Sincerely Yours

Sometime, 1965

From where I sit on the counter, I can see the entire kitchen, even the top of the stove.  My mother bends to put the skillet of sizzling batter in the oven. The house is quiet.  My father is at a Meeting for Grown-Ups.  My brother and sisters are at a Big Kids Movie in town.

October, 1999                                                                                            

Mama,

         The first frost has come.  The rose hips all down the lane are bright red.  The blackberries are too ripe to jam now.  They might make a nice wine.  I brought in the pears a few days ago.  They are in the “keeping” room now where it’s cool.  I think I’ll try making pear honey with them.  

Leaning over the kitchen sink, my mother points out a dove feeding in the grass of the back yard.  She picks me up from the counter and holds me as we listen to its fluttering calls.  She tells me a story about doves that I haven’t remembered for years.

         I always think of you especially in the kitchen and the garden.  I think you would enjoy where we live.  The sheep are in the back pasture again, looking through my living room window.  From the front windows I can see the farmhouses dotting the hillsides all around with little puffy white sheep surrounding them, too.  In the evening the mist starts down at the river and climbs up the hill to our house just before the light is gone.  The last of the summer roses stand in the yard, still beautiful.  I don’t have the heart to cut them and bring them in the house.  I’ll let them enjoy the last few days they have on earth.

Together we walk outside to pick tomatoes, spring onions, and cucumbers for our supper salad.

         Sometimes in the mornings when the sun is low on the hills and the light is golden,

 I stand in the garden like the roses.  I like to be just where the angle of the sunlight meets the slant of the hill if there is really such a place.  There seems to be.  It is nice in the almost quiet of the hillside while the morning birds sing all around.  The bees are drunk on the overripe apples and they drone around slowly. There are feathered seeds floating on a breeze so light I can barely feel it.  The sun ignites them for just a moment before they float on, fade, and disappear.

We fill my mother’s apron and then carry our bounty over to lay it carefully on the edge of the porch.  Mother lifts me up to the pear tree, and I point to the fat little fruit with a blush around its edges.  She picks it for me and we sit together on the porch steps next to the makings of our salad while I take little bites of the pear.

         At times like this I am both happy and sad.  Happy to be here, walking on this earth, seeing and hearing and feeling these things.  I think of the people who were here before with their troubles and hopes and moments of joy.  And I feel sad knowing that there will be an end to my turn someday, too.  This place will still be here, but the world will move along as it does without me to watch the light change.

My baby teeth make a pattern of tiny holes around the middle of the pear.  I hold it up for her to admire.  She tells me those little teeth will fall out someday, and I’ll grow a whole new set. I tug at a front one, calculating, and she assures me that what she’s telling me is the really, truly truth. I wonder how she knows so many things.

         And I am sad for all the time I’ve had to spend so far away from you.  Sometimes I forget how far apart we are because in my mind you are always with me.   I carry you everywhere I go.

Back in the kitchen, Mother lifts me again to the top of the counter so I can watch her work. She opens the oven to check on the cornbread.  She carefully washes the vegetables, slices them, and arranges them in a small platter as if for company coming.  She tells me we’re pretend company tonight and we’ll make a tea party of our suppertime.

         When I was younger, I sometimes felt very critical of you.  Now that I am right in the middle of my child-raising years, I am amazed at how you managed as well as you did.  You were a motherless daughter who married a fatherless son.  But I wouldn’t trade my childhood with anyone.  I don’t know how you did it.  I think you have a great gift for loving people.

She sets the table with our good dishes and, once I have washed my hands, she shows me how to set out the flatware, just so.

         I love you and miss you every day.  Sometimes, though it is like you are right at my elbow.  I change bed linens and I remember helping you do the same.  I work in the garden and remember following along the rows with you.  I read books to my children and remember the ones you read to me.  I cook and fill the table with dishes all in the middle.  My family prays and eats and I am thankful for them and for you and for the feeling I had as a child sitting at the table you and Daddy filled. 

                                                                                                           

We sit, and my mother dishes tomatoes, spring onions and cucumbers onto our plates, shaking a bit of salt and pepper over each.  She cuts them into bite-sized pieces on my plate and tucks a napkin under my chin.

         Everyone needs that when they go out into the world.  No one should leave home without a few good dinners in them, some bedtime stories, and the smell of ripe tomatoes to fall back on.

Still, the first bite of tomato is much too large and I can feel the juice running down my chin.  My mother reaches over to wipe it away with her napkin.

         And the memory of laying your head on your mama’s lap, where everything will surely be all right.

When we finish our salad, my mother steps to the oven to take the cornbread out. It looks like the sun. It even smells warm and golden. 

         Thank you for the family dinners. For the nursery rhymes and the fairy tales, for the talks over coffee, for biscuits in the morning.  Thanks for telling me the truth as you knew it about life.  You have been right so often.

She slices the warm cornbread and crumbles it into two bowls, pouring milk over the top.  Bringing the bowls and spoons, she notices me gazing from my place at the table through the back screen door, enchanted at the red and purple sunset.  The dove’s call flutters around us like kisses.

         Thanks for loving me no matter what.  Thanks for having faith in me even through the times I disappointed you.  Thanks for paying attention. Thanks for giving me your time. 

We take our bowls out onto the porch, where we sit on the steps again and slowly spoon warm bites of cornbread and milk.  We watch the sun go down behind the pear tree, and follow with our eyes as the dove flies away to her roost at the top of the barn. We have all the time in the world.

         Thanks for your lap.  Thanks for showing me how to be a good mother.  Thanks for filling me with good feelings and memories.  They have held me up through this wide world so far. 

The horizon is a heart-stretching blend of colors. I am full of cornbread and milk. My mother smells of warm cornbread and lily-scented talcum and Jergen’s hand lotion. I scoot closer to her on the step we share, careful not to spill the milk left at the bottom of my bowl. Her arm encircles me. She kisses the top of my head.  I am completely happy.

         I love you, Mama. Thank you.

We sit until the twilight bleeds out into dark and she carries me to bed. I don’t know yet that she will begin to lose herself to Alzheimer’s before I turn thirty-five.  I don’t yet know that she’ll leave this world before I’m fifty.

         Your youngest daughter,

Sometimes the letter that means the most to you; that makes you happy and peaceful and thankful, is not one that someone wrote to you. Sometimes the letter you are most grateful for, in all your life, is one you sent to someone else in time. 

Still likes to sit on the counter.

                  Thanks for coming.  Come again soon.

                  

               Leann

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable. -K. Gibran