A Life Well Lived
[for my Aunt Mary Ann Lewis]
She lived her whole life
in her parents’ house,
went every adult day to her job in town,
walking both ways,
came home for lunch, always.
Loved a man who lived with his mother,
who couldn’t marry till his mother died;
and his mother outlived him.
When she was born the midwife said
“Don’t bother dressing her; she won’t live,”
and measured her size by slipping a wedding ring
over the newborn wrist.
Her mother ignored the midwife,
and the “blue baby” label;
Mary Ann spent her first months
pinned to a feather pillow,
in a basket lined with mason jars of hot water.
In her eighties, when her heart failed her at long long last
she went to live in a nursing home where, she told us,
they played cards and sang songs and had endless good times,
and she enjoyed herself immensely
A relative remarked:
“She doesn’t have sense enough to know
she should be miserable.”
(by Suzette Haden Elgin)