My Mother was a Mother before she was a Mother

My mother was a mother before she was a mother.
    The second oldest of 14 children,
    she rocked her mother’s babies,
         just a couple years before rocking her own.
 
By age 6 she carried babies on her hip.
    Carried them from room to room.
    Snatched them up before ocean waves swept them away.
        Fit the bibs and airplaned the food for crying, hungry mouths.
 
I wonder what it was like for her,
     to be a mother before she was a mother,
     to bathe, feed, discipline, comfort
         when she still needed those things herself?
 
I imagine her in that muggy Florida childhood,
      Spanish moss dangling from tree canopies,
      orange blossoms blooming in Grandpa’s groves
          dreaming of a different childhood when those afternoon thunderstorms
                 came barreling in to quench a thirsty ground.
        
My mother was a mother before she was a mother.
     And she mothered for the first 50 years of her life.
     First her mother’s babies, then her own,
           until we left her all alone.
 
She had a 20-year reprieve until,
     She moved closer to my aging grandparents.
     Only grandma is still alive--grandpa died last year.
And my mother--who was a mother before she was a mother--
   is now a mother for her mother.