Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
The week of Earth Day was a spring break for my grandson Leo. Because he has working parents, he went to his former daycare for the week. We are not sure if that is where he learned about Earth Day, but he came home and wrote in his special journal (the one with the soft cover). Leo is in kindergarten, so he is new to reading and writing, but this grandmother/ teacher/ writer sees the potential of his writing. If nothing else, it will go in the archives of his earliest writing.
My interpretation: “How Do You Help The Earth”
Do not litter. Do not throw trash on the ground. Do not pick the plants. Do not kill the plant. Do not kill the environment. Do not cut the trees because the trees help us breathe.
How do we help the people?
We can help people walk and help people get things if they can’t reach it. We can help do the remote when people can help people keep up the house and we can all help people get ready for a party. We can help people if they have a broken leg. You can help people if they are not tall enough to put up the lights.
How do you share? You can give away something.
Keeping the world good. by Leo, age 6 (kindergarten)
I’ve been writing this month with Ethical ELA’s #Verselove. On Sunday, Susan Ahlbrand led us in a prompt called “Lingering Lines.” We could choose a song from a musical to use as inspiration. One of my favorite musicals is Waitress by Sarah Bareilles, and my favorite song is You Matter to Me. Try to listen to it without crying. I can’t.
My grandson, Thomas (5.5)
This weekend my daughter was visiting with her son, Thomas, who is now 5 and a half. How time flies! He is the sweetest boy with an active imagination and crystal blue eyes. He loves me without condition which warms my mamére heart. I borrowed the song lyric and wrote a short poem for Thomas.
You Matter to Me
I find sea glass treasure in your eyes. You look in my heart as a mirror and smile for the picture frame. You matter to me.
I sing a lullaby love song and you think I’m magical. You say “I love you” like they’re the easiest words to say.
I know your love is true innocence of a 5 year old simple and free, no baggage or judgement. You see You matter to me.
Margaret Simon, draft
Kidlit Progressive Poem Update: Patricia had a family emergency, so Rose is taking her line today (at Imagine the Possibilities). That is one thing I love about this community. We can lean on each other.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
When I was having children, I never really considered the future and what it might mean for me to be a grandmother. I had three girls. Three daughters who grew into three amazing women. And now I am Mamére to four grands and another one on the way. My youngest daughter is pregnant with her 2nd child. She has a 2 year old, June, and this one is a boy due in July. We’ve had fun calling him “July.”
Pregnancy is not an easy time. There are so many changes happening in a woman’s body. After an earlier miscarriage, Martha was full of fear. I was confident, but I understood her fears. She invited me to the 20 week anatomy scan ultrasound. I sat in awe at the image on the screen…a perfect baby.
Here is my love letter to this new baby boy:
July
I already love all four chambers of your heart, steadily beating showing off for the camera. And those little toe nubs that I can’t wait to tickle. We could see the perfect stairs of your spine curled, floating up in the certain space of womb. I fell head over heals for your tiny nose, the deep eye sockets, the thing that tells us you are boy.
I can wait as you grow and grow, coming to us on a hot mid-July morning wailing for more time inside. It’s OK, my grandboy, I love you already. Margaret Simon, draft
On Sunday I read Maria Popover’s The Marginalian. She wrote about matrescence: “While mothering can take many forms and can be done by many different kinds of people, the process of one organism generating another from the raw materials of its own being — a process known as matrescence — is as invariable as breathing, as inevitable to life as death.”
In Matrescence: On Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood, Lucy Jones writes of her own experience giving birth to a girl. “Time started to bend. I was carrying the future inside me. I would learn that I was also carrying the eggs, already within my baby’s womb, that could go on to partly form my potential grandchildren. My future grandchildren were in some way inside me, just as part of me spent time in the womb of my grandmother.”
I am grateful to be a grandmother, the seed from which my grandchildren sprouted. Honored by my daughters to be beside them as they do their best to be strong women who mother with wisdom and care.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
I’ve crocheted for years, so this year I decided to try to make a garment. I’ve made baby blankets, shawls, and hats, but when I saw a pattern for a baby sweater using two hexagons, I thought this will be easy enough.
We were taking a driving trip with our family to Oklahoma right after Christmas, and I wanted a project to do on the drive and while relaxing at the house. I picked out three colors from my inherited boxes of yarn from my friend Marion who died in 2020. My daughter Maggie, the mother of Stella, said of the three colors, “Stella will wear that.”
