In Memory of my Mother, Emma Schaefer

My mother, Emma, and me, in front of Steel Pier, Atlantic City, New Jersey

Summer 1952 - I was just two years old.

The following poem is from an collection entitled: Ride the New Morning, self published in 1983, Shepherd's Bush Press.

Emma

By chance I glanced at my reflection

and saw there – you.

I’ve not noted you in my face before,

but I’ve felt you inhabit my thighs and belly

so round like yours,

and at times my woman smell recalls

images of you and me together in

our claw-footed tub,

me so small next to your Boticellian swells

ripe in womanhood.

And in my bathroom now with

its claw footed tub

hangs our Atlantic City portrait –

you, Romanian, really, gypsy-looking

and me in the 50s sailor suit

posed in an-honest-to-God

paper moon.

 

Mommy

you were mommy

never mother

sometimes, ma

and so sadly

you were not all there,

not quite sane,

a little over ripe,

but a beauty in an aesthetic long departed.

And mostly you were mine,

though I never showed the love,

always called “daddy’s girl”…

but I loved, I love you still.

 

by Susan Schaefer ©1983 Ride the New Morning