Remember the redolence of oil paints filling the cottage your paintbrush capturing the drift and dive of ospreys sway of sea grass in the wind … your orange and blue license plate with letters LHS you said stood for Little Helen Silver since you were only 4’8″ and when I was seventeen you said I could eat peanuts off the top of your head … and you told me your Russian parents came here for a better life that what happened to Jews in Europe must never happen again not to anyone … morning aromas when you percolated a pot of Chock full o’Nuts toasted caraway rye topped it with cottage cheese and raspberry jam?
Remember saying The New York Times slogan should really be “All the News That’s Print to Fit” that you have to read between the lines keep questioning … those crazy red poppies in your garden next to the split-rail fence how we joked that if you harvested the opium from all those seeds you’d get rich—or very very happy … that time I asked if you ever had an affair and you admitted “a couple flings” more an ego thing—to know you still had it … how your neighbor Sol would catch and clean flounder for you every summer weekend and you’d sauté it in butter and vermouth with a squeeze of lemon? Was Sol one of them?
Remember the orange and pink bikini you bought me from Saks in “swanky” South Hampton … (even now I slather on the Bain de Soleil Orange Gelee you loved so I can steep and bake in memories of you) … fixing your own lamps when they flickered telling Grandpa fuck off when he said it was a man’s job … your Stangl pottery with the pink thistle cherry grape-cluster patterns? When wildfire consumed Dad’s house I asked if anything of yours survived the flames so intense they reduced the fridge to a clinker and he handed me your fully-intact Stangl cream pitcher (that these days holds the pens I write with) the blue and yellow flowers double-fired now with a rough ash-gray patina.
Remember the water in the creek slapping the underside of the dock at night Grandpa’s motorboat rocking side to side sloosh-sloosh-sloosh? Remember when the end approached you forgot who I was but treated me ever so kindly anyway? No, I don’t suppose you do but I’ll keep remembering for the both of us little Helen Silver until I can remember no more.
Kathryn Silver-Hajo’s work was selected for the 2023 and 2024 Wigleaf Top 50 Longlists, nominated for Best of the Net, Pushcart, Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and Best American Food Writing, and appears in many lovely journals. Kathryn’s books include the award-winning flash collection Wolfsong and the YA novel Roots of The Banyan Tree.