I crocheted and crocheted until I realized that it was way too big. The first hexagon would almost fit me! I had not accounted for the gauge of the yarn. I was just following the pattern.
Rather than lose the project all together, I decided to rip out the extra rows to make it fit. Then I spent a while making the other side.
Finally it was ready to block.
Two hexagon crocheted sweater blocked on the ironing board ready for steaming.
I brought it to Stella one afternoon when we were visiting. Stella has her own unique sense of fashion. Her preference is to wear leggings in one pattern and a top in another pattern. Sometimes she wears a dress as a skirt or a costume. Her favorites are skeleton, ninja mask, and Elsa nightgown.
Stella ready to go the art show (pj top, dress as skirt, and Elsa wig)
When Stella first saw the sweater, she said, “Nobody anywhere ever has worn a short sleeved sweater.”
My daughter Maggie explained to her that I had made it specially for her. She eventually came around and posed for a picture in her new sweater. Her dad sent me this picture.
Stella fashion: Hexagon sweater over Christmas pj top and Mardi Gras pants
Currently I am looking at a pattern for a summer sundress. Do I dare?
My students and I are reading Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse. In the book, there is a poem “On the Road with Arley” that begins with line “Here’s the way I figure it, my place in the world is at the piano.” It’s been fun to find music of the time period and write alongside it. My students worked hard to create poems using this beginning line. I asked them to use imagery to create a tone. I wrote a model poem about my place in the world.
In a Canoe
Here’s the way I figure it, my place in the world is on the bayou lazing about in a canoe with you.
I’m just a mamere wanting the best time to be outside watching for eagles slipping through slow current listening for Mr. Owl to cook-cook-for-you!
My place is in open toes among cypress knees sniffing catfish air hearing cicadas buzz when the sun goes down.
Here’s the way I figure it, my place in the world is in a canoe with you.
Granddaughter June, 22 months, pointing at an alligator at Avery Island, Louisiana.
My daughter joined my older daughter and her kids at Avery Island, Louisiana, a few miles south of us. It’s the home of the Tabasco plant. The place is beautiful, set on an inlet from the Gulf of Mexico. The water is fresh water and yes, there are gators there. Alligators are generally not aggressive animals. They peacefully float along the surface. I’m not sure, but this might have been June’s first time to see an alligator out in the wild.
Let’s play with enjambment today. Enjambment is a poetic element in which a sentence or phrase continues from one poetic line to the next, without end punctuation. Enjambment can create a surprise or suspense.
Here’s an example from Maggie Smith’s poem “First Fall”:
“I’m your guide here. In the evening-dark morning streets, I point and name. Look, the sycamores, their mottled paint-by-number bark. Look, the leaves”
Here is my draft:
Your finger is the guide here, pointing, noticing, identifying first gator. You say, “Foggie,” and Mom repeats, “That’s an alligator!” You point again, fumble over new syllables, soaking up space, place, and being a toddler on tour. Margaret Simon, draft
Today is a dual post for Spiritual Journey and Poetry Friday. Ruth Ayres is our host for the Spiritual Thursday link up here. Heidi Mordhorst has the Poetry Friday gathering here.
Ruth chose the topic of “wholeheartedly” for Spiritual Thursday. When I looked up the meaning of wholeheartedly, I read “with complete sincerity and commitment.”
Due to the invasion of Hurricane Francine, I wholeheartedly jumped into protection mode. My daughter sheltered at our house with her two littles, Leo (5.5) and Stella (3.5). Combine that toddler energy with a 6 month old puppy and you get an equation of full on energy. We baked, we colored (Albert ate a few crayons), we read, watched a fun Disney movie “Brave”, and played and played and played. My daughter said to me as they took all the plastic containers out of the cabinet, “They never get bored.”
My teacher heart was happy when Leo wanted to write a book. We folded a zine, and he wrote and drew. It was fun so see him making the connection between letters and sounds and words. His first page read “Mat is soopr hro.” He couldn’t stop laughing when he decided that Mat would sit on a pear. I loved seeing his face shine with pride.
