Reflections on Adulthood
A Letter for Rhonda
By: Elise Glaser
You cut up crispy apples, the insides wet and cold because you refrigerated your apples, something my mom never did. Every apple core was meticulously cut out so I could dip it into creamy light pink yogurt. I was over after school, maybe before you would drive us to choir.
Everything you touched was beautiful, and you had “never met a green you didn’t like” I told you “I had never met a green I liked”, but I knew it was a lie as I said it to you. Now I can see what you saw, the green hues in leaves, light and turning with the fall, or the dark green pine needles that tower over our warm, quiet houses.
I must have been in 4th grade or so, when I ate your white, cold, juicy apples. This summer I was 21, and I cut up your hard boiled eggs, knowing that you would do it more beautifully. I rolled the eggs and cracked them on the counter, cut them, but the yolks and the whites weren’t even. You took over and went through those eggs like a sharp machine, cutting them to perfection so none of the chalky yolk would tumble out.
Your cuisinart circled around the kitchen. You threw oreos in it and it crushed them up. You crushed the mixture with your hands into a pan gently, everything in its right place, everything beautiful.
You told my dad to use big brushes and start painting. And you stared at my oil paintings, thinking about them, validating them as art, or something worth looking at. You taught me how to make art when I was so little.
You and my mom would take my little ice-cream-clay creations and put them in the kiln. Or when you boiled down newspaper to make
gargoyles. They smelled bad, remember? Because they fermented under the glossy glue.
Boisterous, warm, loud energy in every room. We paddled in the lake, up to our chests in the green water, held up by intertubes. You told us about being a junior ranger at a camp, something my mom didn’t know about, she was happy to hear you got to go to camp. You told us about the loons that cooed in your Canada camp. We had seen a loon on the lake, wondering if they were named after the moon. You called out to it, and we giggled, shaking the water around us.
I will lie in every room in my home, because you have touched all of it. The white, textured ikea blanket on my bed we would cuddle up with on the red suede couch. The heat roaring and our hands warm with red rooibos tea. You would bring over cookies, or clothes that I would try on.
We laughed when I tried on all of the ladies’ business clothes you sold. I was going to DC and you were excited for my professional endeavor. The jackets hung over my 19 year old body and you held the back as we looked at my body in the mirror together. With your Canadian vocal roundness, you would say: “Not bad, eh? And you could pair this with a business pant or skirt?”
You are still there, you know. Living in my guest room where you made everything beige so we could sit in there and the walls would calm our racing thoughts. You are in every corner of my parents’ room, where you painted the sides of the bricks white to bring your light into the room.
When I heard you were gone, I shook outside of class, wishing I could be hugging my parents and thinking of you. I would do anything to say goodbye, to have one last hug or a last laugh with my mama. You made her sweet and childish and giddy.
Without thinking, your careful hands worked through me. I cooked condensed milk on the stove until it was brown and bubbling, and drizzled it over three apples. I mixed together milk and pumpkin puree and baked a pie that made my house smell like November. These are the things you gave me. Your small hands pressing into pie crust, taking the extra minute to make sure nothing dripped over the side, these are the things you gave me.
When everyone you love dies, you get a bunch of new clothes
By: Elise Glaser
I wore her sneakers on the farm everyday. They got dirty and had bristles in them that I would pick out only to find them stuck in my fingers
Too big for me, I would look down and see her feet when she was skinny and frail but still shuffled slowly through the woods with us
Proud of her accomplishment, her sweet elegance still carried in her small uncomfortable movements.
Her earrings, pounded silver hoops thrown into my toiletry bag. I wear them most days but I don’t remember them hooked into her earlobes.
I left those shoes underneath my bed in Barcelona, too big for me and dirty.
The reminder of her in them too strong too
My toes not quite reaching the end, empty space at the tip that would bend as I walked.
I wore them in Zurich, too.
The dogs and sand and sky and barks and chirps and sun all remind me of her. We would walk to the park and spin, play frisbee, run. She was always small, always smooth, always gentle.
There were Rhonda’s clothes too.
I wore them until they became my own, comfortable, worn down and pilled, but she was always in them.
The clothes she would dress me in her living room, hold the back taught so the fabric fell on my body the right way.
Lynn’s ring broke the 5th day I wore it. In Amsterdam, I looked down to find the moonstone gone. Maybe she was calling to me, maybe I was too careless.
All I have now is a metal band with its gem missing, and I have misplaced that too.
The Mothers
We were 22 and 23.
Our moms call us now, and we listen as we brush our teeth, nod as we floss, mumble as we wash our faces,
As they worried that maybe they married the wrong person, maybe this is all too hard, maybe I’m getting too old.
They call us and we put them on speakerphone, going about our day, making food, packing our suitcases, while we take a rest. They call us groggy, anxious, sad and we reassure them and listen, out minds wandering and distracted.
I’m fine, we say, sort of tired, but fine.
We hear them breathe out, agree, and continue on, echoing from our phones in the middle of the day.
Maybe they were getting old after all.
Not My Children
My parents and I take care of each other now.
My mom rubs my feet, presses on the inside part of my foot, the arch.
I lie on their bed, like a child
Yet she clings to me, holds me in a way that reminds me of before, but she, too, begs me to hold her, I do, but I don’t like how it feels.
My dad brings me buttered honey toast in bed, “that toast cooks quite well”, he says
I look at him, his hair longer than before, and white, pushed up as his chin pushes down, his glasses on the bridge of his nose
I tuck them in,
Picking up the blanket off of the floor and pulling it up around their necks as they, on their sides, begin to doze.
I twist the lamp switch off, thanks sweetie they say, then,
Feel better in the morning honey.
Glaser Media + Writing 