH Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. Her chapbook Fever of Unknown Origin was published in 2001 and her full-length poetry book The Truth About Death was published in 2012.
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Family

I’m out of my usual routine, in Tennessee since yesterday afternoon for Marianna’s (Sam’s fiancée) graduation from Law School.  Adrienne and Matt and Emilio arrived today, and we had lunch at Sam and Marianna’s house with her parents and sisters.  It was the first time we’d met her family, and it was a lively yet relaxing early afternoon on the porch, with the main item of discussion being who would get to hold Emilio next.

So, no haiku yesterday or today, and really, ever since reading Adrienne’s most recent post about being a mother, about her own little family, I’ve been thinking there is nothing I could post right now that would be anymore right on about where I’m at — in the middle of family and loving it.

Click here and enjoy — it features a photo of the amazing Emilio too:  http://barnardbabyblog.tumblr.com/post/5360037730/4-months

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Haiku XCIV

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Maple catkins lace
Grand old cemetery trees
Wind sways sweeping seeds.

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Mother’s Day

I recently listened to my daughter answer a friend’s question about what it’s like to be a new mother.  “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” she said, without hesitating.

“Ah, yes,” I thought, remembering all the times I’ve said the same thing.

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Indispensable

I have 25 days of work left.  “I can’t imagine the Coalition without you.” “I don’t want to talk about it.”  “What are we going to do without you?”  “I’m just really worried about what’s going to happen when you’re gone.”

I’ve been hearing comments like these since I announced a year ago that I’d be leaving in June.  And, to be fair to the talented, dedicated and amazing people who make up the Coalition, the staff, board members and member program directors, almost all of these comments are coming from people outside of the organization.  Now as the date gets close, really close, the comments are escalating.  And the fact that there’s no one identified yet to take on the job has shifted some of the questions to the vein of, “Are you really going to leave?  You’re really going to do this?”

“Yes,” I answer.  “And everything will be fine.  Voids don’t get filled until they’re created, but they do get filled.”  I’ve watched this phenomenon my entire adult life, and believe it whole heartedly.

Last night, after reading our Chinese cookie fortunes looking for clues about what’s next in our lives (there was an interesting and possibly relevant message — “don’t pass up a once in a lifetime opportunity” — but that’s another post), we got the real wisdom on our way out of the restaurant.  We ran into a woman David and I both know, and met her friend, Gary.  Talking about leaving our jobs, and the importance of leaving, the rightness of the path of moving on and recognizing that no matter what we’re doing at our jobs, it can still happen without us, Gary lifted his hands.

He held one hand as if gripping a glass of water, and dipped a finger from the other hand into the imaginary glass.  “Put your finger in a glass of water, and then pull it out.  The day the hole in the water created by your finger doesn’t fill back up as soon as you pull your finger out, then you know you’re indispensable.”

I don’t need a glass of water to know I’m not.

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Haiku XCII

Wisconsin farmland
Rolls and swirls across the hills
Heading east plane-bound.

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Coffee Shop

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I’m in a coffee shop in Madison with cappuccino, wi-fi and time.  This is a place I often imagine myself and hardly ever really experience.  In my imagined life I have boundless time to sit in a cafe and be creative, or read, or just watch the life of whatever city I’m visiting move through.

Coming to Madison this weekend for a visit with David’s family, I thought maybe I could make it happen, I could actually get to a coffee shop with some open time and sit and read and write and just be.  And here I am.

But the path here is not what I expected, though this particular cafe is playing the role well. It’s an independent coffee shop (Starbucks just doesn’t work for this particularly fantasy) with interesting cards, a bucket of slogan buttons by the cash register, coffee accessories, and a fairly spectacular railing for the upstairs seating area — circles of metals and looping silver chains, the kind of repeating and swirling patterns I draw myself when I doodle.

Sam called yesterday with unexpected news.  Marianna has been offered a job in Tennessee, so their planned move to Boston for Sam to go to BC graduate school may be taking a 180 degree reverse turn.  We talked twice yesterday, as they’re trying to sort out what their best move is, how real is this offer, what does this do to Sam’s plans, just simply, what should they do?

Early this morning I heard my phone buzzing.  I got up to check to see who had called. Natalie, Eric’s mother, was in the hospital last week and is now in a rehab facility, and I wanted to be sure it wasn’t someone from Connecticut calling.  It was Sam and Marianna.  I tried going back to sleep but couldn’t.  David was still sleeping, so I left the room to call them back.

“Guess what?” Sam said.  “I won a 37 foot, two bedroom camper trailer in a raffle!”  He and Marianna are camping with her father at a music festival, and Sam bought two tickets for a charity raffle.  And then won.

“Do you and David want it?”  David and I do talk a lot about our plans to take off and travel the country, teardrop trailer in tow.  Sam wanted to be sure we didn’t want to amend our vision of what will be following our VW Passat wagon.  “I really don’t know what to do with it.”

And isn’t that just what life is?  Right turn swerves, then left turn swerves, tumbling chances and changes.  We’re in Madison because we’d planned to come to a family wedding here and then that fell apart, but a good number of the wedding guests came anyway and there was a wonderful gathering of lively and interesting people last night.  Sam and Marianna were moving to NH in two weeks, to spend the summer with David and me before moving to Boston.  Now they may be staying in Tennessee.  I was planning to spend the rest of my life with Eric and then he died.  Now I’m in the big, interesting life of another man and in places I never expected to be.

Like Madison.  Except for a long time I’ve expected to be in this coffee shop.

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Haiku XC

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The grass is so green
Grey skies again and again
Lonely daffodils.