- “you are all related to a man you’ve never met.”
- this is what my immigrant mother says to us
- between sheets of water and steam
- that brought her to this country to marry our father
- and endure her children.
- “and he is one who makes the best of things.”
- the story goes that our relative had his arms blown off in a war.
- he relies on others to feed him when they have time.
- people who are busy are often infuriated by the helplessness of others,
- so he tries to make the best of things by waiting for the rain.
- he is rewarded: the rain starts and the rain stops.
- then he runs into the woods to gather mushrooms for others to eat.
- he is clever, our relative.
- he wraps his bare feet around a swollen stump of a delicate mushroom
- blooming in the wet, yielding earth and then, bending his knees slightly,
- he jumps up, exploding into action, severing the mushroom from the ground.
- we see him momentarily imposed against the sky,
- above the earth,
- a man on a mushroom.
- we never ask, “how did he bring the mushrooms home?”
- we knew.
- it was she
- again and again trying to make the best of things.