A few months ago, I went through a big pile of Mom’s poems. Little by little, I’m reading them and trying to sort them into decades and themes.

I set this one aside.

The carriage Mom mentions in this love poem to Dad wasn’t the type of carriage you read about in a fairy tale.

Something as Bright

What did you know of me
walking our children under the leaves
and over the bridges of towns too small
for memory. Shoes from the store where
babies toppled boxes, and the fair of
fruits and vegetables that came delivered
because I couldn’t manage with the carriage.

What did I know of you
bringing that same carriage home boxed
on a Boston train; what thoughts danced
in your head, what dreams … was four your
number? Three of the four were born in
different states, all in a different town.

What did we know of anything.
Something as bright as love kept us together,
kept us alive, kept us growing. Thank God
for that, and you.
~ Joan Vayo, September 14, 1973

Now that both parents are gone, I’m asked if I “hear” from them. No visions (yet) or messages in dreams (yet). But what made me go over to the stack of “do something with these” keepsakes today, 48 years to the day since Mom wrote this? I like to think she taps me on the shoulder once in a while, to help me tell her story.

Their story.

A few months before he passed, Dad told me about that baby carriage. It was gigantic, he said. Getting it home on the train from Boston to Lynn, Massachusetts, was an incredible challenge.

As I understand it, the box was too large to fit into the aisle of the train. So Dad took the pram out of the box and propped it on the outside platform at the end of his train car, where he was able to lean out and hang onto the handlebar. At first, the carriage was only for baby Harry.

Within a few years, there were two more little ones.

Three children in three years still amazes me. Gary and I had three as well, but we took our time. It took us 15 years from start to finish.

By 1973, Mom had some time to look back on her 21 years of marriage and marvel that their love remained, as it did for another five decades.

The carriage Mom mentions in that love poem to Dad wasn’t the type of carriage you read about in a fairy tale.

Or was it?

Something As Bright ©1973 Joan C. Vayo. All rights reserved.

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