Before my mother had surgery on her deviated septum, the doctor
said she
must have had a broken nose at one time.
How could this be unknown to the woman on whose face the nose
resided?
Well, shit happens, she said, as we wound through hulking banks of
snow in her car,
moving towards the heat and flame of a glass blowing studio
where we would make paperweights.
For the lesson, the instructors handed out safety glasses and arm
gear
to protect us from the hot liquid glass,
ready to be formed into something extraordinary.
A wooden paddle was to be held
as protection between the arm and the rod that drew up the molten
glass, swirling and rolling
to make the paperweight’s shape as it cooled
heavy and devastating in its permanency.
My mother with her crooked nose took up the paddle first.
She was armed to protect me
as I rolled the molten glass under streaming water.
Dwarfed by industrial furnaces and soaring warehouse ceilings,
she stood with her feet slightly apart on the concrete floor.
Fine strands of gray webbed through her hair, cast in fluorescent
light.
She choked up on the paddle, a child at bat.
Her jaw, dimpled with pocks from a million furious smoke
inhalations
set rigid out of habit even after her rage had finally subsided.
Reflexively, she swung the paddle low, the height of a naughty child’s
behind.
This time her force stirred up only dust, and air, and sorrow for a
woman still trying
to protect herself from a broken nose.
