My motherʻs dented potato pot
was grey and unremarkable
the lid clanked and rattled
when the water was roiling
One of the first things she taught me
was how to make potato balls the German way
with half grated cold boiled potatoes
and half grated raw, the mix
rolled like a sticky snowball
with wet careful hands
filled with buttery croutons
and PLOP: into the boiling pot
They rose in the water
bobbing like albino apples
were rescued, drained, sometimes fried
and on holidays drenched in gravy
duck gravy being her favorite
Decades later, visiting me in Hawaiʻi
frustrated with my Asian hodgepodge
of curries and noodles and soups
she asked when we would eat
some real food, and at my blank look
said, exasperated: “Potatoes, like potatoes.”
In the last year of her life
when standing was an agony
I found her in the kitchen
gripping the counter edges
determined to make the potatoes
and before I shooed her out
took a picture over her shoulder
her hands identical to mine
knowing somehow that I was seeing
a ritual intrinsic to her identity
that making the potatoes
meant being herself, being alive
being my mother, being safe
both of us safe, finally
I rarely cook potatoes
I forget to buy them
or I buy them and they go bad
so casually wasteful
my mother would be horrified
But when I do, and break them open
breathe their steam, mash them up
I am suddenly 8 years old
50 years simply gone
my mother expertly rolls a potato ball
drops it, salty and slick, into the pot
which I can barely see into
the way, now, I can barely see into
the years ahead without her.
