Mother's Child
Janine Canan
Aija, in that little south German town, early Sixties, studying in the basement apartment, stone, with a lookout through the Black Forest, where one night you sat alone and watched the storm from start to finish, trees drenched, a drowned marsh at your feet, then--though no one would believe it later--a spectacular show of pink yes pink lightning, a lace like your grandmother would have woven decades back in Latvia--you beside her sipping warm milk and honey--though Latvia barely existed, a Russian land-patch with German soldiers retreating, where you were born, carried in your grandmother's arms to the refugee camp in Berlin, from which you fled, all six of you, to Petaluma and chicken farms--where your grandmother died and you, fourteen, became your mother's child.
