A poem a day for 2013 - day 71 - My mother calls me Robin

I am her first child
She knows every nervous part of me
She knows the shake even in the still of my hand
I have cried my ugliest cries in her lap
I am her artist child
The emotional one
I feel everything
Spilled milk was always something to cry over
It was milk after all / and the children in Africa / and...
I was not the easiest child to rear I suppose
I insisted on hand me downs and Goodwill thrifts
And there was that red coat I wanted to wear everywhere
That didn't go with anything
I tried to take care of everybody
With my long fragile fingers
I couldn't go ten steps without turning a cartwheel
Even in the grocery stores, the malls, the wherevers
I am a grown woman now
Whatever that means
Still I am a square of toilet paper in the wind
Against my mother's tears
We are still trying to figure out each other
Trying to make each other happy
Trying not to make each other cry
We will always do this dance
I love yous said out loud never came easy
We were an implied love family
That was ok with me
My mother always worked
I had everything I needed
I gift her with poems for her birthdays
For mother's days
For because days
I am always seeking her amen
In everything I do
All this time
Maybe that's what firstborns do
Our lives are so parallel
Hers, mine
Mine, hers
I have all these stories
Hers, mine
Mine, hers
My favorite days I think
Were early early mornings
When I was a little girl
A table in the corner at Denny's
Over eggs
Hot chocolate
Cheese
I knew she loved me
Hard as it was to say
Before I was this poet
This spiller of my life
I was a long legged
Skinny shy of a thing
When days were complicated
And I practiced to be brave
She taught me tender
Kind
Give
She gave me air
Dreamed I would fly
And so she named me
Robin