How do you break a habit you no longer need? Cairo used to go downstairs to the basement at bedtime. At 8:30 every night, for nine years, she would wait by the side door. It’s been more than two months, and every day at 8:30 p.
m., I stand up. To put the cat to bed.
I know it won’t stop. I know this because Cairo is not the only ghost in this house; the others are still here decades later. I can’t go into the cold cellar, that weird little room in the basement with the dodgy door, without feeling my mom.
I keep Christmas decorations and tinned goods in there now, but once, it held shelf after shelf of pickles, relishes, beets, jams, pears, peaches, salsa and tomato juice. Well, not tomato juice. Mom made V5.
It was like V8, but she only used five vegetables, so we called it V5. The jam jars were sealed with wax, and to this day if I open a jar of jam I expect to have to break through a wax plug that is, of course, not there. I thought finding little bits of wax on your toast was normal.
She would spend hours working with whatever Dad was pulling from the garden that day, and I’d watch, and eventually help, as she crammed cucumbers into jars, and added dill and mustard seed before topping them up with steaming pickle maker juice. Three kinds of pickles, two kinds of relish, fruit, chutney and whatever else she was testing out that year. We’d help put lids on using the olive tongs — the metal lids were boiling hot — and she’d screw the tops down.
Throughout the e.