Momma Ain't Happy

Momma ain't happy,

ain't nobody happy ‘less momma happy,

and momma ain't happy ‘less her people happy.

That toddler won't stop fittin'.

That girl just feelin' bad all the time, the doctor don't know.

And that “I-ain’t-nothin’-special-ain’t-gonna-go-to-any-good- college-like-my-friends” teenager!

Good Lord,

that baby gotta grow up be ok don’t get its own way,

that girl gotta get off the sofa, get out and live in the big world;

that almost-man need to know know know 

that come college acceptance day, he is special, 

no matter what those letters say.

And this momma gotta sleep at 4 am, letting her "I-don't-know- I -can't-do" go, 

and her babies gonna be your babies, she your baby, and you gonna heal us all up.

God, I got some ideas on the potty training, 

put up your stuff after playing, 

no cussing saying; 

no guarantee, but I got some ideas.

But the miracle-working, 

self-controlling, body-healing, spirit-loving, 

I don't know know know.

So you gotta do do do for me and my people, 

cause God you know, 

ain't nobody happy less momma happy, 

and momma ain't happy ‘less her people, your people, happy. 

Heal us all up, God, 

heal us all up.

© Rie Harris, 2018

Allie Mae Burroughs
Photo by Walker Evans, 1936

Before and After

The night the bat flew in was the tipping point.

The tar paper stapled to the wood-framed maw of my shack

came away on a windy winter’s night in Upstate NY.

The bat, sensing no difference between the dark inside me and out,

flew in, settled upside down in its new cave.  

It was a homesteading year for me and my young son,

a way to keep him with me and our extended family,

working the land, plenty to eat, little money.

I milked cows, harvested honey from the bees, 

stayed awake all night with the birthing sows, 

watching that they didn’t roll over on their babies.

I fed the chickens, the horses, the cows, the pigs, 

jammed the pick through the ice in -40 degree winters 

to get water for the livestock,

slept in coat and hat and burned green pine

in the wood stove; burned anything I could get my hands on 

til the chimney caught fire from the creosote.

I named my shack “Sadness.”

I did nothing well enough to feel proud;

I worked hard but felt no connection to my tasks, 

no love for the animals or myself.

Everything was a burden, a weight filling my stomach,

a confirmation of  failure.

I couldn’t adjust to this life and its demands.

Every day was winter.

I want to go back to the minute 

before the bat flew into my house.

I sat in darkness with the bat.

I sat, thinking of the irony of yearning for the routine I hated - 

the milking, the mucking out, the infinity of farm life -

yearning for the familiar misery of it.

I watched my son, sleeping in his crib, 

unaware of the little drama around him.

I opened the door and shone the flashlight til I found the bat on a cross-beam.

I stood on a chair and threw a blanket over it, 

trembling that it would escape, would settle again,

too high for me to reach.

The bat fluttered as I held tight.

I walked away from the shack,

unfolded a corner of the blanket and ran back inside. 

In the morning, I climbed high on a ladder

and, with a staple gun, tacked the tar paper back to the wood frame.

I did it all in a state of numbness,

barely present, yet knowing  

somewhere in my primitive brain,

that if I kept on, 

kept on doing everything,

I would be transformed.

© Evie Safran, 2016

Photograph of a Woman with a Hay Stack
from the NARA archives
Wikimedia Commons