Toaster Oven: this
is her main appliance, used for heating plain toast or toast with cheese or
potatoes. Sometimes she cooks potatoes in the toaster oven, leaves them in for
three hours on 350 degrees and whines that they don’t make potatoes like they
used to when she filches out the hard, shriveled skins.
Linoleum: the
kitchen floor is linoleum. A pale cream color with gray marks leftover from
raising three boys and a husband and three daughters-in-law and six grandchildren
who always gather in the kitchen. It’s supple and creased, like her face.
Ceiling: Her
husband made the rich wooden beams that grid the ceiling before he died. She
used to invite in the mailman and present it to cops, and they marveled at the
worksmanship. She is easily made proud. My dad does woodwork too, and she brags
about his talent to supermarket cashiers and family members.
Make-up: she cakes
on foundation and turns her cheeks neon with blush, then weighs down her
drooping lids with bright blue eyeshadow and dribbles mascara over her stumpy
lashes. Her hair used to get done up with fluffy curls, so it resembled a
beehive, but now she has resigned herself to a bun at the nape of her neck.
Model: her
adjective for all the female grandchildren. I have a “gorgeous model figure,”
my sister has a “lovely model face,” my cousins “stand like models” and “speak
like models.” Every day she tells me I am beautiful.
Raisin Bran: the
only cereal she eats. When she comes to our house for dinner or we go to
restaurants, she mushes up her food with her fork so it looks like a crumb-cake
topping, no matter what it was originally – fish, carrots, cookies. I think the
Raisin Bran is the only food she does not crumble up.
Jewish: this is
why she didn’t marry the Italian man she loved, but chose my granddad instead.
She, and my family, expect me to marry Jewish, even if I have to do the same. A
part of me, a part of me that I am disgusted by, wishes she won’t be around to
see me turn my back on my heritage. If I decide to put love first.
White: the color
her hair would be if she didn’t dye it, and the color of every piece of
clothing she owns.
Ninety: her age. I
hope it’s genetic.
Tender: the way my
dad’s voice sounds when he asks her questions and she doesn’t know the answer.
Questions like, “What year is it?”, “What
was your grandmother’s name?”, “Do you remember which pills to take?”
Hearing Aids: we
pool our money to buy them for exorbitant amounts of money, but still we end up
repeating ourselves in higher and higher octaves when we talk to her.
Lip-Reading: we
suspect that she can do so, learned from years of faulty hearing aids, I guess,
but she never mentions it and pretends not to hear when we do.
Laugh: a
comforting cackle is the best way I can describe it, or a sped-up, lilting
hiccup. She laughs when her sons joke or when she didn’t hear what you said. “Do you like the peas, Grandma?” Laugh.
Ma: the name she
is called by my dad and his brothers. I used to think it was nasally and
jarring when they said it, but now I think that maybe it’s perfect.
House: five
minutes from mine, where my dad grew up, where my uncles played, where my granddad
built things in the garage, where my mom met her mother-in-law for the first
time, where I go once a week to talk with her, even though I end up having the
same conversation six times because she can’t remember what we talked about
already.
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