Passages
by Ken Sanes
I remember as a child
watching my mother
stir homemade soup
as it simmered on a hot stove.
As I watched her,
turning to speak to me,
I was only vaguely aware
of her thickly framed body
and old fashioned shoes,
and her simple dress
with a pattern of flowers.
But I can see her vividly now,
just as clearly as I remember her story:
She came to America as a teenager
on a ship from the old country,
alone in steerage,
and passed through Ellis Island,
filled with hope for a better life.
Then she worked,
cleaning tables
and washing other people’s clothes,
twelve hours a day.
Finally, a decade after she arrived,
she had a restaurant,
based on her popular recipes,
along with a husband
who, like the recipes,
came from the old country.
But her husband died
after my brothers and I were born
and, for most of her life,
she just got by,
raising us alone,
and telling us stories
about the father we never knew.
Later, when my brothers and I
had our own families,
she would sit with our children,
and tell them about life in an earlier time.
But, at the end,
the sight of her in a hospital bed
was a cause for despair.
Lying there, she didn’t know our names
or the details of her own life,
but she still smiled at us
as if she had just woken up
from a sound sleep.
And, as she was lying there,
unable to lift herself up from the pillow,
I worried over the way our children
were huddled at a distance,
quietly watching,
in their first encounter
with life and death.
And I remember thinking
that at least they would look back at her life
when they were older
and finally know her as she really was,
fully embodied,
expansive
in her universal principle,
and always interested
in the welfare of the people around her.
As I look back, now, myself,
after all these years,
I can still see her restaurant,
and the way it acted as a refuge
for three generations,
a place for homework, dinner,
and comic books,
where everybody’s children
could eat like family
and experience the connection
between food and love.
And I can still see her
when she was young and vigorous,
standing in the kitchen in the back,
stirring the soup,
while my brothers and I
laugh and play nearby.
And she turns to ask
if I want homemade bread
because it is good for dunking.
And, yes, I do want homemade bread --
except now it is me who is asking,
and, as my grandchildren
listen to my question
and look up at me,
I hope one day
they too will realize
they were experiencing
a universal principle,
however incomplete,
and know the essence
and understand.