Peter’s mom is the kind of mom you want to have when you’re laid up, sick at home. I mean, sick in your body, not sick in the head— although she might be a great comfort for those times as well. I’d love to find out.
Peter’s mom has eyes like big blue cornflowers, and curly tendrils that frame her face, like the sheet music cover of an old Stephen Foster tune.
I don’t know why Peter’s mom is so modest; it’s not because she’s churchy. She just prefers to wear long full dresses every day. “Life’s too short for pants!” —I heard her say that in the kitchen one time.
She’s crafty. Peter’s mom mills her own wheat every day and makes huge stirring pots of chocolate and peppermint tea. She’s got a knitting project and a loom project and a bikini she’s crocheting for someone’s little girl. See what I mean? She may be wearing long dresses, but she’d knit an orange tangerine bikini for you.
Because of her bent to sink her hands into everything, Peter’s mother always wears a Quaker-style long-length pinafore— she’s made dozens of them in every color. It’s as much to keep her frock clean, as to store her secret tools in all the pockets. If those pockets could talk!
But back to being sick. It’s almost worth coming down with the croup to be nurtured by Peter’s mother. I’ve dreamed of “faking it” to become her patient. She’d put you right to bed with a vaporizer and a hot-pack she made herself, with the soft cotton cover of the moon and the stars and the sun. She’d have a tray of special foods for whatever your distress: scented Jasmine rice if your tummy hurt— ginger and honey tea with a drop of whiskey, if your throat was sore.
My family’s illness ethos? The complete opposite. “If you’re too sick to go to school, Missy, you can march right down to the shop and get to work.”
I didn’t even know what a cough drop was, until I lived far away from home.
I once thought maternal figures like Peter’s mother only existed in Beatrix Potter books. But Peter’s mom is no lie. She never gets mad at you for being sick. “There, there, sweet pea,” she’d say, “Pobresita, little dove. Don’t you worry.”
I asked Peter one time if his mom ever lost her temper at him, for say, losing one of her homemade sweaters after school. He said, “Oh no, she knew losing something like that would hurt me more than it could possibly hurt her.” Zounds!
I knew Peter for three years before I met his only sister. The girl among her band of brothers. He said she was as brilliant as his mother at inventions and crafts, and that she made little homemade leather booties for all five of her children. Five!
“Does your mom see them all the time?” I asked.
Peter said, no, a visit was a special occasion. I couldn’t wait to see if Sister wore long dresses, or what she wore, at all. I even fantasized that if I pretended to stub my toe during teatime, maybe they’d both make a fuss over me. I felt hot all over.
Sister showed up late that afternoon, in a crocheted miniskirt and Henley. That was just the first impression. There was a lot going on. She had a patched denim vest on top of the Henley with some kind of spit-up on the front and a wadded blue pack of American Indians poking out of the inside pocket.
I answered the door. She reflexively pulled her jacket close and I knew the smokes were going to stay our little secret.
Sister had long tall boots and long tall legs, just like her mother. Her children rushed in, in front of her, fighting to reach Grandma’s skirts first, and no wonder—- Peter’s mom had made them all stuffed embroidered Raggedy Anne & Andy dolls in Revolutionary War costumes that were identical to their own little faces.
My god. I mean, my mom gave me a coffee chain gift card last year, and I was really touched.
Sister rolled her eyes. Not at me, just rolling. She had a crown of long blond hair that looked like it’d never been cut, and her face was drawn. — Real bags under those rolling blues. Her face’s deep shadows made her mom seem youthful by comparison. She smiled that smile you smile, when you’re helpless and seething inside. —Or more like, the last few minutes of seething, before you don’t even make the effort.
I found myself saying, “Can I make you some tea? What a journey you must’ve had, with that handful carrying on.”
I took Sister’s heavy backpack and her hat and the diaper carriers, and smoothed a place for her on the kitchen’s one overstuffed chair. She sank down like a stone. The kids were shrieking in the living room with Grandma, who was showing them how to do something with their fingers, like turn a Cat’s Cradle into a Rubik’s Cube.
I made tea for both of us. Peter had gone to lay down, I guess. Sister looked at me, confused, like, Thanks, Miss Earl Grey Hot.
I said, “Sorry, let me introduce myself, I’m Clara.”
I planned on following up with my highest compliment, the thing I always to know, "What-is-it-like-to-have-a-mom-like-yours?"
But I didn’t say that. Wrong number, right? That was the wrong question. I got an instant recognition.
I went to get Sister some creamer. I said, “I bet you haven’t eaten all day.” And then I found the eggs, and one of Peter’s mom’s aprons, and I went to work.
Gem like.