It takes a lot of experience for a girl to kiss like a beginner.

Is this Sunday? It might be, I hope it is because the weekends must hurry past and take me into the week days which don’t stress me so and make me feel that I should be using my time more wisely, spiritually, fervently. And I won’t find crowds at the market reaching for the brussel sprouts. But I have been out of peanut butter since last week and that has put the whole day off. Cream cheese is a lousy way to begin the day and leaves one longing coveting a taste treat that only thick salt free peanut butter can satisfy. No chunks though because then you wont know if it’s a chip of a peanut or a chip of a dead insect. Oh just one of those strange ideas one gets like lima beans being plant embryos or yogurt disgusting because of the feel of the word gurt on the lips and tongue. But now I eat both and I still cant handle chunky pb, maybe there is sense in this one.

 

Fresh morels were so much more exquisite than the dried and it took me decades to eat mushrooms. .. the mush word was the obstacle here- and so the gravy boat started at the person right after me so when it finally became my turn I could linger and remove all the chunks and not bother everyone else with the waiting. I should have thanked her for that when she was still alive. But would she have understood? Which part of me did she get? And that time at the café near the water which was so posh to her and so every day to me she asked me gently when I became so rich. And she didn’t mean money. She meant the confidence the ability to redirect her and make her speak to me nicely, the ability to listen and not get dragged under anymore.  But I had no answer. It happened somewhere in Denver in the early 80’s when I knew what a wonderful mother I could be, when I stopped thinking it was important to be pretty and instead knew that beauty was mine already, had been for years and that being the brainy one lets one absorb all sorts of tips/resources/compensations/talents that don’t fail when cuteness leaves.

 

 The night before I saw  her for the very last time I made her bed.  She was irritable and very specific about each little ripple in the crochet cover and I persisted until we had it just right. Her book was being held upside down and I had long earlier decided to just enter her world rather than try to force her back into mine. So the next morning when she told me a very nice couple visited her last night and made her bed I didn’t cry, “that was me mom, that was me.”  Instead I agreed that was very nice of the woman and asked her she wanted to go for a ride.  So even if I had thanked her then - for letting me linger with the gravy boat or read whatever I wanted or day dream under the stone gazebo and never once tell me I was late or gone too long - she wouldn’t have known it. Still it was good to be on time for a change. Yes. Punctuality is not overrated.