MY GRANDMOTHER

 My grandmother with my daughter. (1974)
  She raised me.  Also, took care of my daughter for two years.

When I was twenty something

I stopped wearing a bra.

It was symbolically burned

as sign of liberation.

I attended groups to raise

my consciousness enough

to never be like her,

a woman with no liberal aspirations.

When she was in her twenties

she worked in order to feed

four children, the burden

her husband ignored while he

drank his earnings with whores.

After the fire, that killed

one of her kids, she suffered more.

Until she raged against the condemnation

of a woman who fought against her own subjugation.

She left her little country, her husband too,

to work, to save, to establish new rules

in a different world where she was almost a slave.

But she forced her family's transformation.

When I knew her, she was a housewife

who took care of grandkids like me.

Her husband, now sober, worked responsibly. 

He loved her.

I loved her too, but in my twenties,

in my ignorance, my arrogance

I judged she knew nothing about

the struggle to be free. 

(For Imaginary Garden With Real Toads)