yesterday

I spoke of you yesterday,
to a stranger.
We mused about growing old,
that one day an old crock pot burned brown on it's edges would be the most important treasure one would rescue from the rubble of memories imploding.
I thought of you then,
in so many stages of my life.
Forty one years of change.
I thought of you bare and asking with desperation "please, could you close the bathroom door"
me watching on,
as no one listened to the crazy old woman who knows not of what she speaks,
your dignity stolen from you right before your pleading eyes.
I thought of your hand and it's softness, how I skipped to keep up with you as you walked on so swiftly,
you the original "go green" - you always brought your own bag up-town for errands to the long since gone "five and dime."
I thought of your kitchen and your cast iron pans,
the printed aprons of occasion,
the wire whisk you would hand me,
you taught me how to make the meanest gravy around.
In the memories, time had ticked on - winds of change had blown through.
What was, became a new, and a new and a new,
and an old.
An old you and a much older me.
The stranger she indulged me,
she listened as I went back,
how the plastic baggie of plastic bunny heads had induced the freak out that I had staved off in the chapel as I begged God to take you,
like you begged the girl,
"please shut the bathroom door"
"Please God, end her suffering"
Our dignity entwined you and me.
The strangers eyes moistened,
she had not intended to cry today.
And yet,
here we were bawling.
It comes down to the soup tureen and the baking dish turned brown from all the years of bubbled over cheese.
My two tangible pieces of us that prove we once existed.
I will say
"See those brown marks burned on the crock Emma?"
And she will indulge me like the stranger,
"yes Mumma"
"Well those are the marks from the cheese, from all the years when Nana made me my favorite dish, her famous Mac and cheese"
And Emma will watch my eyes fill up,
thinking that her Mother is so sensitive,
and I will rub my hand that misses yours along the markings,
and remember when I turned ten,
when it was bitterly cold outside,
the year the USA defeated Russia in Olympic hockey
the times when mac and cheese seemed the only plausible choice.
I said to the stranger, "worst part of getting old, losing the constants"
She smiled from behind a veil of her own loss and grief,
"you are a wise young woman," she said.
I touched her then,
she put out her hand for mine.
I held it in brief
and imagined selfishly,
that it was yours.