Category Archives: family

Anniversary

Today is the 39^th anniversary of our wedding. It was 1974 and we were 22 years old. I had just graduated from the University of Michigan three weeks before and Stephen had just finished his first year law school final exams one week before. It was a Saturday of Memorial weekend, just like today. That night we stayed at a hotel (the Dearborn Inn) for the first time in my life–a very mini honeymoon. And then we moved our stuff the next day into married student housing in Ann Arbor. In thinking back a few days ago, I wrote this poem which I read to Stephen this morning at the kitchen table. We had a lovely, low-key day being together. Happy anniversary one more time before midnight, Stephen!

5/23/13

Nearing Anniversary
(For STM)

I might tell you
what I remember
from 40 years ago

and though you were there
and we were simpatico
your memories may not be

even recognizable to me,
either morphed over time,
put through that gauze sieve

we each have or
true from your point of view
but maybe the image

has blurred or completely erased
and what mattered to me
enough to file away

just vanished from your life story.
Or we each can remember bits
and piece together say, that date the first summer

when we were supposed to go to a horse show
but ended up making out on the beach
and you remember the color and make of the borrowed car

or where we went for dinner after
and both of us recall the unexpectedly cold wind
blowing off the lake, the threat of rain

and I remember the insistence of your lips on mine
as we made our tent under the sandy blanket
and my passionate body awakened for the first time

like an iron slowing heating up to red hot
not an incandescent bulb you could turn on or off,
the abandon of desire almost scaring me with intensity.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2013

What are your stories about long-time relationships? How reliable is memory? How can you tell?

Still there! Seyfried Jewelry in Ann Arbor where we got our wedding bands.

Moving

This Space of Grace blog is moving soon to a new home, integrated into my newly designed website, FullBlooming.com. All the same posts will be there in the archives and I will be writing more than ever. I am grateful to blogger for this time of connection (since 2009) and I trust I will see you all (and hear from you too) at the new location. You will be automatically transferred, you won’t miss anything so no worries. Thank you to all my readers and to those whose comments encouraged me to keep writing.

Recently I have been researching family history online. Many reasons why this is the time to do it. Questions to answer like: is what I remember actually true? Here is a new poem:

Peony by the Driveway, 2012 Copyright MDMikus

2/8/13

Photo Albums

My mother, one year maybe in the ‘70’s,
took the time to gather all the family photos
and for each of her 7 children made a life story

with bits of baby hair, maybe a curl from the first haircut,
and the tiny beaded wristlet from the maternity hospital
with DUBAY and a blue medal of the Blessed Mother.

Baby pics, posed and natural,
some of us looking so similar, had to tell who was who
by the year on the back or other cues.

And inside the front cover an envelope of negatives
was taped to later make some prints.
In mine, a copy of an old letter from my Grandma Schulte

with news to reassure her daughter, my Mom,
that my brother and I were alright staying with her.
She wrote our daily schedule including snacks and naps,

a newsy description of our interests,
her frequent concern for my hair to stay out of my eyes—
the solution: to give me a permanent.

The love X 7 poured into each album,
her lasting gift, I opened today
and found how close or far off was memory,

how radiantly beautiful
was my mother.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2013

Mom and Me in 2009 Copyright MDMikus

New Beginnings

2011 LGNB 95 smaller front coverD ebook for Smashwords-2 Just had a flash to offer my book, Letting Go and New Beginnings: A Mother’s Poetic Journey, for FREE for today only, the last day of Read an E-Book Week. Enter coupon code RW100 upon checkout.

When I was editing Letting Go and New Beginnings, I had the idea for my Mom to proof read it. She was struggling with a form of dementia from repeated small strokes and I thought this might help her. And it would help me to have fresh eyes read the pages. As a side benefit it caused me to think back to when she let me go, the first of her seven children to head to college.

On the day my parents dropped me off at the dorm, I was 18 and eager for them to leave and to get on with my new life. With six other kids at home I did not really consider what all this meant to my Dad and Mom, the hole I might leave. Working on the book with my Mom opened a conversation about her feelings when I left home forty years before, giving me new insights.

Here is another poem from Letting Go and New Beginnings: A Mother’s Poetic Journey

1/11/06

Seasoned Woman

Seasoned like a succulent feast
with spices both wild and ordinary,
used in unusual, unexpected combinations,
rich, complex, sweet, sour, simple, bitter-bite,
surprising, challenging the senses, satisfying.

And seasoned like wood now ready for good use,
waiting to be crafted into
something of great beauty and value,
an exquisite table polished to mirror sheen,
a hand-carved boat lovingly left deliberately rough,
a delicate or sturdy figurine shaped
from an almost remembered dream.

And seasoned by the flow of days,
some hard beyond bearing:
what doesn’t break you
makes you stronger.

Young, green, soft-wood no good for burning,
seasoned hardwood ready for flame.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
Copyright 2006

I also read this poem on my CD, Full Blooming: Selections from a Poetic Journal.

On Sale for Read an E-Book Week

Starting Sunday, March 3 — for one week only — you can buy my award winning E-book, Letting Go and New Beginnings: A Mother’s Poetic Journey, for only $1.00! That is 75% off the normal low price. Go to https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/39211 and enter coupon code REW 75 at check out.

For parents letting go of their children or anyone working on letting go for any reason. “Words from the heart and photographs that complement the poems beautifully.” Pramod Uday

Good Grieving

There are many things I am grateful for in all this and I try to remember the love that surrounds me. I have a lot of support and many healing skills, but I am just barely coping. Each day I try to sleep and eat and take care of myself, but I feel like a huge weight has crushed me flat, like one of those old cartoon characters that is steamrollered into a paper-thin version of himself. I know from experience that this is part of the grieving process and it will get better over time. Every day I keep on.

As I was slowly trudging to an appointment with my holistic doc earlier this week, some words came into my head: “I feel I weigh six hundred pounds, with shoulders bowed and feet of lead….and walk through mud.” And I thought: that is exactly how I feel. Oh wait, I wrote that…years ago. It is one of two poems in my book, As Easy as Breathing, that I think of as “the good grieving poems.” I wrote these at another time when life knocked me flat. And writing saved and healed me.

First I want to share a short recent poem. For the last month, as she declined, Mom and I could no longer have our weekly phone conversations. I felt her presence nevertheless. These insistent lines came out of that space between dream and waking My Mother’s Daughter) that I complied for Mom’s wake, to share with family and friends as my contribution in celebration of her life and our connection.
7/13/12AM

She is quiet
she is still
she is peaceful

she is getting ready
to walk the long tunnel
ever grace-filled.

Below are the two “good grieving poems” from my book, As Easy as Breathing: Reclaiming Power for Healing and Transformation—Poems, Letters, and Inner Listening

Back to the Living

I feel a dreadful sadness
of losses overwhelming,
one on top of the other,
no chance for breathing
in between. No re-balancing

as waves hit from the blue,
knocking the breath out
and feet out from under.
For a time water comes into
lungs…and there is a peace in this,

but no life. For a time
floating numb. Then salt
mixes with salt and body
begins to right and cough
and sputter back to the living.

Who Can Shine Such Light

I feel I weigh six hundred
pounds, with shoulders bowed
and feet of lead.

I see through salt water
and walk through mud.

The mud that clings I fear
will never wash away
by no matter how many tears.

Even so…there is a wisp of smoke
that may vanish, whispering, “feel this
too…fully…and then see

the other side.
Release what must be
to heal from wounds old and new.
The lightness that will come

from this unloading
will be miraculous.
People will be drawn to this one
who can shine such light on darkness.”

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