Now the evenings are quiet with my mother gone
as though the night is listening to the way we are counting the days. We know even the feel of our grandmothers brush being pulled gently through our hair will fast become a memory. Those Saturday evenings at her kitchen table, the smell of Dixie Peach hair grease, the sizzle of the straightening comb, the hiss of the iron against the damp, newly washed ribbons, all of this may happen again, but in another place. We sit on our grandparents' porch, shivering already against the coming winter, and talk softly about Greenville summer, how when we come back, we'll do all the stuff we always did, hear the same stories, laugh at the same jokes, catch fireflies in the same mason jars, promise each other future summers that are as good as the past. But we know we are lying coming home will be different now. This place called Greenville this neighborhood called Nicholtown will change some and so will each of us. Reader response: In this poem the author Jaqueline Woodson highlights the sights and smells she will miss the most about her home. Her mother's departure marks her own and signals new beginnings. She is aware that moments may be re-lived as they are in one place, but they will never be exactly as they were before. Time influences they way she and her siblings will view their future home with their mother and the home they've always known. The poem shows the fleeting moments we live in and how impossible it is to relive them exactly as they have happened before. It also shows how time brings opportunities as well as change. Making us aware of the importance of memories and the meaning they hold for people.
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