My Mother at Sixty six by Kamala Das

Summary of the poem:

The mind is habitual of running miles per minute, fluttering with it's diaphanous wings it boggles with one thought to another all time of the day. The speaker of the poem is also trapped in the nuisance of her head. Her monostich indicates a single thread of thought interspersed with observations of the real world around and the way these are connected to the main idea.  Notice that the whole poem is in a single sentence, puncuated by commas. The speaker draws attention on the natural process of ageing and is a meditation upon her sudden realisation that her mother has now aged.  

The speaker was driving from her her parent's home to Cochin last Friday.  It clearly shows that the speaker is an independent youth who's all into travelling.  The poet is on her way to Cochin Airport from her ancestral home. She is travelling in a car with her mother beside her. She saw her mother beside her who was then sleeping with her mouth open but for the speaker her mother's face seemed to her like that of a dead body and thus all sorts of pinching thoughts pricked her up. She realised that her mother like all mortals is ageing and one day may soon leave this world. 

Since this thought was so spine chilling she decided to put that thought away.

The speaker then tries to calm her frailing mind by looking at other better things which juxtapose to her mother's situation. 

Driving from my parent's home to Cochin last Friday morning,  i saw my mother,

beside me,

doze, open mouthed, her face ashen like that

Of a corpse and realised with pain

that she was as old as she

looked but soon

put that thought away, and 

She drove away her thoughts of pain and fear at seeing upon her mom's old age. She notices at the short fast race running trees going behind her as ahe drives on her way.  These running sprinting young trees symbolise fast running world around the speaker. As she drives further, she notices children bursting with energy outside of their homes which juxtaposes well with her weak old mother.

She steps out of the car and checks in at the airport security check where she moves away from her mother for a yew yards. From there she again looks at her old, pale and wan and serlie mother. 

looked out at young 

Trees sprinting, the merry children spilling

out of their homes, but after the airport's 

security che k, standing a few yards

away, I looked again at her, wan; 

pale

The speaker has compared her mom's face to a winter's moon. (Simile).Winter symbolises decay. Just like winter loses its magnificence and beauty when compared with fog and mist, similarly the poet's mom has lost her youth, vitality and has become inactive and withered. 

Losing her mother reflects her childhood fear of losing her. She then bids her good bye and similes all her way to leave. She mentions smile three times, thus signifying how much she has subsidised her pain behind her smile to bid her mother a good bye. With this smile the speaker captures the complex subteties of human relationships in this lyrical idiom

As a late winter's moon and felt that old

Familiar ache, my childhood fear,

But all i said was, see you soon,

Amma, 

All i did was smile and smile and smile......