New Year's Eve Poem by Suzanne Hayasaki

Here I sit, happily tipsy
On fine wine and free time.
It is New Year's Eve
And I am waiting for my son's buzz
To kick in and loosen his grip
On the shield he holds up
To fend off my jousting questions
As I try to get a sense of how he is coping
With life in these times of Covid.

The pressures of his academic ambitions
Must sit heavy on his shoulders
But I can no longer lighten them.
He has gone beyond the tiny world I know
And returns more and more a stranger,
Yet dearer to me in his evolving maturity.

What does it mean to be the mother of grown sons?
Does my presence in their consciousness shrink away
Until what used to be warm sunlight on their waking faces
Becomes some distant, twinkling star they happen to glance at
From time to time on a cloudless night?

I know I must accept this natural progression
And welcome the women who will someday eclipse me,
Pulling my sons into their warming orbits.
But for now this son sits with me
Sipping his wine and starting to smile
So I will put aside this poem, mid-stanza
And fill my own glass again
And try to find my way
Into a conversation with him
That will flow into the New Year
And leave me with a memory
Of mother and son
Temporarily intemporal.