Mothers & Daughters

　　"You won't forget to bring the potato masher, will you?" I said to my mother on the phone after telling her I had to have a mastectomy. Even at 82, and 3000 miles away on the long distance line, she knew what I meant: Soupy mashed potatoes.

　　This what was she had made for every illness or mishap of my childhood-served in a soup bowl with a nice round spoon. But I had been lucky as a child and was rarely sick. Most often the potato medicine soothed disappointment or nourished a mild cold. This time I was seriously ill.

　　Arriving on the midnight plane from Virginia, Mom looked fresh as a daisy when she walked through the front door of my house in California the day after I came home from the hospital. I could barely keep my eyes open, but the last thing I saw before I fell asleep was Mom unzipping her carefully packed suitcase and taking out her 60-year-old potato masher. The one she received as a shower gift, with the worn wooden handle and the years of memories.