In her early seventies, Janice Colman (she) is resuming her writing career. Her memoir, a work-in-progress, is supported by a grant from the Toronto Arts Council. Janice’s poems and memoir excepts have been published in The New Quarterly, Zeugma, and Straitjacket. Janice is inspired by late-life writers, such as Abigail Thomas, who also resumed writing careers in their mid-seventies. She lives with and cares for her adult daughter and a varying number of canines in a century-old house in Toronto.
“‘Shabbat Candles’ responds to Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893). I have painted for over five decades. Although some work was displayed in exhibits, I could not part with many. All my work has been autobiographical. I am deeply moved by work that portrays emotional depth or discord.
“My eldest daughter has faced many challenges in mental health and developmental areas. When she emerged from being in hospital for over two years, she renamed herself. She wished to erase her past life and her heritage. I was told she would need to return to hospital within months, but she has lived with me for twenty-nine years since I brought her home. At age seventy-three, I continue to work hard to provide a life, present and future, for her. The Scream speaks to me; it illustrates my own state at times and my daughter’s mind in its tangled workings.”
To my eldest ripe with words: child (she with silver
consuming her curls), your words tonight are
welcome, a gift, as they filled, sifted through the
room, seeped into drawers, ma you know where my
other red sock is, ma, and something from behind my
heart tightening, jagged
and severe lassoing tenderness. ma,
she said, I’m having a hot flash what
should I do, ma—I squinted, could not lift
my lids, as if the sun were too bright could not
open. This child-woman prancing with words. Mush,
it’s all mush, slush and mud, her mouth
brimming over with words, logorrhea midst masticating,
what—captive of her words, I say:
I need to write, let me, sh sh sh, vowels and egrets,
beneath ground sub species spreading
her utterances opaque as dew, dense as fog: It’s going to
rain all evening night and day, in Starbucks it’s going to
rain all week and everyone is vaccinated. Look how
and see. Everyone, ma! This evening, late supper she asked for
Shabbat candles, white, and matzo ball soup. Dumplings she
would insist—two years stashed away, her words
imprisoned, she emerged from the sanitarium with
new meds, missionaries in maroon
jackets supplanted outside the chapel,
she liked the sky-blue stained glass, flat-sugared
cookies, air streaming sunlight. But when
she left she cried “Heil” she did,
and slapped, oh!
my daughter, requesting now Shabbat candles over
which she intones: thank you, thank you for and in
remembrance, her dog passed also father, and for
her mother and for this house, its thick walls safe and strong.
