My mom insists her mother was a saint.
I never met the woman, but I’ve heard
the anecdotes forever. Mom would paint
her mother immigrant-heroic, stirred
to worship by (we thought) her early end.
“Her energy was boundless as her love,
she really was unique,” Mom would contend.
But when I quizzed old cousins, they spoke of
their other grandma, while their faces lit
with back-regarding fondness, and they hummed.
I wonder: was my mother’s mother fit,
who never praised, who hushed complaints, who dumbed
her daughters down? Mom’s fervor’s so profuse,
it intimates emotional abuse.