Cleaning Out Kitchen Cabinets: A Dialogue Among Three Women, and: Your Mother Ironing

28 Laurie Perry Vaughen Cleaning Out Kitchen Cabinets: A Dialogue Among Three Women I. The ghosts darken the sky like summer storms, when heat won't let us turn away from the sink window, drawn to the violence of an open sky, our strong hands do not reach to tear the curtains shut or close the blinds. We stand listening for the explosion that returns. Our hearts are not surprised. We judge the closeness of each storm by counting the seconds between sight and sound. A secret we learned as children. U. There are no ghosts that we can't live with. The eyes of children do not look back at us as men we feared or loved. I've named my ghosts for each regret but I can't remember the colors of those rooms where we lived, where love was less than what I had been told. 29 m. Do you remember the delicate flowers that circled your first set of dishes, the patterns, the formal names of stainless that collect in the graveyard of that kitchen drawer? The waste of wedding presents, the hauntings of meals we shared with men who tore our hearts like fresh bread as we fed whatever appetites they confessed. Your Mother Ironing for Daniel Moore The white shirt was draped over the ironing board— limp, lifeless—an absent father with both arms extended like a man falling away into that dream of repetitive darkness, but reaching, always reaching. She is ironing her husband's best shirt. She has learned to prepare those she loves for the morning. How many times have women ironed as steam filled the voids between difficult words? Our hand must reach for simple work to help us through our lives. Memory is indelible. But her hands rest 30 the minnesota review when you speak, as if your questions and your grief, could scorch white cloth. She straightens the next wrinkled shirt, pulled and smoothed from the basket of the past. It is this woman who stands there ironing that knew your first mother. She was young, unwed, completely alone. A silence settled in that room as she pressed the past into each sharp seam, anger and loss surrendering into the soft white cloth of memory, of dreams. This woman kisses the collar with her iron. She is skilled at the difficult spaces of buttons, collars and cuffs. She says it took her years to learn this simple way of being in the world as she hands you a fresh white shirt. ...