Some Women

I forgot about your mother’s fig preserve.  I didn’t even realize what was in the jar until I opened it and saw the slivers of lemon in with the figs.  I ate all the lemon and half of the figs yesterday and I finished the figs today.  Ate it out of the jar with a spoon, standing up in the kitchen.  I thought to call.  But I didn’t call.  I sent you two jars of lemon curd for Christmas because I knew you’d finish one in half a minute.  And you sent the figs.  I heard he had to leave his job.  I wanted to call.  I can hear his forced cheerfulness.  It’s hard to comfort cheerfulness.  And who’s to comfort you?  We would laugh if I would call.  We’d laugh a lot and it would help.  We would say awful things.  And we would laugh.  But we won’t laugh and I won’t call.  I’ll send you something sweet at Christmas.  But I won’t call.

*

My Grandmother Rose told a story about how, when she was nursing, she had so much milk she had to stand leaning her breasts over the side of the tub to let the milk run out.  She said that when my Grandfather saw her doing this he had to vomit.

*

I dreamed of seeing Mary jumping through the sky
and don’t know why I dreamt her.  It made me cry to see her.
It must be that I’ve missed her.

*

If my mother were here when I came home she would look at me.  Just look to take in all the information she needed to see if I was okay.  No words to it.  But it was, I now recognize, a comfort.

*

Who was she?  She left without saying her name.  She let herself be erased.

*

So there we were sitting among hundreds of young mothers and a few nursing babies listening to the famous childbirth educator.  And there she was, a tall woman with strawberry blond hair done up in a sort of Gibson girl do, dressed in a black taffeta cocktail dress with a deep decolletage into which she had tucked some babies breath.  Apt.  Slightly shocking.  Lovely.  Then she proceeded to speak frankly and quite graphically about the business of birth and after.

*

Jacqueline told me a story about Philip Guston.   She said he made abstract drawings in the morning and drawings of objects – bread, shoes, coffee cups – every afternoon for two years before finally deciding to commit to the coffee cups.

* 

When she was old my mother’s back was so bad she had to always wear a brace.  The fucking brace, she called it.  It constrained her movement.  But if her kitchen floor needed cleaning she would just throw a wet rag down and push it around the floor with her bare foot.  Even as an old woman my mother’s feet were pretty.

*

I dreamed of you the night before last.  We were sitting across a table talking.  You said you wanted to send me a photo of yourself and your mystery man.  (this is what you called him in the dream your mystery man)  And as you said it you held the picture up for me to see but it was a small photograph and I could only see that there were two tiny figures standing together.

I wrote to tell you and you answered:

How lovely that you dreamt of me and that we were doing what we are always doing – sitting across  a table and talking.  If I had a decent picture of me and my mystery man I would send it.  But I just have a tiny snapshot.  Exactly as in your dream.

________

Ditta Baron Hoeber is an artist and a poet.  Her recent poetry publications have been in the American Poetry Review, Windowcat, Contemporary American Voices, the American Journal of Poetry, Construction Magazine and New American Writing.  In 2018 she received a nomination for the Pushcart Prize. Her photographs, drawings and book works have been exhibited nationally and have been acquired by several artist book and photography collections in the United States and in England.