Post #95 – Women’s Memoir Writing, ScrapMoir – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett
Women’s Memoirs is pleased to present our final winner in our May memoir contest – ALL ABOUT MOTHERS. Earlier today we published the two first place winners in our Mother’s Day category and one of two first place winners in our Mothers and Mothering category. Below is the fourth of our winners.
This winning story, Lime Jello-O, by Judith Newton reminds us of the many difficult mother-daughter relationships and how daughters still show up and care.
LIME JELL-O
by Judith Newton
January 5, 2010: Mother died at 101 years old. In July of 2009 my husband, Bill, and I had paid her a visit at the continuing care center where she lived. We found her waiting in her room, hands folded, in her lightweight wheel chair. There was nothing wrong with her legs, but she’d gotten tired of falling down from the vertigo.
“Where’ve you been all day?” she asked, annoyed.
“We’ve been flying and driving to come see you,” I chirped in return. “Didn’t the nurses tell you we were coming in the late afternoon? Your phone wasn’t working again so I couldn’t call you.”
The nurses didn’t tell her or maybe they did. But she’d been waiting and she wasn’t happy. She was dressed up as usual and ready to go in a pink top with a flourish of ruffles at the wrist, a purple pants suit, and a matching set of pink bracelet, necklace, and earrings. She had on eye makeup and lipstick, pink polish on her nails, and a round band aid concealing the quarter-sized age spot on her right hand. At 101 she still liked to brag that she was always taken for ten years younger.
The visit was peaceful when Bill was in range. He was courtly to her and told her we loved her, though that wasn’t true. Bill had only seen her twice before, and I was attached to her by a web of sorrow, longing, anger, duty, guilt–none of which registered as love. When Bill dropped us off at the restaurant and left to park the car, she turned to me and said,
“I like that Bill. He’s nice. Maybe he’ll rub off on you.”
I swallowed, a wound opening somewhere in the region of my throat. She was girlish one moment, quickly cutting the next, but always innocent of having delivered a blow. Now that she was 101 I could put it down to age, but it had been the story of our relationship since my childhood.
The next day Bill and I rearranged her room to make space for the sofa she talked incessantly of buying. There wasn’t space for a sofa we’d say to her.
“Yes, there is!” she’d reply, “I measured it myself.”
So we gave up trying to tell her any different. When Bill escaped to Target to buy bulbs for her lamp, I helped her sort through the half empty boxes in her closet. The center’s director seeing “fire hazard” all over them had insisted she prune them down. We finished the closet, and I suggested tackling the bed. She had boxes stashed end to end under its frame.
“No!” she said, out of the blue, her body stiffening, her eyes becoming narrow.
“But the staff is bound to check,” I said.
“No, they won’t! Not unless you tell them to,” she countered.
“Mom, I’m trying to help you.”
But I let it drop. I told her I was going to the bathroom and took ten minutes coming back.
…..
In December the director called me to say that Mother had been talking to her coffee cup.
“I see you in there,” she’d been saying.
“She’s hallucinating,” the director’s voice suggested.
“She’s remembering,” I said.
My brother had visited her six months before, wearing a mountain-man beard she’d never seen. It had been a while since he’d pried himself out of Arizona, and for several minutes she hadn’t known know who he was. But then she’d recognized those baby blues.
“Mike! I see you in there,” she’d said.
He was always special to her and ever since his visit, she’d been recounting that discovery during every call I’d made.
A few days after the teacup, the director called again. Mother had had a stroke, so Bill and I flew down to see her. When we arrived, she was asleep in a hospital bed—-the bed was new. Teeth out, her face caved in, mouth open, snoring softly, her skin pale as the sheet, her body so shrunken, she looked like a corpse. She was on morphine now, being turned was painful to her, and she slept most of the day. But the staff woke her for meals and water, for turning and diapering. And I fed her green Jell-O when she was awake. I tested the Jell-O first-—strong lime flavor, intensely sweet, slight aftertaste. Not a great dish, but by doctor’s orders it would have to do.
“Good, Mom,” I said when she took a bite. “You’re doing really well.”
The second morning she was especially alert.
“Real food,” she muttered. It was easier to understand now because they’d put her teeth back in.
“What food, Mom? What would you like?”
“Why, buttered toast and coffee!” she said, as if I should have known that. So I tracked down some toast and butter, filled a cup with coffee and brought it back to her room. I buttered the toast until it was soft and tore it into tiny pieces and fed her as if she were a bird. I was happy to have tasks so simple to perform. I was being “the good daughter,” and for once it was without conflict, without ambivalence. She looked so shriveled lying there in her hospital gown. I wanted to feed her. I held her hand because I was moved to do so.
“Your hand is warm,” she told me.
I laid my hand, with hers still in it, along her face. She smiled.
“That feels good.”
The next day she asked me, eyes closed, coming out of her morphine fog,
“Is Mother here?”
She thought I was one of her sisters down on the farm.
“I’m Judy, your daughter,” I said, wanting her to understand for once that I was the one taking care of her. But then I let it go. She needed, was reaching out to, one of her long-dead sisters. I could be a sister.
“Mother’s here,” I said.
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My mother was a depression era cook who liked putting ready-made ingredients, like chocolate pudding or tomato soup, into cakes. I had initially planned to include a recipe in her honor involving key lime cupcakes and frosting made with lime Jell-O. But the recipe didn’t pass the taste test in my kitchen. Life is compromise. Instead, I’ve included a favorite recipe for Key Lime Pie. I like to think that Mother, who was famous for her pies, would have liked this one too.
Key Lime Pie
(Adapted from Martha Stewart, Pies Tarts)
One 8 inch pie shell, baked and cooled
1 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
4 egg yolks
½ c. fresh key lime juice**
1 ½ T grated key lime rind
1 egg white stiffly beaten
¼ cream of tartar
5 egg whites
6-8 T sugar
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
1. Combine condensed milk, yolks, lime juice and rind in a bowl. Gently fold the beaten egg white into the mixture. Pour into prepared crust.
2. For the meringue, beat 5 egg whites and cream of tartar until fluffy. Continue beating and slowly add sugar. Beat 7 to 8 minutes to form stiff peaks.
4. Smooth meringue over the filling and cover filling completely. Make sure meringue meets the crust.
5. Bake 8 to 10 minutes until the meringue is golden brown. Do not chill. Serve at room temperature.
**Key limes are small, round, and yellowish. They are grown in Florida and in Mexico and other parts of the Southwest. They will perfume your kitchen.
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Here are the links to our other three Mother’s Day stories:
Pink Pearls of Wisdom by Sara Etgen-Baker
What Was I Going Back To? by Irene Kessler
Because of you by Kathleen Hewitt
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