Heather and I have been working on uploading Mom’s poems to this website. It’s slow work – we have to read each one to decide how to tag it, and also to check the date that Mom wrote it. I’ve read lots of Mom’s poems in the past, but never so many in such a short time, and as I’ve read them, I’ve come to realize that I’ve underestimated Mom.
I’ve known Mom for twenty-four years now. I’ll never forget the day that I walked Heather home, and she insisted that I come inside with her. I used to be incredibly shy, and I was terrified of meeting her parents. When she finally got me in the door, Mom immediately tried to set me at ease. And that is Mom. She cares about people. Of course that didn’t help. About the only thing that would have helped was leaving, but if I had, Heather would have killed me. Yes, I was that shy.
I didn’t even know that Mom wrote poetry until Dad started talking about putting a book of her poems together. That would have been ten or twelve years ago. I was curious (and no longer so totally shy of them. Dad and I ended up getting along pretty well much to Heather’s surprise). But poetry really wasn’t what I was interested in. I used to have an incredibly narrow view of what is and isn’t art, and poetry really wasn’t part of it.
Dad encouraged Mom to write more poetry. And he worked hard to get all of Mom’s poems typed up on the computer, spell checked, and safely backed up in more than one place. Dad was Mom’s biggest cheerleader. I know a lot of people used to be scared stiff of Dad. He could be gruff, direct, and he didn’t suffer fools gladly. He was also loving, considerate, and organized. If Dad hadn’t have organized all of Mom’s work, we wouldn’t be able to put together this website. Everyone has heard the saying that ‘Behind every successful man there’s a good woman’. Well folks, the reverse is also true. Dad was the first to recognize Mom’s genius, and her greatest supporter up until the day he passed away. He put together Mom’s first website over on Geocities. He put together at least ten collections of her poetry, and got them signed ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers). Dad loved Mom, and he loved her poetry. He stood behind her every step of the way.
In part this website was put together based on what we, her children, believed that Dad would have wanted. Heather is the one who will do most of the talking, but others of us have worked on it as well.
As I’ve been reading the poems, I’ve come across some beautiful pieces, pieces that I want to share. Dad had come up with the idea of numbering Mom’s poems, and in September 2000 she hit number 1 thousand, and being Mom, she wrote a poem about it. You should read it. It’s really neat.
And then let’s go back to January 2000. Mom was having problems. Cat problems. You know what cats are like in winter. They want you to open the door, and when they see it’s winter outside, they want to try another door. I don’t know how many times Mom got up to open the door, but she wrote about it, and having been there myself with cats, it put a smile on my face.
As I continue to post more of Mom’s poems, I’ll post links to my favourites, and I hope that you will enjoy them.
Wayne Borean
March 30, 2010