What I save

It occurs to me I frame photos

of their childhood for the same reason 

my mother framed 

so many photos of her children’s parties,  

dances, roller rinks, the poses around
the Christmas tree: 

Not so she’d remember us that way but 

so we’d remember us that way.  

Look, she shrieks when I blame 
her prickly temper for too much 
that’s wrong with me, 

See how happy you were. 

Your 8th birthday. So many gifts! 

The photos give me little clearings 

of pleasure in the woods of
my wearisome family ties. 

And now my children rebuke me for 
shortcomings as their mother which

worries me--do my failures cast 
too great a shadow on their childhood?

So from my album of ruddy flashbacks, 

I select the photos that remind them of their

three separate trips to Disneyland. 

To prove how very happy they have always been.