Memories long ago, of poetry and Pepto-Bismol, of raising his daughter as, suddenly, a single father – columnist Robert C. Koehler recalls a gift and a challenge.
I’m sitting on the couch right now, trying to cross my legs and reach a couple decades into my past. Fortunately, I have some help with this – at least for the second part.
I started writing poetry after my wife died of pancreatic cancer in 1998. All of a sudden, I had become a single dad. My daughter was 12. Our days were complex, grief-filled and fragmented. But reclaiming poetry, which I loved and played around with in my college days, began rescuing me from the present moment, that is to say, pulling me back into my own life.
Poetry became a means for me to look beyond the surface of things. It wasn’t easy. I had to dig into my soul, grope for understanding beyond the obvious and, oh so delicately, put this understanding into words. The poetry I wrote back then is still alive, an ever-present gift from that fragmented past.
All of which brings me to a bottle of pink medicine, which I haven’t taken, or thought about, in decades. The other day a friend of mine, who picked me up at the retirement community where I now live, happened to mention that my building is right across the street from a parking lot that is noticeable because there’s always a bright pink car parked there, which she called the Pepto-Bismol mobile. And suddenly, boing! Nearly three decades went poof in my mind and I was back in those stumbling days, when I was a preteen’s single dad.
The poem is called, uh … “Pepto-Bismol.” I now welcome it to the present moment, with the caveat that love never dies.
My daughter self-medicates
in the bathroom
at midnight
with 15 milligrams of Pepto-Bismol
in a plastic cup.
Oh budding flower,
exasperating heart’s delight,
self-proclaimed queen of the bathroom
who spreads evidence of herself
across the countertop
in a messy panoply
of pastel product lines —
Body Splash and Clearasil,
mystery cylinders and snapping cases
of unguents and comforts
with a lanolin base —
how I wish
for your sake
the bubble hadn’t burst.
So many things can go wrong
in childhood
that a man’s rough energy
will only aggravate.
She knows
I nurture
with a monkey wrench,
but who else can she call?
I remember nausea
and bathroom floors, bare feet,
the world untethering at my belly,
a moan and …
a mom, a mom,
and Pepto-Bismol,
so damn sweet
and pink on my lips.
How different that was,
how safely long ago,
in a secure decade.
This motherless child
mothers herself as I watch,
my nervous love
hovering in the doorway.
She needs me there,
yes, yes,
if only to share the darkness
Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His newly released album of recorded poetry and art work, “Soul Fragments,” is available here. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com, visit his website at commonwonders.com.
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