Winter Leaving
My mother taught me oak leaf from sugar maple, with its five pointy lobes, when I was five. She’d spread her painted nails, gaudy veins branching off the midrib. Once smooth like yours she’d say, her five metacarpals blading through gauzy skin. Her hands could knead, could roll and crimp—mandelbroit, rugelach, apple pie. Forget about strudel, her fat mother-in-law scoffed, slipping her own padded knuckles under tissuey dough to stretch and pull until papery thin, my mother’s knuckles sharp as a knife plunging holes into a Naked City corpse.
Once smooth like yours, I tell my granddaughter, her five-year-old hands still baby-fat padded, mine barely veiled by tissuey skin, crazy-quilt of veins and cracks, burnt-brown as autumn leaves at my door, leaves preparing for winter leaving, crepuscular, desiccated, dust to dust, my mother, my fat grandmother, me.
5 replies on “Winter Leaving”
The poem speaks to me as a 79 year-old poet and Grandma who’s still cooking.
I just love this. It also reminds me of my Nanny, who is 88 and still baking (and teaching me) and of my desperate attempts (lol) to pass this down to my teenage daughters…
Beautiful imagery. Takes me back to watching my mother’s hands and wondering why they looked the way they did…when I was seven and we did laundry together.
Wonderful. So much that feels familiar. Gorgeous language!
What is it about maternal hands that speak to us, generation by generation? Well done!