What Do Mothers Know?
dVerse prompt for Sept. 9, 2024
For your Prosery prompt, I have selected the first line from her (Tina Chang) poem “Love”: “I am haunted by how much our mothers do not know.”
Write a piece of prosery of up to or exactly 144 words, including the given line in the order in which it has been given. You may add or change punctuation, but you may not add or delete words.
I purposely did not read the rest of Tina Chang's poem, as to not influence my first thoughts by her words and their meanings. I was recalled back to an overheard conversation between a group of teenage girls, who didn't realize I could hear. They were trying to come up with alternative ways they could have gotten "hickeys," or "love bites," what to tell their parents. I laughed and told them their parents told their parents those exact same things, and no one was fooled! No one would believe they "ran into a door knob," yet that's one that seems to pass through the generations. Parents always know. They weren't always old.
Here is a perfect gross of words, twelve dozen, or 144.
⁕ ⁕ ⁕ ⁕ ⁕
“I am haunted by how much our mothers do not know,” she tells me.
Oh, don’t be fooled, our mothers know a lot more than we imagine! Things were not so different when they were young. We just imagine that they were.
I tell her, once she’s a mother she’ll understand how foolish she has been!
I tell her, do not dwell on it too long. Do not let it haunt you, do not waste your time. Accept our mothers know it all, and keep it near to heart, out of love and understanding. You forget, they were our age once upon a time, not so very long ago.
I tell her, later on she’ll realize that mothers’ eyes are always watching, storing up for lonely days. Days when visitors are scarce, and children laugh behind their backs at all they “do not know.
I like the talk between generations. Young people learn to realize their parents and grandparents were young once, and older generations remembering what it was like.
ReplyDeleteI chuckled at the overheard conversation. I’d never heard of the running into doorknobs before.
ReplyDeleteThe wistful ending caused me to look ahead to a time when my children aren’t here anymore. I also remember laughing and thinking my parents didn’t know.
The first person perspective brings this conversation closer, Lisa, and is a familiar one. Each new generation thinks it knows better, but ‘mothers know a lot more than we imagine’ and, yes, ‘they were our age once upon a time, not so very long ago’. My grandmother was the most understanding woman I've ever known, the most dependable, and she saved me and my sister when my mother made a mistake.
ReplyDeleteIndeed... mothers do know, but they also accept a lot more than we do.
ReplyDeleteWe went along the same vein. I love this (obviously) :)
ReplyDeleteYour prosery is beautifully composed and brings back so MANY memories of my teenage girl friends and our incessant chatter.
ReplyDeleteDo not dwell on it, let it waste your time....how I wish I had heard those sage words years ago..lovely presentation with all.
ReplyDelete