TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

Love is a verb. It’s an action. You can tell someone you love them over and over again. You can tell them every morning and every night. You can tell them when you call from out of town or when you text from work. You can write it in cards and in emails. But people know we love them by what we do. We know we’re loved by how we’re treated and regarded — by love in action, not by words alone. 

My mother is someone who says “I love you” a lot, but she shows her love more than she professes it. She is the kind of mother — and grandmother — who shows up. When my sisters and I were young, you could find our mom at our soccer games and recitals and choir concerts. Now that she has grandchildren, you can find her at orchestra concerts and cross country meets and the games of another generation of soccer players in our family. 

She is the kind of mom who makes and freezes multiple meatloaves or pots of homemade soup and then drives around town, dropping these meals off at her daughters’ homes. She has a knack for finding the perfect little presents for the people in her life, presents that make you feel seen and—yes—loved. Cherished. To know my mother is to love her: her smile, her infectious laugh, her hugs. 

As a parent, a daughter, a sister, a partner, and a friend, I hope to learn from my mother’s example: that love is being present. It’s not about grand gestures, but about the small, consistent things you do for the people you care about.

Today’s poem is a testament to a mother’s love and courage and fierce protection. Maybe the real measure of a person is what they do for people — or creatures — who cannot do anything for them in return. Love is not transactional. Love, like poetry, is a gift economy.

My Mother's Love
by James Allen Hall

My mother feeds the multitudes of abandoned cats
that live in the field behind our office. Every sundown
she untangles fur, feline lineages. She names each one.
And though they are legion, she does not forget.
She administers heartworm medicine to one hundred
feral cats. She cradles them. Imagine her 
frenzy, then, the day the bulldozers come,
a sudden god-congress in the air.
The cats hunker in their homes in the ground.
The bulldozers begin their awful roll. My mother,
at field’s edge, waves her arms, a decoy. 
She stands in front of the men and their stomachs,
big rollers of flesh. She does not move, she shouts
until their faces dampen with her spit. She hears the earth
fill with mewling. She digs, she saves thirty-two cats that day,
then takes them home, bathes them, speaks to them calmly
even as they claw up and down her arms. I’m her
witness, I’m buried in this story, down in the place
where collapse is inevitable, where love is
only love if it makes you bleed.

“My Mother's Love" by James Allen Hall from NOW YOU'RE THE ENEMY © 2008 James Allen Hall. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of the University of Arkansas Press.