In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

LINDA PARSONS MARION 377 To My DAUGHTER GOING OFF TO COLLEGE from Home Fires (1997) One day it will not be enough to make perfect pesto, cinnamon coffee, and know every little club on Jackson Avenue. All this you've learned in secret, striking out on your own. I've said the usual mother things: There are men downtown who would crack you open, leave you drying on the curb. Where will your pearl be then? I've said, One dayyou'll see, as you counted your bus tokens. One day you'll look in the mirror and see only furniture. You'll feel a great hole in your heart, a weight in your pocket. You'll take these crumbs, drop them by an ancient moon and, in your darkest hour, find yourself at my door. I'll take you to the clock on the mantel. My grandfather used to scavenge the alley for his clocks. That one's made of bedposts. He drank, people called him weak. I watched him work, a carpenter's hands hiding his bottle when I came too close. Four daughters, no sons, something less than a man. As a girl, my mother must've heard him stumbling in, the raucous chiming greeting him like children. Now light the eye of the stove and smell my grandmother's kitchen. I'd stand shivering till she struck the long wooden match. 378 LISTEN HERE On Saturdays she bought gladiolus for the altar, for the quick and the dead. We walked through the hothouse, our palms brushed yellow for forgiveness. In the dense geranium air I clung to her dress like a bud at the moment of birth. All week she cut buttonholes at the Allen Garment Factory. Thirty years of service, the diamond pin says. Up at five, lighting the flame, her hands planed smooth by the zig and zag of broadcloth. I have her hands, people say, a woman who lived her faith. She believed in the diamond pin, in the thirty years. She believed in his clocks after he died. She forgot the man who sang to his shadow and bragged on him finally being saved. Sometimes I'll turn on the gas, a smell so sweet I'll turn to hold her dress. One day all this will be yours: You'll sit at a vanity, her milk-glass lamps on either side. You'll take her diamond pin from the drawer and rub it like a token. The moon will look new, you'll get up while your daughter is asleep to hear the soft ticking. And with your whole heart you'll know where you've come. ...

Share