Slaw

Decades ago, I knew how to shred the cabbage. The strands would come out long and crunchy with my grandmother's hands guiding mine until I learned how to guide the head downward safely on my own.

I think of her as I open a bag of pre-shredded coleslaw mix in my kitchen 20 years later.

I can never get it right these days when I try to do it myself. The pieces come out small, often forced to mush themselves through the grater. On a more ambitious day, I might try again and resort to hand-chopping larger strips of cabbage when using the grater inevitably doesn't work out.

The pre-shedded mix helps eliminate waste from the skills I have forgotten, and I can hear her voice in the back of my head as I take this shortcut.

The vague blur of a should-be happy memory turns sour quickly. She would be criticizing me for forgetting what she taught me, asking why I don't buy my cabbage whole, scolding me for never unpacking my grater when I moved into this apartment in the first place.

She would not like that the mix includes purple cabbage and carrots. She would not approve of the way I pour olive oil and white vinegar over it in a single-serving bowl, mixing with a fork.

I salt and pepper this untraditional slaw with the amount I want the first time. I mix well, only adjust the oil and vinegar if needed, and it is so similar to what I grew up with, yet so different.

She used to turn over cabbage with her fingers, coating her skin in oil, washing and rewashing hands as she added more salt, more pepper, more oil, and more vinegar slowly in rotation until she got it just right. I used to lick stray pieces from my palms before washing them to mix it all again with her.

Now, I don't need to wash my hands after each adjustment or run the garbage disposal afterward to clear the cabbage that had stuck between my fingers from the drain. I don't need the mess or the textural nightmare to satisfy a craving.

I am sure she expected these moments to make me miss her. Evenings helping with supper in her kitchen should have made me look back fondly, but a little poison goes a long way. She always had so much of it slipping from her tongue.

Bitter words and pinching fingers take their place on a pedestal in my mind, the way I once stood on that wooden stepstool at the counter.

The truth is that the good memories have always been hidden away from her there. Pre-dinner vanilla ice cream cones eaten in secret in the basement with my grandfather, sneaking off from the front lawn to pick green apples in my great aunt's neighboring yard, and digging through treasures in the unfinished bedroom upstairs that she never ventured into herself all remain as moments untainted by time.

There are no lies slipped into an otherwise innocent moment in the memories there without her. There is no shouting. There are no complaints or criticisms of my mother's choices. For all of her pretending in public and hypocrisies at home, I know she never once found herself responsible for her inability to form relationships with any of her grandchildren.

I eat my coleslaw with no regrets, not even now that she is gone. If I were to have one, it would only be that no matter how hard I try, I cannot remember how to shred the cabbage on my own anymore.