My Mother Taught Me To Hunt

She did, indeed. "What did you learn in school today, Matthew?" she started asking when I was five. She made me feel I should learn things, so I have pursued learning, sometimes relentlessly, ever since. Learning something (or, better, multiple "things") to bring home and share became proof of my prowess: a string of trout for the pan after a day of fishing for knowledge. And, she listened to my answers each day for so many years that I think about reporting what I've "caught" at the end of each day, still, even now.

(We didn't get along all the time, but those-- asking and listening-- were absolute gifts.)

When I think of her, I now often think of the ending to Ted Kooser's poem "Mother":

But the iris I moved from your house

now hold in the dusty dry fists of their roots

green knives and forks as if waiting for dinner,

as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that.

Were it not for the way you taught me to look

at the world, to see the life at play in everything,

I would have to be lonely forever.

The poem's ending catches my sense of debt, of appreciation, and while I don't think I ever feared the spectre of loneliness the way the poem's speaker seems to have done, perhaps the gifts of seeking knowledge, of seeking life, and of reporting it, of sharing it, have protected me in their own way.

Thanks, Mom.

Your son,

Matthew David

P.S. I posted an expanded version of this entry on my own blog (Matt Duckworth Underwater) back in December, near the anniversary of her death. Since Mother's Day is this Sunday, it seems fitting to remember my mother again, though without the anger this time.