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Mother's Relish
Giggles and Hugs Before Supper
By Julia Rosien
Mother stood in the sweltering kitchen, wiping bits of relish and pepper off her brow and into her hair. Her cucumber-stained hands dripped green mush past her apron and onto the floor. The mixture of mashed cucumbers in the big cauldron looked like something only a witch would make. She told us it was relish.
She propped her hands on her hips and heaved a sigh full of frustration. The sun shone brightly on the garden, and I imagined her willing the rest of the vegetables not to rot in the heat. Mom and Dad spent the morning grinding what I considered noxious vegetables, and still the garden swelled with its bounty. My baby brother toddled around the chair, pulling on her apron and scratching her bare legs with his little fingers.
She sighed again and glanced at me, her 7-year-old shadow. I smiled weakly and waited for her to shoo me out of the kitchen. My constant presence had pushed her to the limits of her patience after Dad's job of grinding concluded and he left her to finish the canning. Dad quickly disappeared with my older brother out to the shed to something manly. The relish was taking too long, and the kitchen looked like a construction zone. Suppertime quickly approached and I watched her wrestling with herself about how to handle that calamity.
"Julie, isn't there something you would rather be doing than sitting here in this hot kitchen?" I wanted to ask her to play with me but I shook my head. Her hand reached up to her face again and came away with a long string of cucumber. Her lips curled in disgust and inspected it as if it were a slug. Instead of throwing it across the table, she giggled.
