Make a circle first by looping the short snake
Of crocheted stitches, joining head to tail
Continue looping, pulling gently - not too tight
Expanding the circle in a lace filigree
Of loose-looping, therapy in the wool
The click and flash of the hook-needle
Against her gold wedding band.
That click the secret ingredient
Of perfect crochetwork, the added spice
Used for making rugs, left out of food.
Her cooking a mismatch, bland as wallpaper paste
Peas, potatoes, meat - indecipherable in the sludge.

She'd take her postcard piles out on rainy days
The splash on the grey panes keeping us burrowed
Twitchy as rabbits, nervous with boredom
Our youthful energy bubbling like lava
Just under the surface. Empire State,
Liberty and endless old grainy photos
Of long-ago ladies she traveled with
Sitting down to buffet dinners
The camera always trained on their
Mountainous plates. Forks, knives clutched
On expectance, and up to lipsticked grinning mouths.
I knew what folk mean by
'ladies who lunch' aged 10
the disparity between her doily-bottomed pastries
good china for important guests - chipped cups for us -
and my mother's delicious coffee cakes
served up as wedges on plates.

She had every color of thread under the sun
A rainbow of shine and texture
Organized from earthy browns to vibrant ochre
The deep aquamarine and cobalt dividing the pack.
Her Singer kept polished in the back room
The window looking out on the arm of the garden
As wide and as long as the bench.
A dressmakers dummy missing its head
Stood pride-of-place, middle of the narrow room
Posing in the latest creation - some blouse perhaps
That needed new buttons or a clean lace collar
"for the lady next-door-but-one".
The head - Judy - we called it
My cousin would frighten my sister with -
The youngest of our trio, horrified by its
Polystyrene fakeness, dented nose
Its no-eyed molded face, lack of hair.

Her hair was tinted a funny shade of blue
Curls set every two weeks by my aunt or
Mum would come, patience personified
And dab the hair with lotion, add a paper
And roll the spiky sausages all over
While she'd complain if they went in too tight
Clucking her tongue while instructions flowed.
And mum would set her face, hold her tongue
And methodically roll - an hour, two
Easily passing, the smell of peroxide thick as fog in the air.

That was then, this is now
And the same woman lies
Most of the day in bed, the air
A hothouse, the greenhouse she never had.
Gone her tended garden, the hedges
That needed forever clipped
The gravel drive that was a nightmare
For the motorist, its incline deceptive
The sweep in front of the house sharp
As the scissors she wielded in her sewing room.
Gone too the postcards, snapshots of America
Europe. Perhaps they're in shoeboxes
Hidden away in some aunt's cubbyhole
Forlorn, forgotten - like she is to a degree -
My Dad attends once a week
A difficult hour carried out with grace
His mother, her essence wasted
Reduced to this shell, marking time.

She finally has her own greenhouse.
What could ever grow in it?

Note: This poem was written two weeks before her death.