Meals with Grandma and Grandpa by Lori Rottenberg
Meals with Grandma and Grandpa by Lori Rottenberg It is no wonder they clung to these precise sacraments, dinners timed not to hunger but the clock: always at 6, unchangeable as shabbat, as the Sh’ma, as the book of history telling our people’s sad stories again and again. Before main meals: melon in summer, grapefruit in winter, graceful shadows of multi-course morsels served by German maids; china, cloth silver—never disposable— a strict grammar of repast. Knives had to face politely in, keeping edges to our selves, cut flowers centering us on these rites—vestiges— Continental elegance they once knew. Such exquisite planners, they hadn’t foreseen this life an ocean away: outsiders forever working with their hands to help build the American Century in whose sunset I sat. I was instructed in this order, a novitiate, my grandfather calling me to lay the service, wash dishes as offering, everyone a part. They spoke English always; my heart bursts to hear uvular Rs, to remember birthdays, jello desserts said like the color of late- afternoon sunbeams streaming on my grandmother, on her African violets blooming in rows on the windowsill.
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Lori Rottenberg is a writer who lives in Arlington, Virginia. She has published poetry in many journals and anthologies, most recently in Minyan, Bourgeon/Mid-Atlantic Review, WWPH Writes, Open: A Journal of Arts and Letters, The Jewish Writing Project, and Artemis. She also has work upcoming this spring in december, and her poetry and non-fiction have been shared nationally on the Unitarian Universalists for Jewish Awareness website. One of her poems was picked for the 2021 Arlington Moving Words competition and appeared on county buses, and she served as a visiting poet in the Arlington Public Schools Pick-a-Poet program for over a decade. She is currently a Senior Instructor at George Mason University, where she teaches writing to international students and poetry to students in the Honors College. She is in her final year of studies at the George Mason University MFA Poetry program. Please see her website at lrottenberg.weebly.com for more information about her work.
