For My Mother in Her Mid-90s

Aunt. Don’t ask me how I come to address my mother thus. Long complex, complicated stories: heart-warmingly familial and sadly colonial. You know how utterly, wonderfully insensitive the young can be? Oh no. We are not here talking adults who should know better but never do. Aunt, I thank you for being alive today, alert, crisp. Since we don’t know tomorrow, see me touching wood, clutching at timbers, hugging forests: So I can enter young, age, infirmities defied. Hear my offspring chirping: “Mummy, touch plastic, it lasts longer!” O, she knows her mama well. The queen of plastics a tropical Bedouin, she must travel light. Check out the wood, feel its weight, its warmth check out the beauty of its lines, and perfumed shavings. Back to you, My Dear Mother, I can hear the hailing chorus at the drop of your name. And don’t I love to drop it here, there, and everywhere? Not missing out by time of day, not only when some chance provides, but pulled and dragged into talks private and public. Listen to the “is-your-mother-still-alive” greeting, eyes popping out, mouth agape and trembling: That here, in narrow spaces and not-much-time, who was I to live? Then she who bore me? Me da ase. Ye de ase.