“Three Generations”
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My daughter called me with a burst of enthusiasm: “It was accepted! My essay was accepted!” I didn’t remember talking with her about Exponent II — she had discovered it herself, and here she was, brimming with excitement. A few months later, she slid a hard copy of Volume 43 Number 1 on my kitchen counter.
In January of 2021, both my mother and father were reaped in the soul-harvest known as the COVID-19 pandemic. For months afterward, my six sisters and I gathered whenever each of us could, taking inventory of the furnishings of my parents’ house and sorting the mountains of papers they saved. My father saved and filed every pocket calendar, every travel itinerary, every report, every receipt, bill, and statement. My mother was more particular. She saved precious items in boxes or folders with accordion sides, tied with brown strings. They contained love letters, correspondence with her own sisters, her certificates, awards, and her writing. She wrote poetry or prose for the family Christmas letters, Relief Society presentations, or when she had something on her mind. My practical lawyer daughter said we should hire someone to clean out the house and it would be done in a couple of days. My real estate agent niece encouraged us to hurry up and get the house sold while the market was hot. Instead, we pored over file cabinets of paper remnants of their lives, boxes of keepsakes, and folders of news clippings.
In August, flipping through one folder, I found a clipping, and then a full issue of Exponent II, Volume 17 Number 1, “Women and War.” A handwritten sticker on the newsprint front cover said, “Submitted poem, see page 5,” and there on page 5 was the poem my mother had submitted. If Mom had told me about being published, I had forgotten. I was delighted to find this. Dementia had whittled away many aspects of my mother’s personality in her later years. The poem printed here was one of many precious windows into my mother’s life.
I remembered that moment of rediscovery as I slid my hand over the colorful glossy cover of Volume 43 Number 1, “The Art of Losing.” My daughter’s essay covered so many losses: the diagnosis of terminal cancer for her dear mother-in-law, the loss of a pregnancy, the loss of both her grandfathers and the grandmother, who, although she didn’t know it at the time, had submitted a poem to Exponent II some 30 years before. My mother’s poem was titled, “On Mothers and War.” Her inspiration had come from the reports of her journalist son writing in Saudi Arabia about the war in Iraq. Both my daughter’s mind and my mother’s mind had been on similar topics. Writing of their pain and empathic suffering helped to heal and comfort them. Three generations of women in our family have found validation, new and fascinating perspectives from sister saints, and shared joy in the pages of Exponent II.
Deon is attempting to retire from her occupation as homemaker. She enjoys papercraft, needlecraft, woodcraft, and word craft.
Provo, Utah
Categories: Shout Outs
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