'Lacrimae rerum,' according to one of my teachers, was a Latin phrase chanted by monks in the wee hours of the night, when the veils between body and soul are the thinnest. This phrase can be translated as 'the tears of things,' or the 'tears in things,' a reminder of the grief and praise - the living suchness - that resides within the things in our world.
Others say this phrase arose from a poem by Virgil, a scene where Aeneas, witnessing a mural depicting a battle from The Trojan War, is confronted by the carnage of war.
I felt something kindred when my youngest son, turning fifteen this year, shared with me that the first of his circle of acquaintances - neighbors, playmates, schoolmates and teammates - was being deployed to Afghanistan. At the tender age of seventeen, he's being sent off to war.
For that I have no words, only tears.
This remembrance of the 'tears in things' - and an afternoon spent cleaning out the garage, where I came across my son's old fish bowl - melded together to create this poem.
After pinning up a free ad on craigslist, I placed the fish bowl - and the rocks, and the castle my son had saved up his allowance to buy, and the net - into the hands of another father.
He still wore his work clothes and work boots, the dust of the day's labor on his t-shirt and in the creases of his hands. He was taking the fish bowl home for his five year old daughter. They would go to the pet store together, later that night, to pick out a fish.
Hand me downs
When my daughter outgrew her first set of clothes –
the onesies that could fit a doll
the little socks and hats
that fit in the palm of my hand –
I tucked them away in a box.
There might be another baby,
a coming one to wear these clothes again.
When my second daughter was born
I opened the box. She wore the clothes
of her sister and the memories
of baby girl and baby girl
swam together in one sea.
The clothes were packed and unpacked
two more times for my sons,
until they cradled my last child.
I folded the clothes in a box again,
now to pass them along to the newborn
daughter of my friend.
There was a time when my daughter
collected rocks – pebbles, gravel
from the driveway, smooth stones
from the river. She stored them
in buckets in the garage.
I bought her a rock tumbler
to polish her rocks. Until one day
the rocks gave way to soccer, then
to origami and to stacks of books
from the library. The rock tumbler
was packed in a box for the thrift
store.
And there was a time when my youngest
son had a fish bowl and three small
betas, one after another, each named Pablo.
The fish bowl, the stones on the bottom,
and the Asian temple that he saved up to buy -
the temple that reminded him of the kung fu
that held his heart for many years,
until it did not – sat in a box in the garage
next to the kung fu swords and outgrown shoes.
Until the morning I realized the days of cleaning
fish bowls and buying fish food were past.
I asked my neighbors, did anyone need
a fish bowl, and would they like to have it?
Sometimes it's hard to pass along what once
held the weft of love, what marked an epoch
that's now gone. Do you cry when you give away
your child's baby clothes, their outgrown
things? I do.
Some things I don't give away –
the slope of my feet
that's the slope of my father's feet
the shock of the sneeze
that's my mother's sneeze
the bulge of my veins that are my grandmother's veins.
Some things I wish to recycle, or renew
(the voice in my head
that sounds like the voice in every woman's head
that sounds like the voice in every girl's head
that says there's something wrong
with my belly, or my breasts, or my skin.)
Some things come to stay. These hand me downs
are not so easily boxed up, taken to the curb
or given to a friend. And yet I wonder:
what tears lie within these give aways?
What tears hold the soft release of their skin?
And what tears hold what stays?
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