With love, always

by Annette Friend (Del Mar, CA)

I picture my mother

white shmata cleaning rag

like an eternal light in her hand

seeking to brighten the furniture

in our little used dining room,

shining the up-right piano

I practiced on so badly,

I’ll be loving you, always,

Irving Berlin’s ode to enduring love

always on her lips.

I miss her voice, tremulous, soft,

but always on tune.

I miss her nut cake, her famous

desert that friends, loved ones,

neighbors adored and scarfed down

as soon as it emerged from the oven.

Seven sticks of butter and lord knows

how many cups of sugar

slithered down our grateful throats.

I take out her well-loved serving dishes

when my mahjong friends gather.

Red and white ceramic with pictures

of stately castles in Europe never visible

from the shtetl she came from.

They could even be worth something

but I’d never sell them, I still see her hands

scrubbing their delicate surfaces clean.

We always fought, she and I,

her frame of reference

always Europe and the devastation

of the Jews she left behind.

Mine, trying to dwell

and inhabit this brave new world

of America where she had come.

We always fought and I thought

maybe I didn’t love her enough,

maybe she loved me too much,

always wanting to protect me from

the alien world she found herself in.

I always loved her,

I know that now,

maybe as much as she loved me.

In my mind, she wears a red babushka,

slips it off her grey hair

to wave at the bus we wait for.

signals the bus driver to stop.

She yells, “Yoo Hoo, Yoo Hoo”.

Instead of cringing and looking where to hide,

today in my mind, my lips rush up

to graze her lined cheek, with love always.

Annette Friend, a retired occupational therapist and elementary school teacher, taught both Hebrew and Judaica to a wide range of students. In 2008, she was honored as the Grinspoon-Steinhardt Jewish Educator of the Year from San Diego. Her work has been published in The California Quarterly, Tidepools, Summation, and The San Diego Poetry Annual.