Grandmother Energy

Two poems about growing into myself

Grandmother Energy 1

It’s been coming on for decades. 
The blossom fades slowly. 
The grays are strays for so long. 
Then bam. 
I realize I’m the oldest woman in the room. 
The competition has ceased. 
Not because I’m old, but because I realize 
The competition was ludicrous and contrived. 

Kipling was right. 
Mine is the earth and everything that’s in it. 
What’s more, I am a woman. 

I can in fact keep my head when those around me are losing theirs. 
I can fill sixty seconds with sixty thoughts 
And be grateful for sixty times to practice letting them all go. 

I can trust myself and know I make mistakes left and right. 
I can not give way to hating or to praising – I know myself. 

I can stoop and build again with this good, frail body.  
I can slow and stop and lie on my back in the forest. 
I can reach my arms high with the tree limbs that stretch to feel the sun.
I can marvel at the sweat trickling down the dappled thin skin of these old arms.

I can dream and think and know I’m more than those. 
I can meet triumph and disaster and know that I’ll survive either 
And love them both in the end.

I can hold on. I can let go. 
I can hurt and hurt and hurt again, and feel the spiraling beauty of it. 

I can get up and do the thing instead of adding it to the to-do list. 
I can leave it all unfinished and messy and imperfect
And know that I am too. 

Grandmother Energy 2

If I break my life into thirds,
I’m one third daughter, one third mother, one third grandmother.
But not by age.
By mindset.

My daughter energy simmers with certainty and says,
“I won’t make the mistakes you all make. 
I know myself.”

My mother energy simmers with certainty too, and says,
“Listen. I can help you avoid my mistakes. 
I know you better than you know yourself.”

My grandmother energy feels certain of one thing: love. She says,
“I love you and I love watching you navigate life. 
I know you’ve got this.”

Sometimes it feels like a crap shoot, which energy I’m in today. 

Daughter energy is deceivingly alluring — 
That cocky, confident walk on the cliff’s edge like a boss. 

Mother energy means well —
Bless her heart, as they say. Bless my heart
When I hear those words coming out of my mouth, telling you what to do.

But damn, grandmother energy feels so sweet. 
She’s always said: 
“Trust life. You’ll be so glad you did.” 
And now, trusting life, I hear her next line:
“Consequences are sweet 
When fully metabolized.”

---

Afterword

Back around 2021, when life was hard and I was resisting even harder, I brewed myself a pot of tea in the pretty little turquoise teapot my dad brought back from China in the early eighties. When I reached for my grandmother’s tiny coffee mug, I sensed her presence — the soft curls on her head, same as mine, the slender fingers of her hands, same as mine. But more than that, her spirit, her love.

Trust life. You’ll be so glad you did.

Those words came at the close of that opening into her presence.

I wish I could say that was the moment I turned the corner, I realized how my resisting was weakening me, turning me bitter, and I simply started trusting life. But there’s been no hard corner, just one step, then another. Rewiring, repatterning, remembering who I am.

Yesterday felt hard. The reach for the turquoise teapot and the little brown mug wasn’t déjà vu. It was new. I was ready. And it came in clear as day:

Turns out, consequences are sweet when fully metabolized.

Right now, I’m sitting with the sweetness.