1) Mother died six years ago today. There isn’t a day I don’t think about her, for any of many reasons and memories. I had a late brunch with two friends in Harvard Square today, and ordering smoked salmon avocado toast reminded me of teaching her how to make avocado toast at her last Christmas. One of her superpowers was to spread anything on bread and not miss a spot, so she was an ideal kitchen partner in this case.
2) Mother voted for That Man in 2016 because she genuinely thought we would all be safer with him in charge. She wrote a few people a letter about it, including me. (I’m sure I still have my copy somewhere in this house.) She did not live to experience the pandemic, nor see the violence of the insurrection. Now, having indisputably won the popular vote, he is making us unsafe in ways Mother could never have imagined. I often wonder how she would feel about how things have transpired in the last six years.
3) I go through all the old photos and I see her smile — Mother very much preferred photos when everyone was posed and smiling instead of candids — but I see her smile as she lived, not frozen in a frame. At her deepest core she was a truly good person who cared about other people and doing good in her community.
3a) In her last years she loved sharing her Six Word Story, an exercise the congregation went through at church. Hers was “Lost. Found. Saved by church family.” That, and the simplicity of “Pobody’s Nerfect” may be her best legacy.