A Mother's Day visit with my mother

A poem and a request

My mom and I at the Dallas Arboretum, December 2024

Happy Mother’s Day to all those who celebrate. I’m in Dallas this weekend visiting my mom. Five years ago, in 2020, we were locked down and in the midst of the pandemic. We still didn’t know much about COVID and there were no vaccines. I wrote this poem¹ then, when I couldn’t fly to Dallas to see my mother for Mother’s Day.

Restricted

It doesn’t matter
how I feel, if I’m
healthy, if I don’t
have a temperature,
if I’ve scrubbed 
my hands until they’re raw,
if I’m six feet away
and wearing a mask
of many colors
and gloves, if I’ve
disinfected my entire
body in bleach,
if I’ve quarantined 
for fourteen days 
after flying from California,
because how can I know
if I’m really healthy,
if the dry cough and fever
I had in January
was just the flu,
because what if 
I have it now, 
if I’m asymptomatic
like Typhoid Mary
a cook who refused to
to stop cooking 
and was sent away
imprisoned basically
on North Brother Island
for being an asymptomatic
carrier of Typhoid Fever,
so I can’t come see you 
to buy your groceries,
to hug you and take 
your loneliness like you 
took mine away 
when I was a child
because what if 
I am the carrier of a gift
I would never want to give you?

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My book Gathering the Pieces of Days has been out in the world for a month! I want to thank all of you for your support and encouragement. This community means so much to me. If you have a moment and feel so inclined, please leave a brief review on my Goodread's page. You can also leave a review on Amazon. You can get my book from Unsolicited Press, Bookshop.org, or Amazon. Thank you so much.

1. “Restricted” first appeared in MacQueen’s Quinterly, Issue 4, July 2020, http://www.macqueensquinterly.com/MacQ4/Pickrell-Restricted.aspx.