Persephone

Wintergreen

96 Wintergreen always there in my mother’s pocket book wedged between eye glasses, a broken watch, coupons, lipsticks, keys she was always sure she lost. In her last days, she insisted the lifesavers be on the night stand near the bed, there to keep her from coughing or throwing up pills. Like Joy perfume and Jolie Madam, a whiff of wintergreen is a smell of my mother, the color in her last years she always chose as she longed for emeralds, for green to move into late Vermont winter snow. When I see a field of it, smell the minty scent, I want to scoop it up and bring it to her. She already started seeming lost and scared, was terrified if she called and I didn’t pick up the phone. Peppermint or spearmint wouldn’t do. It was wintergreen in silver foil, clean and fresh as a night the stars are silver fish, the moon a silver apple. I wonder why I didn’t make a tea of it for her, if anything else growing smells as fresh. When we drove in Murray’s car thru Silver Moon Diners and cranberry bogs my mother always asked if I’d like one, gave me the roll, smelling of her lilac scented lipstick and for years, faintly of Marlboros and Tareytons, the sweetness melting as the city 97 did behind us, comforted like air the first day of snow when nothing is stained or walked on. In the last pocketbook she used, wintergreen still scents the lining longer than the bitter smell of Compazine and Librium, Demerol, Lanoxin, pills for nausea, pain, anxiety, fear ...