A FEW THINGS I LEARNED FROM MY MOTHER-IN-LAW.
In loving memory, Martha Jane Linton Whitehouse

Every day for a little while, it’s fun to sit and do nothing.
The more you know about the natural world,
the more delight it gives you.
To hide a feeling is not dishonest,
it can be a way to protect and honor it.

I had not grown up in a family that respected boundaries,
and it was a relief to have a mother-in-law
who set such store by them.
In her I found a kindred spirit
who understood the pleasures of solitude,
altering her mind with the flow of the world.

Life is here one day and gone the next.
Enjoy what life offers you, but don’t make too much of it.
If you live in a nice house, you can have a nice life.
Eating and drinking are two of the great joys of life.
Smoking is another, but you can do without it.

History is an anchor, and family history is a key.
Try not to be needy, but have compassion for those who are.
Value education, and honor those who provide it.
Do your work quietly, don’t make a fuss.

If you love a complicated man, you will learn to adapt.
You can afford to let him be more serious than you are.
There is nothing more important than family,
even if your family sometimes drives you crazy.

Martha, mother-in-law, gin-drinker, I lift
my glass to you, bare-footed, braving the humidity
on the porch, armed with your frosty martini,
watching the surface of the canal stained pink
by a pastel sunset through dark palms,
blurred by the passage of underwater life.

Your voice quavers slightly as you relate
a tale of your husband’s mother’s father—
an orphaned twelve-year-old farmed out to relatives
who beat him, he ran away and apprenticed himself
to a blacksmith and, by the end of the summer,
he’d learned to lift the heavy sledgehammer standing on his toes.

So that long-vanished ancestors will come to enlighten us,
you tell us the family stories you have taken to heart.