The broccoli never went for good green food; instead, it flowered whitely and prematurely behind the row of healthy but inedible marigolds. Obviously I did something wrong when I planted it, so its growing life was considerably stunted. It all looks pretty, but it’s lost its purpose.

I sit on the bed with my mother this morning as she cries. “I’m thinking about my brother,” she says. She misses her brother. Before I moved her in with me, which was a year before her brother died, they shared a two family home. He drove; she cooked. They were good company for each other until each started down that road toward senility. Even then, they had those old memories to share of their childhood years when their mother took them to live in Poland, after WWI and before WWII. That’s what they would remember. That’s what they would talk about.
Over on Doug’s site, he’s remembering his childhood, which was similar to mine.
Hah (I commented on his post) I remember those days too. The first tv I saw was at my aunt’s house — 9 inch black and whilte screen that most of the time showed a station symbol because there were only a few shows available. We called pizza “hot pie,” and the kind that oozes as in your {Doug’s) description is still the best kind. It’s hard to find these days. “Fast food” came form Fred Laney’s hot dog wagon that was pulled by a little pony and came around once a week.
In the summer, trucks laden with fruit and vegetables came by once a week, too, with their drivers shouting “waaterrmellonnnn!!” Coal was shunted into our cellar to heat the coal furnace, which my father had to fill with a shovel. I would swipe some to draw “Girls Are” on the sidewalk.
Doug describes many of the things I also remember: the black and white televisions on which we put a plastic sheet that was blue (like the sky) on the top, red in the middle, and green (like grass) on the bottom. There were no such things as credit cards, and our phones all were “party-lines.” (Go over to Doug’s; he explains it all.)
Meanwhile, I’ve got to stop at the market to pick up some broccoli. The kind without flowers.