For You Both Poem by Diana van den Berg

(To my children)

I want you both to know
that I loved you fiercely
and prepared for your births
long before you were conceived.
I knitted and gathered and read and listened
and bubbled with excitement,
and all through your childhood
and teenage years
I planned and taught and tried to provide
the best that money could buy
and even more
the best that money couldn’t buy.
I taught you from very early childhood that
“Mommy loves you
even when you are naughty and she is cross”.
I always remembered something your father said
long before either of you were born,
“It is easy to love your own children,
but it is not so easy to get them
so that everyone else loves them.”

I shared my blessings and passions with you.
I encouraged you to love storms,
not only so that
you would not be afraid of thunder and lightning,
but also so that you would enjoy their magnificence.
I advised you to make sensible choices,
but supported whatever choices you made.
I encouraged you to follow your dreams.
and to walk your path
with honour, courage and dignity.

I hid many heartaches and tears from you
especially if they co-incided with your birthdays
so that they could be special and memorable to you.

I taught you the unimportance of money.
Perhaps I neglected to teach you its importance
- for that I am sorry.

Despite what you may believe,
I gave you my all at all times,
as flawed and imperfect and unwanted
as my all may have been.
My deepest wishes
for your hopes and dreams
have never stopped being my first priority.
I have been proud of your every achievement
and have cried secret tears
at your fears and sorrows.

I long to be part of your lives
and those of your families.

Everyone, yes everyone without exception,
needs a mother, and a grandmother
and even a mother-in-law.
Please let me be these things.

Please forgive me for whatever
I have done wrong,
or not done,
or done imperfectly.
For all of those things,
whether you tell me what they are or not,
whether you believe I know what they are or not,
I am sorry.

I tried to teach you by example.
I always did everything to the best of my ability
and threw my heart and soul into it.

I beg for your love, support,
respect and communication.
If you can’t give me love and respect,
please pity an old woman
who longs for her children
and please pretend you love, respect
and admire me and need me and my advice or anything you name from me,
and most of all please, please, please
communicate with me.
I long to know all about you,
the things you couldn’t or didn’t tell me
when you were children,
what your likes and dislikes are,
your joys and your heartaches,
what is important to you and what isn’t,
what the children do and say,
and please pretend an interest
in my life and its details too.

Yes, my heartache outside your family walls
has brought me to my knees,
and I will settle for your pity and pretence
because, yes, the truth may be too much
for an aching mother’s heart.

I do not have much time left on earth
and after my death it will be too late.

The reason I have
written so little poetry to you, for you and about you,
is firstly -
because what I do for one of you, I do for the other -
as Ouma did for all her family.
In her eyes, there were no children-in-law,
nor stepchildren
nor stepgrandchildren -
we were all equal to her -
and you are both so different from each other
that that makes it, what seems impossible,
to write for either of you or both of you
and simultaneously write the same for both -
and secondly -
I am not a good enough poet
to transform feelings and facts
for and about my precious children
into art
and anything I try to write to/for/about you
will only degenerate
into the likes
of this
appalling
non-poem.


(25 July 2004)