I’m happy to report that Francine came through with little fanfare here in the arch of the boot, New Iberia. She skirted by to the east and only dumped rain and some leaves and branches. My grandchildren have learned about earning cash for chores, so they happily helped pick up sticks (a penny a stick) and swept cypress needles off the deck.
This post is neither very spiritual or poetic, but I felt I should post something. There’s a reason I didn’t write much while my children still lived in our home. I am wholeheartedly a mother and now a grandmother. I wouldn’t change a thing.
Leo and Stella show pride in their baked banana bread.
This morning I am waking up with Thomas. His mother is on a work trip, so I am being Mamére. Thomas is fascinated by bubbles. He has a bubble blower and a collection of bubble wands. Early in the morning, this is his outside play time in between bites of cereal.
I wrote 3 poems for Two Truths and a Fib, an anthology by Bridget Magee. In that book, I have a bubble metaphor poem, acrostic, and Fibonacci poem. Since another fascination of Thomas’s is numbers, I decided to write another Fib poem. The syllable count follows the sequence, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 (and so on, if you choose).
Bubbles
Trapped Air circles in the wind caught in a rainbow– A fascinating wonderland.
Margaret Simon, draft
I invite you to write a small poem today. Please respond to other writers with kind encouragement. Thanks for stopping by.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
Last summer we instituted the first annual Simon Summer Camp, complete with t-shirts. One of the daily activities was a walk. A neighbor and long time friend has an empty lot next to his house. He’s had a mound of dirt on this lot for a while now.
We call it the mountain. Leo is five, so he remembers. When he and his sister Stella visited this weekend, Leo said, “Let’s go to the mountain.” Stella, in her 3 year old wisdom thought this might be a long trip, so she would need the Disney chair.
Watching these siblings create games is thoroughly entertaining. It wasn’t long before they were racing from across the street to make it to the mountain. Leo always won.
Then Leo found a shovel under the tarp and wanted to dig. There was only one shovel. This caused a little screaming from Stella, so Mamere had an idea. “Let’s go back home and get little shovels (trowels) and pots, and we can make plants.”
They loved the idea, so we hiked back home and got two trowels and two black plastic pots. The kids successfully dug some dirt and filled their pots. Unfortunately, there was a gathering of stinging ants near Leo, but he didn’t complain. It wasn’t until later that I noticed both of his hands covered in ant bites. Somehow when you are on a brave adventure, a little pain is to be expected and endured.
I happened to have an envelop of marigold seeds left over from last summer, so they were able to plant seeds as well as decorate their pots with clover flowers.
I know these childhood adventures are fleeting. I hope they will remember their visits to Mamere and Papere’s as times of fun, love, and safety. My daughter values our time with them because she had these moments with her grandparents. Those memories feel like dreams now as she manages a tough job and raising two smart, sassy, and curious kids. I’m exhausted after only a mere 24 hours. They’re totally worth it.
Welcome to Poetry Friday. I am happy to be hosting this week. I chose this week because I am out of school for the week for Mardi Gras break. I’m sorry you do not all get this break. It has been so much fun. And today the fun continues with all of your poetry goodness. Find the link up at the end of this post.
Leigh Anne Eck is naming skies. On Thursday, I read her post on Facebook alongside a photo of a sunrise. She wrote “Today’s sky is “step.” I hope you “step into a new day” and “rise up from the dust and walk away.” Following the madness of Mardi Gras, coming home to the solemn Ash Wednesday, I felt surreal, a mixture of fantasy and fact. Her message grounded me as did my morning walk through my familiar neighborhood. Home.
I thought I might get a poem from all of this, yet that poem is still brewing. Today I am sharing a sweet haiku I wrote about my 4 year old grandson picking a wildflower for me. Here is a photo of the tiny blossom in a Mardi Gras cup. I wrote the haiku using Read, Write, Think Haiku interactive, a prompt from Donna Smith.
Wildflower from Thomas
Winter in Louisiana is mostly wet and humid. On an early morning walk while walking through the foggy air, a grief poem came to me. Maybe reading these two poems side by side will put you into that surreal mood I’m in, where there is joy and grief and everything in between.
If you are joining in the link up party, click below and add your link.
Margaret Simon lives on the Bayou Teche in New Iberia, Louisiana. She is a retired elementary gifted teacher who writes poetry and children's books. Welcome to a space of peace, poetry, and personal reflection. Walk in kindness.
Reflections on the Teche 
