Things I Inherited From My Mother

To-Do Today:

1. Clean the house.

   1. Take out the trash

   2. Sweep things (not just under the rug this time)

   3. Clear out the fireplace grate

      1. She used to tell me stories, when the coldness of winter blanketed the house as thick as any fog. I would sit before the gentle flames and she would drag a brush through my hair like it was made of butter. We have the same hair, dark and thick as a raven’s wing. Even my father would crack his office door open a little, so the sound of her soft voice could filter through. Tales of golems and ravnim would mix with the crackling fire would mix with the bitter howls of the wind at our door and it would seem like the whole world was holding its breath.

2. Schedule the check-up at the doctor

   1. Find a less depressing way to say “no, I don’t have evening plans any day this week.”

      1. Actually, that one’s pretty good. 

   2. Make a reminder to actually go

   3. Don’t forget.

      1. Try to shake your mistrust of hard white tablets and squeaky metal gurneys as easily as you shook out the pillows in your spare bedroom this morning. They gave one of my great-aunts, or maybe great-great-aunts, intensive chemotherapy when she could have done radiation. Her hair—our hair, dark as a legacy and thick as the roots in our family tree—fell out in clumps down the shower drain and never grew back.

      2. My mother carries a grudge like a baby, more tenderly than she ever held me. A slight against her family? That grudge, she will hold gently, meticulously, reverently, letting it grow in her arms, singing it soft honey lullabies and whispering stories. She did not take me to a doctor until I was ten and pneumonia turned my skin gray with death, as gray as ash in a fire grate that hasn’t been cleaned in weeks.

3. Go to the store—I need new pens. Oh, and more peanut butter. And

Shopping List:

1. Pens. 

   1. The high-quality ones, this time—my fingertips are chronically covered in ink splotches.

2. Peanut butter (extra chunky, low fat)

3. Fruit (sliced, like how she would bring it to my room when I was a child, and my forgiveness could be bought with crisp red apples and pomegranate seeds.)

   1. Cherry tomatoes

   2. Bright bell peppers, the ones that come in a big plastic bag—but make sure to trim the tops to save the flesh close to the green.

      1. She hates wasting food more than anything. Something about how my great-grandmother Rivka did not escape the ghettos and starvation in Russia so I could push around the food on my plate. Every morsel is a blessing, just like we are always the lucky ones. She scrapes and shakes at empty cans, stores potato skins in the fridge, keeps chicken fat in a jar. Expiration dates are a suggestion.

      2. I trim bell peppers religiously, try yoga and mindfulness exercises, mix zucchini pulp into sauces, buy new pens as if it is the writing utensil that is responsible for the writer’s block, soak and fry stale challah bread into toast, and smile at myself in the mirror every morning until it feels whole. Still, my mother is and has always been better at it than me, at finding purpose in worthless things.

   3. Strawberries

4. Melatonin, because in the winter I still wake up at four a.m. shivering and craving sliced fruit.

   1. She has insomnia, too.

   2. She takes tea instead of pills before bed. One of the few things I did not inherit from her was a love for bitter leaf water. 

   3. Possibly the only thing.

Things I Inherited From My Mother

1. Her anger, in sweet spoonfuls down my throat. She made sure I got every drop, nothing left to waste.

2. Her voice, sweet and husky and rich as honey dipped in gold.

   1. Her language, the one I learned from her, the one that weaves along my tongue, gap-toothed and filled with holes. I know the words for useless, for lazy, for baby, my love, for listen to me and why aren’t you grateful? and sweet daughter of mine. I search my forked tongue for I’m sorry but I never learned the words.

   2. Her stories, her grand fireplace tales. They will wrap around me like a tallis in my worst moments—not a comfort, but a covenant.

3. Her obsession with lists, with the need to 

   1. Categorize

   2. Carpmentalize

   3. Cross off, because if everything on paper is

      1. Neat,

      2. Clean,

      3. And composed,

      4. Then she can pretend like everything inside is too.

4. Her crooked nose.

5. Her anger. Always her anger.

   1. Remember to take out the trash.

Avah Dodson’s short fiction and poetry have won prizes and recognition in the Bluefire 1,000 Words Contest, the Royal Nonesuch Humor Contest, the Scholastic Writing Awards contest (National Gold Medalist), the Sarah Mook Poetry Contest, the Kay Snow Poetry & Fiction Contests, and the Betty Award Contest, among others. Her works have appeared in The Incandescent Review, Echo Lit, Parallax, Voices de la Luna, Stone Soup Magazine, Highlights Magazine, Skipping Stones Magazine, DePaul’s Blue Book: Best American High School Writing, and others. She enjoys reading, going on walks with her cats, and k-pop (a little too much). She despises grapes with seeds and ukuleles. You can find her holed up in her room listening to "Free Spirit" by Khalid or spending time with her family and friends.