I am the Keeper

                                                 by Camilia Cenk

of details, dates
remembrances, photos.
A spreadsheet inventory of four children’s shoes
(sizes, styles, seasons).

When the volume of data overloads computer memory
(a red usage bar warns of waning capacity)
I comb through months of photos,
sift and winnow,
delete and mold and shape into containable folders,
organized and sorted,
prepped for printing in photobooks
and single snapshots to mail out
(remember to do this on time this year).

When mom-friends or playmates or sisters-in-law or cousins drift
out of contact,
I remember to reel them closer with a timely message
an invitation, a proposal.
A struggle always to circumvent overstuffed schedules.

I keep watch on bathing routines, hair care
oral hygiene, skin conditions,
coughs and breathing patterns.
The color and texture of any visible physical attribute.
The texture and temperature of moods.
Emotional needs parched and unmet
amid a jungle of distraction and meal prep.

All the bits and pieces of daily living.
Socks, cereal, spilled milk, (too many) sweets–
I keep.

And,
I am also the keeper
of heritage, of lineage.
There is not only the dense sticky mass of “now.”
There is also the heavy weight of “later.”
When I am gone.
Who will know the story of the old photos?
Who will record the notes of the day, or what the child said,
or how each one entered the world?
Who will keep the details that I kept?

There is no great-grandmother, mother of my mother,
to have modeled grandmotherhood for me.
There is no grandmother, my mother,
to model mature maternal manners.
There is only me, one of three
Still alive.
Three in one:
great-grandmother, mother, me.
I am my own grandma.

I keep a home in my house,
with books in every room,
photo albums lined on a shelf:
baby pictures of my mother,
baby pictures of myself,
baby pictures of my babies.
Shelves and counters covered
with figures, vases, dried flowers
as a grandmother’s house would have.
Basement stacked with boxes of shoes
(organized and labeled by season and style).
Totes of fabric for assembling quilts
(another grandmothers’ pastime).
More boxes (carefully labeled) with holiday decorations.
And others (carefully stacked) with relics
of past family lives:
my grandparents’ high school yearbooks,
marriage licenses, death certificates,
birth announcements, newspaper clippings,
baby memory albums they started
for the babies that once were their own.

I am the keeper
of generations
of history
of damp moldering evidence
of what came before.
Where all of the lives living
in my home originated–
from the grandmothers
that rippled out from other grandmothers
and that we (my babies and me)
expanded from, too.

I am the keeper
of all the ripples all at once
on a churning sea of right now
among tantrums, squabbles,
ripped knees, stained fingers,
fairy tales, movie nights,
time outs, ice cream,
school days, bedtime prayers.

I pray that the lives in my keeping
outlast my power to keep them.
I am the keeper of too much
all at once–
and I hope what I keep will keep
long enough
for the next keepers
to follow.


* * * * *

Camilia Cenek is a writer and editor. She has BA and MA degrees in English and a BA in Psychology. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Madison Magazine, The Good Life Review, The Sunlight Press, and Creative Wisconsin Anthology. Find her at camiliacenek.com.