Screenshot
My Mother the Alchemist
by Rose Mary Boehm

I’d watch her transform stingy nettles into spinach soup after we picked them carefully, trying to touch only the underside of the leaves. We had no gloves. Dandelion shoots became salad with a bit of vinegar and salt. She magically metamorphosed a box of our silver flatware into a hundredweight of potatoes, her last damask tablecloth somehow converted itself into another hundredweight of carrots.

She brought water from the pump in two heavy buckets up to the second floor on stone stairs. That became soup, drinking water, and a bird bath for my budgie.

After picking up the left-over stalks from fields the farmers had finished harvesting, mother dried the wheat and ground it in the coffee mill for a chunky morning porridge.

One day’s worth of sewing underpants for the Russian army mutated miraculously into bread and sometimes butter.

And at the end of the day, mother made the best magic of all: with a book on her lap, by the light of a glowing fire in the wood stove, she transformed a different hunger into possibilities.

Sentries and markers
The hinterland of dreams
Deliverance

PAINTING: Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May by John William Waterhouse (1908).

BOEHM my mothers and fathers engagement 1927

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I have recently (pushing 86) put some serious time into looking back. I grew up during WWII, in Germany, where hunger became our daily companion, and one of the most important things for any mother was to keep her children alive. Feeding them was one of the most important challenges.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: My mother and father’s engagement (1927).

BOEHM

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as eight poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize  and once for Best of Net. Her collections include Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books July 2022), Whistling in the Dark (Cyberwit July 2022), and Saudade (December 2022). Her latest collection, Life Stuff, was published by Kelsay Books in November 2023. Visit her at rose-mary-boehm-poet.com.