The Meat Hammer

I would be home after school doing my homework in my bedroom and hear banging from the kitchen below. It was my mother using a meat tenderizing hammer to prepare chicken Kiev on the wooden cutting board. The cutting board had legs raising it an inch off of the red Formica counter. The sound resonated like a drum, traveling throughout the whole house. This was the typical rage and aggression my mother brought to all situations. Sometimes I want a meat hammer.

She would gun the big brown Ford station wagon on the icy driveway, burning a rut into it and alarming all of us with her bullheadedness. She wrote hate mail to any of us who dared to grow up and leave home. Or she did to me at least, I have not asked the others. They think she is a saint now that she is dead. Ding dong the wicked witch . . .