Next Day

I'm feeling moody and reflective today. You could call it hormones, or lack of chocolate, or too much cleaning up of poopy messes thanks to my chillin's. So for whatever reason today I was reminded of this poem that I used to ooze over when I was in college. It was sort of my fear of what my life would be, because I knew that I would be a stay at home mom. Just knew it. But what if years from now I became unloved and forgotten? What if being a mom sucked all the life out of me, and I was left used up? That was my fear. Perhaps irrational at the age of 20, but there you have it.

And then I met this poem via Contemporary American Literature class. Yes, I say met. Why? Because when you come across a poem that over time becomes a friend, yes, there is a meeting.

Let me introduce you. Dear reader, meet Next Day.

Next Day
By Randall Jarrell

Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,
I take a box
And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.
The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical
Food-gathering flocks
Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James,

Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise
If that is wisdom.
Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves
And the boy takes it to my station wagon,
What I've become
Troubles me even if I shut my eyes.

When I was young and miserable and pretty
And poor, I'd wish
What all girls wish: to have a husband,
A house and children. Now that I'm old, my wish
Is womanish:
That the boy putting groceries in my car

See me. It bewilders me he doesn't see me.
For so many years
I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me,
And it's mouth watered. How often they have undressed me,
The eyes of strangers!
And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile

Imaginings within my imagining,
I too have taken
The chance of life. Now the boy pats my dog
And we start home. Now I am good.
The last mistaken,
Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind

Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm
Some soap and water -
It was so long ago, back in some Gay
Twenties, Nineties, I don't know... Today I miss
My lovely daughter
Away at school, my sons away at school,

My husband away at work - I wish for them.
The dog, the maid,
And I go through the sure unvarying days
At home in them. As I look at my life,
I am afraid
Only that it will change, as I am changing;

I am afraid, this morning, of my face.
It looks at me
From the rear-view mirrior, with the eyes I hate,
The smile I hate. It's plain, lined look
Of gray discovery
Repeats to me: "You're old." That's all, I'm old.

And yet I'm afraid, as I was at the funeral
I went to yesterday.
My friend's cold made-up face, granite among its flowers,
Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body
Were my face and body.
As I think of her I hear her telling me

How young I seem; I am exceptional;
I think of all I have.
But really no one is exceptional,
No one has anything, I'm anybody,
I stand beside my grave
Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.


Yeah, totally uplifting! I was such a moody little snot nosed brat.