After dropping gutter ball upon gutter ball,
my mother, in her skinny eighties,
who’d never bowled or played a sport
in her long, immigrant life, got up for her last
try, following our visiting son’s sixth or seventh
spare. Desperate for something to do
in our town, he’d told us and his grandparents
bowling would be fun.
 
So Mom stood at the lane in the Grasshoppers flats
she hadn’t exchanged for bowling shoes,
holding the ball in both hands, fingers
avoiding the holes, then set it down,
with a little nudge.

The ball began to roll with preternatural
slowness; it seemed it might take eternity
for her turn to be done.
It was infinitely slower than the arc
of the moral universe, but surprisingly
steady. Still, we could have placed bets
on inertia or friction while waiting—until
it hit the head pin at the magic angle,
and as we gaped, and mother clapped
her hands together, mesmerized,
one pin after another languidly
lost balance, tripping a brother,
until they all lay felled like a forest
during a volcanic eruption, and the scoreboard
lit up.

What were the odds? One to ten thousand?
It felt like an oppressed
peasant winning the presidency
in some third-world country.
My mother’s smile looked shy,
but secretly victorious as a Valhalla warrior’s.
And Dad and Gramps and Dan and I
whooped and hooted for her joy.


© by Judy Kronenfeld.
Used with the author’s permission.