As the winds whip up, a book of poems is a reminder of a mother’s love
It sounds like the water in the electric kettle is beginning to boil, although I’m confident I didn’t turn it on. However, I am not so confident that it keeps me from going into the kitchen to check. It’s not that unusual for me to brew a middle-of-the-night cup of tea.
The kettle is off but the alarm on my computer is blinking on and off with a severe high wind warning for my area. The boiling water sound I am hearing is actually wind. If only I slept at night, instead of writing, I wouldn’t even know about this. Likely I would have slept through it and awakened to a weather report about it.
But now it is 2:29 a.m. and I am awake enough to know I should check the locks on my open-in casement windows. Charming as they are, they have a history of opening wide to the wind if not tightly fastened.
My lock check begins with the French doors in my office. The rabbi of the backyard, a massive oak tree, bows low in prayer toward the house. I thank him for the many windstorms he has shielded us from over the years, now hoping I remembered to do after each wind event, which is what they are called here in California.
Suddenly I’m wishing to be back home in Virginia where we called them bad winds and the whole family gathered in the living room watching the purple wisteria vines scratching fiercely against the glass panes. I sometimes wished to be a flowering wisteria because they survived storms still looking so delicately beautiful.
A desire to read Emily Dickinson is calling me to my living room library. In the dark, I reach into one of the corner bookshelves, where Emily resides, and retrieve a slim volume. It was dark so I couldn’t see which book I had but I was happy to be surprised. Emily and Elizabeth Browning have been my lifelong poetry heroines.
Settling on the window seat, I switched on a light and saw that I was holding a book of love poems from Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I opened the book to read this neatly penned inscription:
Dear Patty,
How do I love thee? I love thee enough to remember that “Sonnets from the Portuguese” is your favorite of the love poems by your favorite poet.
Mother
December, 1980
The winds have quieted now. I am going to re-read the Sonnets.
Email patriciabunin@sbcglobal.net. Follow her on X @patriciabunin and Patriciabunin.com