Whatever You Want
Janine Canan
Catherine Jackson is seated at the harp. With frizzy gray hair, dangling earrings and long powdered nose. Long bare arms, gathered satiny skirt with hand-painted flowers spread over her knees. My mother said I'd never amount to a hill of beans. Her strong callused fingers press into the strings. Then swishing out the door, her high laugh a glissando, she lifts her foot--in its elevated red leather shoe--into her yellow jeep and disappears over the hill. Her handwriting swirls gaily over the page: You can do whatever you want.
