Mistake Dance--The Poem

If only we could tell our
children about the Sunday morning
they were gone and after eating BLTs
you made me try on all the polo shirts
I had been ordering mindlessly for years
because none of them seemed to fit after
the first wash (turned out I needed talls).

One bright orange paisley number, gaudy
and attention-seeking even for me, had
reinvented itself as a halter top and when
I shook my big belly in a come hither stance
you dissolved on the carpet in giggles.
Even the dog was moved to bark, incredulous
as we fell over each other laughing at stacks

of the same mistake. Too much of parenting
is bluff-it-out pretending we know much
about anything or that we’ve somehow
outgrown our child mind. We float above
it all, puppeteering ourselves as grownups,
as if appropriateness was what kids most
deeply need and we shouldn’t model all

the dumb shit and disappointment that goes
with being even occasionally fearless learners.
If management is doing things right
and leadership is doing the right thing
I want them to see us going down
with our titanic follies full-heartedly
not absently rearranging deck chairs.