Happy 97th to Mama

(Marie Lafayette Himley Sartori, 97)

Her Abiding Gift

Marie, beautiful baby
born ninety-seven years ago,
I welcome you again to the spinning world,
You, a many-gifted being,
I see above all as bearing
the endowment called enthusiasm.
Possessed by the gods, it means;
in theos, ‘god’ + ousía, ‘essence’.
And all these many years,
your liveliness has never faltered,
has been the bent that represents you,
the flair that signifies “Marie”.

Drama and language and music
began your path in life. Decades later,
you told me in an interview,
that in another life, you’d have been an opera diva!
Easy to see you on stage, fully present,
projecting your essence to the rafters.
But the career you chose this time around,
fortunate for me, was parenting.
You mated for life and shouldered
a thirty year vocation,
you, a single child, raising nine;
your intensity of feeling, your enthusiasm,
influencing every one of us.

Solo now seventeen years,
you continue to model enthusiasm,
that inspiration called divine.
Your zeal, tempered but present,
still sparkles in your eyes.
Your tongue has softened, but your humor
as ready and alive as ever it was.
Though memory and speech,
you have, in part, released as less needful now,
it’s still easy to kindle
your inborn eagerness, your excited interest.
Marie, Marie, come as earthling
ninety-seven years ago today,
I bow in gratitude for your abiding gift–
the fervor with which you have lived
your long long life!