Parenting via Frank O'Hara

When I visited City Lights bookstore last weekend in San Francisco, I wandered through the poetry section in near rapture, up the stairs in the ether and gathered a few books to flip through, those I knew and those I had never heard of, thinking how poetry endures, the toil of it, despite. Frank O'Hara's Lunch Poems is a small book to revel in, and this poem one of my favorites:

Ave Maria


Mothers of America


                               let your kids go to the movies!


get them out of the house so they won't know what you're up to


it's true that fresh air is good for the boy


                                                                but what about the soul


that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images


and when you grow old as grow old you must
                                                                         they won't hate you


they won't criticize you they won't know


                                      they'll be in some glamorous country


they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or playing hookey


they may even be grateful to you


                                                      for their first sexual experience


which only cost you a quarter


                                            and didn't upset the peaceful home


they will know where candy bars come from
                 
                                                     and gratuitous bags of popcorn


as gratuitous as leaving the movie before it's over


with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the 
                                                                       Heaven on Earth Bldg


near the Williamsburg Bridge
                                oh mothers you will have made the little tykes


so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies


they won't know the difference
                                       and if somebody does it'll be sheer gravy


and they'll have been truly entertained either way


instead of hanging around the yard


                                                         or up in their room
                                                                                        hating you


prematurely since you won't have done anything horribly
                                                                                         mean yet


except keeping them from the darker joys
                                                               it's unforgivable the latter


so don't blame me if you won't take this advice


                                                                 and the family breaks up


and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set


                                                                                             seeing


movies you wouldn't let them see when they were young


Frank O'Hara, 1960

I'm home again in Los Angeles after a perfect weekend in San Francisco and just outside of it. I spent most of the time hanging out at my dear friend Jody's house. I wore my pajamas until noon, and she lay on my bed and we talked and talked. Her husband made delicious coffee. We went to a ridiculously fancy restaurant on Friday night in San Francisco and ate tiny portions of too-rich and fussy food. We went to a beautiful benefit for a school for kids with severe disabilities -- the school where our darling Lueza attended -- and I sat next to Jody and cried when the slide show ended on her soulful face. Despite the sorrow of Lueza's absence, and it was palpable, the love that surrounded that child fills her home still, and I can honestly say that I have not felt so relaxed and happy and at ease in years. Thank you, Jody and Jacek, for your warmth and hospitality, for your beautiful home and for being such steadfast friends.

We woke up this morning and visited Jody's good friend, ate the most amazing homemade biscuits and orange marmalade (honestly, I could have eaten a jar of it) and sat out on a high porch in the hot sunshine, laughing and talking. After that, Jody drove me into the city to my blogger friend Sally's house where the famous Maggie lives, and after listening to Maggie's jokes and chatting a bit in their wonderfully quaint San Francisco home, Sally drove me to City Lights, where I raptured in the poetry room upstairs and purchased a small stack of black and white postcards of poets and a copy of Jack Gilbert's The Dance Most of All.

Sally and I walked to North Beach and ate eggplant parmigiana sandwiches at a corner bar and continued a conversation that lasted all the way through lunch and to the airport several hours later when she dropped me off and we decided that meeting one another was exactly what we had expected and that we'd known each other forever. 


Reader, I've a perfect score on melding my real life and my blogging life as every single blogger I've met personally has been an unequivocal pleasure. I'm awed by this and very, very grateful.