Adelaide B. Shaw
Little Mother
She is my gardener’s madre, his madrecita. Every now and then she accompanies him and sits on a flat rock in the shade of the pines. I point to chairs on the patio, but she declines with a smile and shake of her head. She is a small woman, thin and as brown and wrinkled as a leaf in late autumn. She could be eighty years old; she could be ninety. I want to ask Miguel about her, but his English is limited as is my Spanish.
the gentle way
he holds her steady
and slows his step
reversing the roles
of parent and child
I ask if she would like un poco de agua or café. She smiles again. “Si, si. Café.” I bring her coffee with leche and alzúcar and a couple of cookies and watch her from my house, concerned that she will get up and wander about and possibly fall on the uneven ground or faint in the heat. After Miguel is done with the gardening, he takes her arm and helps her into his truck.
‘Gracias,” he says. As they drive away, madrecita gives a small wave.
When several weeks pass with no madrecita, I worry that something terrible has happened.
“Your mother? Donde esta?”
“My brother,” Miguel says. “She stays with my brother.”
the daily news
more of the usual— all bad
except . . .
the weather report changes
to sunny and fair
About the Author
Adelaide B. Shaw lives in Somers, New York. She has been creating Japanese poetic forms for fifty years. Her books, Travel Souveniers, An Unknown Road, and The Distance I’ve Come, are available on Amazon. She posts published work on her White Petals Blog.