Mary Lash

Issue 16

Flash Nonfiction

Our mother told us:

As one of nine kids in the Depression, she was happy to get a new pair of shoes and an orange at Christmas.

Her father was illiterate, but her mother led the school board.

In their one-room school, she and Aunt Belle fought over the pork chop bone. The young teacher—the teachers only stayed until they found husbands—gave them her sandwich to share.

When Uncle John killed mother’s cat as a joke, Uncle Dunk shot John’s dog.

In high school all the boys wanted to dance with her. The short boys were the best dancers.

She wanted to be a kindergarten teacher but got a scholarship to beauty school instead. She worked in Carmel-by-the-Sea, where she did the hair of John Steinbeck’s ex-wife. Foolishly, Mother spent her money on beautiful clothes, rather than saving it.

She had polio, but the mean nurse thought she was hysterical and left her alone in pain. She learned to walk again because FDR’s March of Dimes paid for her treatment.

She said that if God wanted her to have more than two children, He would have given her more than two hands.

She said he who hesitates is lost.

She said that kind of man was a flash in the pan.

Mother didn’t tell us:

How she hid in the dark from the furious date outside her window.

That she’d been married and divorced before she met our father.

That our father was also married before, and we had a brother.