A month had come and gone, time passing slowly. Mia’s changing. Eliza stood alone at the kitchen counter breaking apart lettuce for a dinner party that evening. She eyed her knobby fingers, scrutinizing. Mia had become unpredictable and too quiet, Eliza thought. One moment, she was sweet natured, the girl they all knew, and the next she would snap; a cloud perpetually following her around. Eliza cracked open a stiff pea that wasn’t ready. Sometimes, Eliza might walk by her granddaughter’s room and glimpse her crying for no reason. The emotions of youth, a constant wave. Eliza was worried.
What to do with a girl that was still too green for this world?
Mia’s first love had been drafted a month ago. This war had already claimed so many young men, consequently ruining so many young women in their wake. Vietnam. The world was a-changin. Joni Mitchell sang Big Yellow Taxi in the background.
Next, she grabbed a purple onion. She noticed her own hands again, thin skin. Mia’s first major heartbreak had the whole house hungry and unable to eat. Everything too all dente, too sweet, or too bitter. However dubious it might be she needed to give her granddaughter space. But, she would mitigate the damage. Eliza peeled and chopped half. The other half would have to wait. Two halves of a purple onion was, occasionally, one half too many. Too acrid, she grumbled to herself. Probably like a meddlesome grandmother.
She prayed, oh how she prayed, and reached out to God every night that Mia would be ok…that this life would be enough for her. But Eliza knew it wasn’t. The tired woman needed strawberries; the sweet to balance the bitter. Too ripe. Eliza knew that she could never be enough to replace Mia’s mother because as much as it pained her to admit it, her granddaughter was not enough to replace her beloved daughter. Not even close.
She rinsed each berry then twisted off the stem. She felt hunched in pain but she never let on, she had work to do. Now, she sat aside the crumbles of feta, not to be added until the very end. The fresh balsamic reduction came from ingredients grown in her own garden. Eliza looked at the bowl: lettuce, onions, strawberries; full of things worked over from her own failing hands. Then, she reached for a jar of pecans she’d gathered last week, shelled, and chopped. A sprinkle of fresh ground black pepper and a squeeze of lemon would add some zing. Except, the lemon wasn’t ready either and wouldn’t squeeze. She sighed.
The door opened and slammed.
“Hi honey,” Eliza said without looking up from the mixed-green salad.
“Did the mail come?” Mia called back in return. She hoped he’d written to her.
“No darling, I’m afraid it didn’t,” Eliza lied. The letter tucked safely away in a drawer upstairs. She’d mitigate her granddaughter’s pain, just as she would her mitigate own.
INSTANT NOODLES 