At the poetry retreat with Pádraig Ó Tuama, we experienced numerous prompts and poetry forms on Tuesday and Wednesday. One prompt was extraordinarily simple: This I Believe. So, while on my Wednesday morning slow run, I came up with the following poem. . .which is mostly about my mother and what she taught me to believe.

Dead End Street

Contrary to the sign, our street wasn’t dead.

And it did not end.

Maybe it was the confusing and tangled mass of Mormon, Italian, Catholic, Levite, Austrian roots that led to that rainy morning when, delayed by my longstanding personal relationship with toilets, I burst into the living room in my underwear, shouting.

I got it! 

My gaze met the neighborhood. Darrell, Rosa, Matt.

My Mother’s explanation was weak.

“Now you’ve all missed the bus. I can drive you to school.”

I might’ve known sooner when my Catholic mother growled about wanting to shout down Matt’s Evangelical mother for wondering whether my father, the only Jew on the dead-end street, could make his way past Saint Peter.

I might have known in 1973, when I stumbled upon evidence of her infidelity.

She confessed. Yes, she had been repeatedly having coffee and cookies with Mario, Darrell’s younger brother—the only gay, black, teenager on our street, and probably the only gay, black teenager in our county.

I was justifiably concerned. “Why did you let Mario eat all the cookies?”

Years later, Darrell explained, “You were okay. But we really loved your mom. Some days we didn’t have food. Your mom fed us.”

Everyone was welcome at her table.

Everyone.

Even White Christian neighbors.

Even her son, who mistakenly thought he owned the cookies.