Accommodations by Sarah Carey
Concrete Wolf, 2019
In her autobiographical poetry chapbook, Accommodations, Sarah Carey faces her father’s declining health, which acts as a gateway to reflect on other relationships. Carey admires her ancestors for their perseverance through life’s obstacles and the courage they give her to battle her own. Carey’s family members accommodate each other’s trauma by banding together as a unit, and they use their ancestors’ stories as a model for how to love well during tragedy.
In the opening poem, “An Ordinary Life,” Carey employs a root motif to depict her ancestors’ ability to thrive during adversity: “When war or storm displaces / What we’ve earned in native soil / We must revive our appetite for risk.” This foreshadows the hardships in the poems to come, but it gives the audience hope that Carey has the strength to overcome them. Endurance is written into her genetic code.
Her first obstacle is her father’s failing health. In “Seasonal Affective,” he seems fine on the phone, but the signs of his illness become apparent as the Christmas season fades. Carey’s family isn’t ready to face the serious nature of her father’s illness. When he falls and the EMTs have to put him back in his wheelchair, the reality sets in that his illness will be terminal. Carey writes, “Weren’t we past this, we ask? Always no / We say, and the chill extends to our bones.”
Carey utilizes her father’s handkerchief as a symbol of her grief over his death in “Handkerchief”: “The burgundy monogram relaxes / As a grieving head nestles on a beloved shoulder.” The tradition to pass on the handkerchief to family members gives Carey hope that she will get to hand it down to her children. She will always miss her father, but she will keep his memory with her in the tradition of the handkerchief. Carey’s family history is valuable to her because it tells the story of their fierce love for each other. They grow together to heal each other’s grief. Carey hopes that her own family will mirror her ancestors’ system of love to facilitate resilience.
In “At Rhine Falls,” Carey brings her journey through grief and loss full circle at her son’s wedding in his new country, Germany. She writes, “An origin story, tectonic shifts, cracked bedrock / A flow of water an earthquake changed.” The plates break apart and come back together, which symbolizes how Carey’s family came together for the wedding after the hardship of losing her father. Just like the handkerchief, her son’s bride’s veil represents hope. Her son’s promise to love his new bride is like Carey’s family’s constant commitment to support each other. Carey’s son and his bride will form a new generation that will follow in their family’s history of loving each other well to bring healing after trauma.
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Alana Pearce is an English literature major at Lee University. She hopes to pursue a career in publishing.