I remember…
worn pillow cases turned into rag rugs,  your repeat of Baba’s words, “No work,  no pork,” and “Waste not, want not,” your insistence that we (sister Amy and I) use our imaginations to entertain ourselves.  

I remember…
not being allowed to attend Elvis or James Bond movies, begging with Amy to watch “Batman,” the laughter we shared watching it together after you relented.

I remember…
the tenderness between you and Daddy, the book you gave me to prepare me for puberty, your quiet embarrassment when I asked you if the book was about fucking,your wisdom at not allowing me to date until I turned 16.  

I remember…
your horror when, at age 5, I brought home the ditty “Eenie, meanie, minie mo, catch a Nig-“ the way you cut me off before I could finish the word, your gentle lesson on language after.

I remember…
the pounding of your hand against Daddy’s back to loosen the phlegm in his lungs, how you turned Amy’s physical therapy into a game for all of us to play, the glass of whiskey with pepper you forced on us when we had bad menstrual cramps.

I remember…
the stinky poultice of fried garlic and onion that you placed on my chest when I couldn’t breath, your soothing voice as you rushed me to the hospital during my worst asthma attacks, your hand pressing up against mine through the plastic sheet of the oxygen tent.  

I don’t remember you ever…
buying anything so that the Nestors could “keep up with the Joneses,” censoring our reading material, even when I was only 12 and pulled the first novel in Lawrence Durrell’s “Alexandria Quartet” off the bookshelf, losing your temper as you corrected the misleading passages in our Texas textbooks, implying that sex was anything but joyful, hiding your political beliefs in conservative company, or complaining about all of the care you gave us no matter how tired you got or what life (and we) threw at you.

I remember you in the woman that I have become with your example.