MY GRANDFATHER'S DAY BOOK

 

Worn and dappled with age, it creaks slightly upon opening, must in its creases, a small narrow door leading immediately into the past. The winding blue script within -- all of it in Finnish -- I can only translate in part, a reminder that language, like memory, can only take us so far. What is left out of this ledger -- this list of dates, facts, and figures -- must write its own story elsewhere. There is no listing for the cost of whiskey and cigarettes, no mention of the son drowned on the other side of the world, nor the wife who followed soon after, no price mentioned for the arsenic that took her. The margins are narrow. There is room only for what he is willing to record, that which makes sense and can be easily measured. I don't know where my own days stand, so many squandered with laziness, the stubborn refusal of youth, so many unaccounted for. I know only that their shadow grows long, no matter which direction I stand. If I am found lacking, grandfather, let these words be a start, let my debt be paid in the telling.

MY MOTHER'S CHINA

 

My mother's china -- bone-white, heavy in young hands,
encircled with a pattern of sky-blue flowers
and filigree, tiny leaves pointing in all directions
at once -- emerged from the far reaches of the cupboards
only twice a year -- Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
It was a set acquired, piece by piece, each having its day,
by saving up a small fortune in S&H green stamps
from the local Red Owl -- the delicate teacups
and saucers, the weighted serving tray, dinner plates
and bread plates, a cream pitcher for coffee.
Even butter claimed its own home -- such extravagance!
Yet we could not have know -- how could we? --
what such an ordinary luxury might mean to our mother,
to at last have something simple and fine, something stately
among the brick and cinder block of the projects,
the mountain girl from Tennessee, denied even a doll
or summertime shoes, trying hard to forget one
lifetime while imaging another, brighter somehow,
which might or might not choose to emerge.
But twice a year, at least, we drank our milk from goblets
like royalty, poured our canned, grayish vegetables
and gelatinous cranberry sauce onto what we imagined
must have been the prettiest plates in town,
while that gravy boat, loaded with thick, brown cargo,
sat motionless among the white cloth of its waters,
dreaming already of the long voyage home,
its sturdy bow not to be seen again for months.