Sunbeam Mixmaster

My mother inherited

an old stand mixer.

The kind

that swirls

and grinds

and blends

seemingly unrelated matter into

warm scones and soda bread.

It was not her mother's

but my father's mother's---

it was white and black and chrome

and, aged at least 40 years it would still groan

churning

turning

on yet another kitchen countertop.

It is some nonspecific day

in the specific 1940s

and there is a war

and there are ration cards

and there is not enough to eat

when there was already not enough to eat since the 1920s

(before they stopped roaring).

My father has a number pinned inside his clothes.

If the Germans

or the Japanese

or the Italians

invade, this number will help account for my father.

All children have a number.

It is eerily similar to children

in concentration camps.

But instead of wooden, flea-infested bunks

no food

no clothes,

my father sleeps on a cleaner bed---

not clean, but cleaner, as clean as can be managed---

behind blackout curtains

his stomach is mostly quiet

and he has clothes. But they are embarrassing.

His mother spends hours

throwing things into pots and pans

and the mixer

and hoping that whatever comes of the blend

will be enough to feed her family.

She is glad for potatoes and their heartiness.

The mixer also cradles seaweeds,

sent to her illegally from Ireland

so she might make some sort of living.

She makes toothpaste and other apothecary items.

She is the midwife in their small New Jersey Irish community.

Balms and candles

soothing women as they bring another being

to soothe and number

into this unreal world.

I often wonder if my Irish Catholic grandmother

made abortifacients

not because she was "pro-choice"

but because she knew her world

and because she knew the hardships of relying on a

stand mixer

to pay the rent

to feed the children

to be.

It is a specific day in

a specific time

in a specific suburban kitchen of my youth.

1995. My first Communion.

My father is already dead

my mother is thinking about that today,

she wishes he could have seen this milestone

which makes me regretful now,

the adult atheist daughter,

that day meant so much to her.

We spent the morning baking.

The tradition in her family,

a cake shaped like a lamb,

is failing like my Catholicism eventually would.

The head falls off

we prop it up with tooth picks and

use icing as glue

and we try desperately to hide our

desperate efforts

which

of course

makes it look all the more desperate.

Yet this mixer has seen desperation before

and if it were to personify

would likely explain to my mother

myself, and my godmother

that desperation does not come on days

that also see expensive white dresses

clean, flowing curls on

little girls

and a buffet spread out on an oak dining table.

These are not desperate times.

I,

my grandmother's stand mixer would say,

have seen desperate times.

But this is me.

I am this queer amalgamation

of a desperate woman

grinding seaweed so she might buy clothes for her son

in which she will pin his identification number

in case evil men on another continent---

her home continent---

get it in their minds to blow his limbs across the Hudson;

I am also

of a desperate woman

grinding flour and eggs

grinding an axe,

as it were,

with her god.

"I am desperate. This is desperation,"

she might reply to the personified mixer.

"I have a little girl

who has no father.

I have love

and no lover.

Don't let the oak dining table

or the crisp white dress this May morning

fool you.

This is desperate."

The amalgamation,

Myself,

I sit in yet another specific time

and specifically recall the way

I came

to be,

through the women in my life.

And I think about the man

my father

who bridged the gap between those

differing desperations,

three women, all desperate

all tightly wound and all

regrets.

A stand mixer;

the common thread.

Maggie, desperate to make a living

Carol Ann, desperate to find a way to keep living

Mary-Margaret, desperate for that stand mixer that no longer works.

Finally.

After about a 50 year run.

And I am desperate to display it on a shelf

to tell it's story and be near it

to remember it in the well-appointed suburban homes of my youth

and to imagine it in the ascetic tenements of my father's youth

and to cling to it,

desperately,

as those who have touched it age

leave

and live only through

my poetic personifications.