“Make love like the bees do.”  

Betty used to say  

Over blue checkered linens and macaroni salad bowls.  

I was nine  

I would help peel fresh grapefruit ‘till  

my fingers got soggy.  

 

With licked fingers and a thumb thimble,  

Betty flipped through Sudoku puzzles in the  

back of bent catalogs.  

 

She talked about George.  

My great-grandfather from Germany  

The pilot who bombed his hometown  

Fighting for the allies in WWII.  

 

He went mad after that.  

 

“George got angry a lot. ‘Used to yell.” She would say.  

 

I watched the bluebirds and daffodils fold on Betty’s moo-moo  

as she pulled a yellowing recipe card  

from a black and white album.  

 

It was Betty’s famous macaroni salad,  

good on Thanksgivings and Christmas and for leftovers and on Wednesdays.  

 

I set aside my peels, wiping citrus fingers on newspaper corners.  

She handed me a knife. My job was to cut onions, not my fingers.  

 

Betty said she raised 5 girls on this macaroni  

Marcie, Kim, Fritzi, Meredith, Gwen  

 

“A pilot in the army, a social worker, two nurses and a mother.”  

She wagged a bony finger. “And there’s nothin’ wrong with just bein’ a mother.”  

 

“We got along fine, just us gals.”  

 

She handed me the spatula like it was dessert.  

I looked back at lines and kind eyes and mayonnaise and dill bits.  

 

I held it under the table for Birdie to lick instead.