Reflection In The Grotto

For the past four weeks I’ve been taking a women’s-only poetry class focusing on the body, embodiment, and the special ways women experience illness, joy, trauma, etc. It has been an eye-, heart-, and soul-opening experience in which I’ve learned a lot about myself, my body and senses, and the art and craft that is poetry. This is my stab at a prose poem based on a recent visit to the grotto I love so much.

Reflection In The Grotto

I’ve visited the Blessed Mother before, here in the solemn silence of her sanctuary.

Or is it mine?

The gurgling chatter of a nearby fountain breaks through my thoughts, reminding me that the quiet here comes from somewhere deep within, a tiny nook I keep hidden from everyone but Her. I can taste the water’s sharp, metallic flavor upon the air. An airplane soars overhead. Cicadas sing.

Today I’m sitting in a new place, upon the stone wall overlooking Her flower garden. My usual spot is on the gray slatted bench across the way, but a man sits in my place, head bowed, punching away at his phone.

The cool breeze plays havoc with my hair, but I don’t mind because it carries the sweetness of the petals swaying before me. Tiny white, pink, and purple flowers, gathered as one, like good neighbors huddled around a blazing firepit on a dark and cold October night.

I hear the pitter patter of little feet and a soft humming in my left ear. I know it’s my son before he even speaks; he’s always singing or jabbering about something.

“What are you writing, mom?” he asks quietly. So inquisitive, this boy of mine. Always asking questions. Question after question.

“Mommy’s working on a poem about nature,” I reply. “I’m using my senses to describe how I’m feeling here in Mary’s grotto.” He seems satisfied by my response, as he scampers off to splash his hands in the fountain and search for ants and spiders within the cracks of the sidewalk.

This sacred space transforms my children. They become thoughtful, calm, yet always playful. Maybe it’s because there’s a mother’s presence nearby. Not mine, but another’s.

I, too, find solace here, within Mary’s warm embrace, as she gazes down at me from her sheltered hollow within the rocky wall, bathed in white from head to toe. She sits quietly with me, side by side, mother to mother, when I’m lost for words and bearing burdens, which is often these days, and offers me the solidarity I’ve so desperately yearned for since I became a mother almost 9 years ago.

The last time I was here—in March—I prayed hard for my daughter, who’s sitting further down this rocky wall writing in her own spiral notebook, observing.

I wonder what she’s writing about.

Is it her anxiety? The raging monster that’s been hounding her (and us) for almost a year, stealing the very piece of her that makes her my precocious 8-year-old.

The brisk wind of this early September morning assaults me and sinks into my bones, deep and bitter. I shiver, but I know it’s not the wind making me cold. It’s my daughter’s illness.

Music begins to play, the nearby church bells toying with my fragile emotions like a marionettist manipulating a puppet’s strings. I don’t recognize the hymn, but it hits me like a gut punch and suddenly I want to cry. There’s something about the melody that brings to mind my childhood and Sunday mornings spent in the pew beside my brother, a time I miss terribly and one to which I will never return.

My pencil stops abruptly, and I lean my head back to breathe and hopefully corral the tears already starting to pool.

Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, I tell myself.

And I don’t.