Muriel the Brave by Diana Vaniotis and Parivash Goff
Edited by Parivash Fahim Goff & Sonia Chintha
Consumed
by the everyday tasks
of loving six packages of boisterous joy –
five boys, then, at last, a girl.
I fill our house with love, with food,
with lively talks of justice.
My cluster complete.
And then
a missed cycle
another
another
doing the math in my head
knowing that another child
is not an option.
I search for options not available
here in America; it’s not safe.
Thank god we have the means, can travel.
But Denmark, Israel are all deadends.
I am set adrift –
a woman, a mother, a fugitive.
Across the desert,
my physician husband and I drive
to a clinic in Nogales
where police monitoring
rules out
after care.
A 13 hour drive home
flooded with grief and relief –as difficult a decision as this was,
how much more difficult
would it be to leave
six children
motherless?
A day later delirium sets in.
A faint begs a call to my gynecologist,
panicked advice to head to the hospital.
Glass shard memories –
a wheelchair, endless questions,
hovering above myself as
infinite ice is packed around me
to coax down a stubborn fever.
Loneliness consumes me –
their licenses at risk for aiding me,
neither my gynecologist
nor my husband
are safe here.
Yet, am I – lost in the detritus
of bandages and bloody sheets?
Fifty years later
I watch in horror –
my story first told
at the Santa Clara County Commission meeting so long ago –
will be repeated.
In my 94th year,
I am witness to a reversal.
I relive a crime scene
that is not my crime.
I weep for our daughters
who will be left alone
in their pain.
The collective feet of supreme arbiters
on our necks again.
*Muriel Mahrer recounted her story to her daughter-in-law, Diana Vaniotis. Diana passed the story along to us, and she and Parivash Fahim Goff converted the story into verse.
Diana Vaniotis
Diana lives on the Central Coast in California where she spends her post- teaching career days taking daily walks along the sea, tends her garden, pals around with her plucky dog, Poppy, reads and reads some more, engages in civic activism and occasionally cooks up a storm of Mediterranean food to share with family and friends. That was before the Covid pandemic. Now she essentially does the same thing, but with a mask.
Parivash Fahim Goff
Parivash Fahim Goff is a seeker of peaceful moments. She finds those moments in small daily doses, whether it be walking her dog, playing soccer or lounging in the sun with a book and a good cup of tea. These days she feels her greatest peace as she’s building legos with her son or hanging with him as he breaks into a fresh box of colorful sidewalk chalk.
Though Muriel just got out of rehab for breaking some vertebrae, she has not lost a step in her fight for justice for women. As Diana and Muriel discussed the awful Supreme Court, she remarked she was currently reading The Handmaid’s Tale. She remains a badass!