Elephant Family
Family is the elephant
that never forget:
how terrible you were at age two;
that one time you peed your pants
on a ride at Disneyland;
when everyone went overseas --
except me,
stuck in a summer math class I didn’t even need;
how you snuck a boy in at midnight;
that time we ran from the cops;
the Spain pictures;
when you forgot your blankie at a hotel,
and we had to go all the way back for it.
Family has a long memory
of mistakes and embarrassments,
but our memory isn’t selective.
Family also remembers
your valedictorian speech,
how you finally convinced our parents to get a pet,
that time you got on a plane by yourself,
when you babysat the rest of us
and let us eat reddi-whip from the spray can,
how you patched me up so I didn’t have to get stitches.
The memory of the family
has strength to lift us up
when, individually, we stomp ourselves down.
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