My mother turns to me and says, Tammi,
you have something to say
and I am caught with the truth just there and a
ready lie.
Christina and I are having a coffee the next morning and I’m
half earnest, half flippant
when I say my grandmother was not a
cookie baking
cheek pinching
storybook charm of a grandmother. So I gave the
ready lie
and joined in about the fishing, crabbing and the
worms in the backyard, us kids out the back
door, down the back porch steps
in the dirt.
About the ever-present Budweiser cans, well,
I kept that buried in my dirty
lie.
Christina, let me dig it up. Let me tell you
about driving drunk up an exit ramp, oncoming
traffic. That day we thrilled kids gave our order
at the McDonald’s counter, our hearts already full
of fries and hot apple pies. “I didn’t order
that,” she slurred. And drunk iloveyous
by the sixpack.
My mother wants the happy places in between.
This old woman there, 84, half
her nose gone to cancer, half
her love recently buried. Yes, she was
that woman.
First.
Best.
Rod in hand.
Reeling them in.