My Mother’s Strainer

orange painted metal

with equal sized holes

stood on our kitchen counter

beside the ceramic sink.

 

it collected old coffee grains,

orange peels, prune pits,

and dead flowers from the garden

she nurtured more than the little girl in me.

 

every few days she’d hold

each side by their handles

and rush to our compost heap

in the far end of the yard

near our grouchy neighbor’s fence.

 

once in a while he’d scream

that she attracts

the street’s rodents

and that the pile of shit

will not yield her better tasting vegetables.

 

she’d walk away, hands on hips,

muttering under her breath

as he yelled out that she

was a weird eccentric lady

with priorities out of order.

my father would walk to our

screen door and apologize for her

like he’d done thousands of times before.

 

this woman who strains, filters and distills

all that comes before her

as if she had a sense of it all.

Diana Raab, PhD, is an award-winning memoirist, poet, blogger, speaker, and author of 10 books and is a contributor to numerous journals and anthologies. Her two latest books are, “Writing for Bliss: A Seven-Step Plan for Telling Your Story and Transforming Your Life,” and “Writing for Bliss: A Companion Journal.” Her poetry chapbook, “An Imaginary Affair,” is forthcoming in July 2022 with Finishing Line Press. She blogs for Psychology Today, Thrive Global, Sixty and Me, Good Men Project, and The Wisdom Daily and is a frequent guest blogger for various other sites.