Groceries

Black ink on yellowish paper, careless scribbles; my mother would have turned it around and decided it to be art, paper raw but somehow still too soft for my own hands, they had started growing thorns lately, even my neighbour’s cat was not willing for me to touch her anymore.

• FROZEN VEGETABLES. Christmas eve. I was eleven years old and she allowed me to help make dinner for the first time. Explosion of colours in the pit of my stomach, excitement only a child was able to feel, something that gotten lost somewhere between that first bad maths exam and first drag of cigarette. Contribute, make a difference, careful hands and colour, colour, colour, legacy as small as black ink on yellowish paper.

• PISTACHIOS. Mama, help me open these. I am growing but I am trying, I still need your help with things. I am trying and some things I can do by myself already but most I cannot. My friend Rick can do a lot more than me but I would never admit it to him. He has kissed a girl already and I am content with hugging only you and I am scared of growing up but I will not say it. But I am trying Mama, I am, and so help me open these, please, because your nails are longer than mine and your hands softer than mine and I am scared of breaking the outer shell and the inner one with it. Teach me how to grow up and not unlearn the art of gentleness.

• BAKING SODA. My mother is sick and it is my little brother’s birthday. The egg splits in half and the shell splinters into the bowl but it will be fine, it is not a hard task after all, it is something I can do for him and for her. The fork is not made for the yolk, it bends and stretches not to be picked up and the shells refuse to be caught and I go out and smoke a cigarette. The oven is a little too hot and the cake a little uneven but it is the thought that counts, right? Happy birthday John – The same handwriting as black ink on yellowish paper; horrendous my English teacher used to say, potential to improvement my History teacher. It did not taste like my mother’s cake but John insisted that it did and it is the thought that counts, so it is alright.

• PASTA. It is my birthday and it is storming outside so all trains got cancelled. I study at university but don’t quite feel I belong. My new apartment is small and there is mould in the bathroom but my mother calls me every day and my shampoo smells the same. I cook myself pasta and add butter to them because my mother said it makes them look more beautiful. I was never sure what that meant exactly but it is always nice to be allowed a cloudy peek into how she sees the world so differently from everyone else. My mother calls and she tells me happy birthday even though the doctor told her not to speak and I tell her of the pasta and how nice a day I had while the room stretches and I shrink and the wine tastes too bitter on my tongue and so I bite on it, for I cannot let the truth slip and the words tumble; Mama, I still don’t know how to crack the outer shell and I am trying but I am scared of growing up. Mama, if only you could show me how to do it all.

• M&Ms. I had come to hate bright light, had come to hate all light for that matter. I hated bright light and I hated the colour white even more, I hated the smell of disinfection and crushed hope, I hated myself for having no words when my mother had always had so many. The vending machine was buzzing slightly and I pressed my ear against it and closed my eyes. If I concentrated enough I could pretend I was in my mother’s office reading one of her books on the old, scratchy red-and-blue carpet, old computer of hers buzzing steadily until it all turned to one soothing melody and I found myself waking in my own bed the next morning. I removed my ear and was back in the hospital with all the naïve hopes and crying people and smiling people and my mother who would be dead two weeks later. But that day I was still naïve and still hoping and I bought M&Ms at the vending machine and separated the red ones from the rest because I knew my mother liked them best.

• COFFEE. I take John out to the bakery down-town every Friday, the one you preferred over the rest because you said the coffee tasted better. I still cannot tell the difference between all these shades of bitterness. John can. He drinks coffee every Friday where I drink tea and he claims to have a beard now but really it is just a few stubbles here and there. Still, he enjoys drinking black coffee and he has a beard now and he cracks open pistachios for me. I bake him that same cake every year that you baked us all our life. I often sit and stare at him until I can see that child in him again, the little brother that would stand in my room in the middle of the night in just his pyjamas to ask me if I could help him pull out his last milk tooth. He looks more like you the older he gets and he holds that same ability to make the whole of humanity fall in love with him at first glance. He smiles the same smile and talks the same words as you. All my strength is dedicated to holding onto him, onto you, and it is the greatest task I have ever had in my life but it is the only antidote against forgetting.

• OLIVES. I look up at expectant but patient emerald eyes, butter voice pulling me back to reality. I nod. Olives. I pass the yellowish paper to softer hands and I give her a grateful look. You would have liked her, embodiment of summer days and vibrant colours, eye for invisible art, lover of love. You would have loved her as much as I do, maybe more. You would have showed her better than I can. Yesterday we went out into the park and she picked up a worm and it made me think of you. Everything does. We placed the worm next to the path and so maybe it will live a little longer. I am learning to be the result of your bloodline, a mosaic of you and your mother and your mother’s mother and I am learning to be okay. I am trying still, but I am trying now not to grow up so soon. It is nothing so admirable, growing up. I know you never did. Every day I miss you and every day I try to be a little gentler to the worms in the dirt and maybe some day I will regain that sense of gentle joy only a child can bear to hold so openly in the palm of its hand.