USA

rmclaughlin@ivillage.com

I think of them as a Mother's Day Trilogy.
One is about my grandmother putting up tomatoes, another is about my
mother's large clumsy hands, and the third is about my preparing my
son's room for his return.

My Mother's Hands

Her hands were large

her movements brusque.

She pulled my hair when she brushed it,

rubberbanding it so tightly my eyebrows

rose permanently in surprise

or wonder.

She washed dishes faster than a machine,

and when she whipped and snapped the laundry

it didn't dare creep over the basket edge.

It stayed timidly folded.

No single socks strayed from their mates.

She kneaded bread dough

with fists that meant business.

Her loaves rose high and brown...

Or else.

Her capable hands earned her a living

answering phones for doctors, plumbers, pest control

She stabbed her plugs at the board,

poking them into the lighted slots

to stop the buzz and hum of interruption.

Not a reader, not a learned woman,

we talked for hours, nonetheless,

always about family, about people

their promise, their sorrow, their coming together

their falling apart...

As a nana, she wanted only to hold the babies

to feel the heft of the bread warm babies.

She'd gather them to her roughly-

as if she had to fold them too.

She held us all in her strong, rough mothering hands

and loved us

like she meant business.

like she meant business.

Tomatoes

"Tomatoes used to come in Mason jars,"

I think as I crank open a red and green can

of whole plum tomatoes.

Dusty mason jars with rusted lids

kept vigil on forgotten basement shelves

and were discarded when Nana died.

We put up those tomatoes together

in August of 1963, an adolescent me

so proud to help.

Nana's tomatoes were legendary and

there would be no more spaghetti sauce

once those tomatoes were gone.

We used the summer stove, in the basement,

paddling vats of bubbling red--

like witches of the spiciest kind.

We snipped fragrant basil,

slipped skins from the fleshy pomodori,

inhaled herb scented steam.

And there was Nana, the key ingredient.

Her hair net loosely enveloping her sparse black hair.

Her glasses sliding down her sweat slicked nose.

Seven long hours in a steamy basement,

twenty seven warm glass jars lovingly filled,

wiped, and placed on newly painted pantry shelves.

What wonders her family would enjoy--

all winter long

long ago.

*****************

I reach for a second can of chopped tomatoes,

dump them into my stainless steel pot.

I was right;

there is no more spaghetti sauce.

Barry's Room

The deer will have to go.

They've covered that wall

in their autumn forest for fifteen years.

Seven year old Barry chose an orange rug--orange

coercing an unfriendly design scheme into uneasy agreement.

So eventually there were brown deer, fall leaves, October woods.

Purple Barney posters gave way

to shapely Cindy in a thong and

photos of teenagers stacked in a pyramid.

What a cozy room--cozy life

our boy has had.

I hope he feels it, has felt it.

But bunk beds won't work for a twenty-two year old.

Friends won't be climbing a ladder

to sleep high above him anymore.

So I order a new double bed,

and stir the glop that

will strip childhood from the walls

to make way for the man who is coming home.

© All Copyright, Rosemary McLaughlin.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.