Yarzeit

This morning I lit the yarzeit (memorial) candle.  My mother, Madgel E. Miranda, died on November 21, 2001.  She was only sixty-six years old by the calendar.  If we counted years by pain and hardship and grief, she was much much older.

Even though it has now been thirteen years since Mom passed on, I still find references to her in genealogy forums on the internet.  “New” messages, or new to me, as I retrace her research for my ancestors, still pop up, and it seems that everywhere I think of to search, Mom has already been there.  I kind of love that.  Love that our minds follow the same paths, that I am following behind her.  It makes her feel closer, as if she hasn’t really been gone more than a decade.

Things My Mother Taught Me

Wear your silver and turquoise to knead tortilla dough;

baking soda polishes rings bright again.

Four paths to payday: beans and rice, flour, Crisco.

If hamburger’s sparse, cut with stale bread or a potato.

Take in strays.  Pay the vet.  Say amen.

Wear your silver and turquoise to knead tortilla dough.

Look the clerk in the eye over food stamps, as though

survival and revenge are close friends.

Four roads to payday: beans and rice, flour, Crisco.

Weed the garden when angry; kneel in each long row.

Zucchini’s one thing you don’t have to defend.

Wear your silver and turquoise to knead tortilla dough.

Drop everything and pick when the blackberries glow.

Write letters of protest.  Root for underdogs.  Like alone.

Four ways to payday: beans and rice, flour and Crisco.

Bring your mother home to die so your daughter knows

love is stronger than what cannot be forgiven.

Wear your silver and turquoise to knead tortilla dough.

Four paths to payday: beans and rice, flour, Crisco.

(Deborah Miranda, The Zen of La Llorona)