The Second World War brought out the best in my mother. She felt necessary. She made soap from lye and fat she saved. She made her own
face cream. She had a book of recipes for all kinds of homely useful things. She canned tomatoes, peaches, pears; canned beans with a pressure cooker
till one afternoon it exploded. She baked bread, cookies, biscuits. She darned socks till they were simply a knot of yarn, unwearable at last.
She felt in command then, able to make do, to make something out of what she found at hand. Her backyard garden grew vegetables. But years brought
frozen veggies, TV dinners, fish sticks packaged bread. Why drive to farms on Sundays to buy just-picked fruit? Gradually her power diminished.
When they moved from the asbestos shack picked up at a bank auction to a two-story brick house, she took in roomers, always traveling men.
But my father had Florida dreams. Uprooted, she shrank. He was mean, contemptuous. Finally she turned her face toward death and fell in. I am the daughter of her abilities. I can tomatoes together with my love. How many times her ghost, her memory stands behind me, watching.
