“Summertime” - Carrie Fountain

“I pray here, over the toilet, that in
the moment, I will tell them the truth
and that I will tell it well enough.”
- Carrie Fountain

✨

Today, a short note of appreciation for the mother-poets and poets-of-motherhood who have so incomparably enhanced my experience of being a mom.

This poem comes from Carrie Fountain’s collection “The Life,” the gift on Mother’s Day 2021 from Hannah Smith that arguably started the #wordcoloredglasses journey.

After a rift with my own mother, I gifted her a copy of this same collection on Mother’s Day 2022 (coincidentally, when I started this blog).

Today, my mother and I celebrated our first Mother’s Day together in years (photo 2).

Never underestimate the healing power of words.

What “Summertime” captures for me is the unique combination of mundane and existential at work in every moment of motherhood (the fish… the death lessons), as well as the unexpected juxtaposition of humility and hope that comes from knowing you can never be up to the task and that you will never give up trying (those final lines of prayer).

Fountain speaks from a place of solitude and ambiguity but in doing so establishes a life-affirming intimacy and camaraderie.

To those who create amidst the chaos, who bring motherhood in its triumphs and terrors into focus, and who create community in the process… thank you for telling it (more than) “well enough.”

And happy Mother’s Day to all!