The last time I saw my mother alive, she was standing over her stove with a wooden spoon in one hand, stirring a giant pot of chicken soup that looked big enough to feed half the neighborhood.
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“Mom,” I asked, “who are you cooking all of that for?”
She didn’t even look up.
“You. Your brother. Vanessa. The kids. Whoever needs it.”
“Whoever?”
Mom tapped the spoon against the rim of the pot.
“There’s always somebody who needs soup, Bethie.”
That was Dorothy Larsen.
My mother.
Seventy-four years old, barely five-foot-one, with snow-white hair she still curled every Saturday night and reading glasses hanging from a beaded chain around her neck because otherwise she’d lose them somewhere ridiculous.
Usually the refrigerator.
She had been making soup every Sunday for as long as I could remember.
Chicken noodle.
Beef barley.
Split pea with ham.
