Portrait in Pen: About a Woman: Susan

About a woman: Susan


You know those clouds
that make the full moon look
like your foot glowing, alabaster
lifting from the foam of quiet surf
at midnight on the beach

or the water laden air in August
weeks since rain but, finally, it is

ahead of electricity arcing and lifting

the hairs on my neck like the time
you touched me

and the cicadas that night
we sat on the sun porch
lit by dozens of candles you’d dropped in jars
when we didn’t understand their language
but understood their call

and you know that time
when all we did was breathe?

You know?

You know.

We both knew, within hours of our first meeting.  She was recovering from a twelve-year long relationship that ended when he left; I was two years away from a twenty-one-year marriage that many say was doomed from the start.  Neither of us was looking when she walked into my townhouse at 2 in the morning with a friend for a weekend visit.  She admitted it to herself two weeks later after we spent several hours at the John Singer Sargent show at the Boston MFA; it took me a bit longer, though I did figure it out before the beach walks and the August rain, cicadas, candles and breathing.  After all the hard work that went before, it’s just as hard to accept, and trust, something that comes so easily.
She was, and still is, a social worker, someone who makes a concrete difference in people’s lives every day from when she wakes in the morning till when she closes her eyes at night.  She never had money growing up or working two jobs before we met.  It’s better now, though she continues to teach me that if you have a positive balance in the bank account at the end of the month, and all of the checks are covered, well, then, you’re rich by many measures.  Many of her clients when we met had more than she did, but that didn’t deter her from giving all she could, emotionally and materially.  I learned from day one from her, and continue to learn, the meaning of being human. She cared not only for those society tends to ignore, but also the gifts of nature around her: birds, bees, butterflies, our cats and dogs, the visitors to our yard – foxes, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, opossum, woodchucks, deer – the soil and the trees.  These fill her more than any gift I could buy her.  My duty, my happy duty then, is to just make sure these most important parts of our life together don’t disappear.


she asked me for

“a piece of wood, a branch
rotted, with a lot of holes”

I knew of one, retrieved him
from the bag of raked leaves

we introduced him
to the caterpillar

a familiar, subdued
fluorescent green and black

hanging from one of the last stalks
of parsley in the front garden

an invitation to sleep
safely this winter

a swallowtail to fly next spring

Most remarkable, though, is her love and understanding of family.  She never assumed to replace my daughters’ mother but, somehow, has managed to grow into the role of mother, a second mother, nonetheless.  The granddaughters know she is the one who will sit on the floor and play for as long as they like.  She is also the one who was taken in, after the fire that destroyed her home and everything she owned just months after we met, by my family as another daughter, sister, niece; the one, I am jokingly reminded, they like more than me.  She is the one who gave me confidence to write, the one who gave me permission to be my true self, who holds my hand as I face fears I’ve held secret for so very long.
To be certain, there are other women, important women, in my life: my mother, daughters, friends, teachers, former and current students of mine, famous women.  Some are close, some are far, some are, unfortunately, gone, and some I’ve never even met.  And, maybe, I’ll pick another woman for a second essay, but there is no other than Susan, my wife, partner, companion, guide who has so comfortably enfolded me in love and understanding, shown me the true meaning of faith and what is real wealth.  Of the many beautiful creations in nature, Susan often speaks of wisteria.

There was some speculation
about her beginning,
whether a bird had dropped a seed
in the normal fashion, in the way of plants,
or if someone had sown specifically


But, however it had been
she took him, the pine, to be her own,
a spindly runner whose gait had been lost,
whose arms flailed at air formlessly

Together they had become sky,
dusk on those certain nights,
lavender, color and fragrance as one

It seemed there was always a breeze,
but gentle, and clouds not quite distinct

And at the edge, honeysuckle



Glenn R. McLaughlin