Assisted Living

Marla Kay Houghteling

My Mother’s Only Dream

She once told me she never dreams,
but I wonder if on waking
a felt eraser arcs across
the chipped, faded blackboard
of her memory,
wiping out dreams.

Except for one dream:
she was driving
the hilly two-lane to Hart.
At a dip in the road,
past the orchards,
she had an accident
and her three girls
were scattered like toys
on the bumpy blacktop.

isbn 1-59661-167-7
53 pages/$15

With fierce honesty and abiding love, Marla Kay Houghteling examines her mother’s life in these wonderful vignettes--the young wife, the working woman, the widow, and finally, the old woman who cannot care for herself--the inevitable deterioration of a body once robust and vibrant, a mind once keen and curious, a nature once feisty and blunt. With sadness, with humor, with chagrin, and occasionally with regret, these poems provide glimpses into our own lives, Houghteling's true gift to us.
--George Dila,
author of Nothing More to Tell

In her new book, Assisted Living, Marla Kay Houghteling navigates the landmarks of her mother’s life, mostly unassisted. The poet’s mother is fading into dementia. Death tugs at her and life offers fewer and fewer points of contact: neighbors whisper in the hallways, the telephone is foreign, the car a final betrayal. In a series of poems that shift between an unwelcome move into assisted living and the fog-shrouded islands of her mother’s remembered past, Houghteling struggles with her own guilt and betrayals: “She was rigid, hard-hearted, a stickler for the letter of the law, not the spirit.” Now, when the mother rebels against the charted hours, Houghteling calls it spunk, not combativeness. “She has softened, and I have, too.”

Assisted Living is a conjuring of a disappearing parent, an attempt to perform a miracle of recognition. As Houghteling scrubs the mold from the refrigerator and the ring from the tub, she wills her mother to rise up and reclaim herself. And from her words, “There you will find comfort. Things will become clear.”
--Heather Shaw,
editor, Spirituality & Health (2009);
editor-in-chief, ForeWord magazine (2007–2009)

Marla Kay Houghteling started her life in Walkerville, Michigan. After college and two years with the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, West Africa, she moved to Pennsylvania. She now resides north of Harbor Springs, Michigan. A recipient of grants and fellowships in literature, she has an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College. The Blue House (2008) was her first book of poems.