Denomination of Daughters

{on a bench outside Jefferson's Monticello}

Susie is my Mother-in Law.  She calls me "Be-fessica,"  or "The Incomparable Jessica."

I can't think what I might have done, or been, or said to earn the latter.

The former came by way of birthing one Jonah, who for lack of a 'j' sound early in life called me Be-fessica, and himself Fwonah.

Susie says I am a daughter to her as much as any of the five she bore herself.  What can I do with this?  What do I say between the space of good fortune and friendship that is mine and hers.  I love her.

I love you.

Susie thanks my Mother for Susie's ability to love me as she does.  This is why - my Mother loved my Dad's mother as only a Ruth loves a Naomi.  All my years of growing up I saw my Mom wash dishes in my Grandma's kitchen.  I watched her laugh with my grandparent's, and talk, and seek advice, and accept help when help was all that would keep our family from glimpsing the edge.

To love the mother of the man you marry is a good plan.   And Susie is right, it was seeing my Mom's love - determined and constant, reaching out beyond herself which planted in me the expectation that when I walked into the Rasmussen home for the first time, I was coming to join, not to divide.

Matt told me early on that his Mother's only advice to him about who to marry was to make sure he chose an orphan.  I am hardly an orphan.  Oh grief, I am a Leavitt - a passel of kin, a parcel of generations that claim me up tight.  And despite that moment of hesitation at the Social Security Office just weeks after we married, I was able to slide out of the name that had cradled me for 23 of my own years and who knows how may hundreds of the years that came before me.  I tried on Rasmussen, filling out the paper and passing it over to the woman at the desk who seemed desensitized to the transformation taking place in front of her.

I am a woman.  I am a Jessica.  She is a Susie.  We both tucked away the name we brought to courtship and wed ourselves to a husband and a name.  Father - Son - Grandson.  Someday Jonah will  offer the same name to another woman, who, like us,  a daughter in her own clan, will find that there is room and to spare under the shelter of this name.

Funny how we women go about trading a name for a name, an identity for an identity.  One might be tempted to think that the moving about and the scramble of families and generations and alphabetical segregation would leave us feeling isolated.  But I don't.  I feel like the jumble of appellations untangles into one metronymic name that lets us be sisters, that lets us love.

What Persephone Couldn't Resist

That's a Good Day

Thank You Marba Rose

Thank You Nita Sue

Thank you Celeste Thank you Susie

A long time ago, I had a Grandma.

Marba Rose.

"Grandma," I would say, "I'm hungry.

"What do you want for lunch?" she would ask in this very sincere way, as if she ever expected me to eat anything other than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

"Peanut butter and jelly."

As if there existed any other edible anything when it comes to lunch.

She would make a sandwich like this:

Two slices of Shepherd's Bread from the Von's on the corner of Lamb and Charleston in unincorporated Las Vegas, Nevada.

Jiff peanut butter spread so thick on one slice you could lose a marble in it.

Margarine on the other side, but only a bit and only to accentuate what came next-

Le Piece de Resistance

Homemade, from homegrown, pure magenta, sweet-tart a la perfection in a Kerr jar

Pomegranate Jelly.

Slice that bad boy in two, serve with a well chilled glass of 2% milk and feel it stick to the roof of your mouth in pure ecstasy.

Plus, my grandma was a genius and knew pretty much everything, like how to love my Dad and his brother through the teenage years.

And other important things like-

"A glass of milk with a peanut butter sandwich provides all eight of the essential amino acids."

I still don't know what an amino acid is, but my Grandma sure made me feel good about eating my daily peanut butter and jelly.

___

I have a Mom.

Nita Sue

She lives in the house my Grandma lived in all the years I was growing up. She tends the pomegranate trees planted by my Grandpa way back when. She harvests the leather-skinned fruit. She juices the impossible seeds. And every time she comes to visit me she brings quart jars full of the sweet nectar for me to make into jelly.

She taught me to make the jelly.

___

I have a friend.

Celeste

She taught me to make bread.

Not just any bread - the delicious kind, that people fawn over, including myself. The kind we have to ration so as not to eat all three heavenly loaves that just came out of the oven, before Matt gets home to enjoy a slice.

___

I have a Mother-in-law

Susie

Dear Susie

She taught me there is more to life than peanut butter and jelly.

And because I lived in her house for two years and cooked elbow to elbow at her stove, following VERY precise directions all along the way, and because she works culinary magic with any morsel of food that makes its way into her kitchen (including.....onions...) I can now whip up a little dish that makes me feel so gourmet...so sophisticated. Like I should have a bit of lemon sorbet before I eat it to cleanse my palette of all the ordinary things that passed by there throughout the day.

This is it - Carrot and Onion Soup

A bit of butter, a bit of chicken stock, a bit of cream

A whole lot of sauteed carrots and onions

Blend

Savor

And think your life blessed that you

Peanut buttered and jellied for lunch

with your own homemade pomegranate perfection

and your own "pain du jour"

and you grew up for dinner

eating onions in ANY form that would have once been worse than eating dirt

and is now better than eating candy

If the peanut butter and milk provide the eight essential amino acids, the carrots and onions must provide the for-the-pure-joy-of-it amino acids.

I love women.

We hand things down in a way that the men generally only appreciate at the table,

and that we appreciate in the soul.

Bless you women.

And ain't magenta pretty?