A soft hum of an approaching train vibrated the wooden step I sat on. Its back, silver from the moon, was barely visible beyond the wall of my hillside parapet. A rhythmic hymn echoed, click-clank, click-clank, as each wheel passed over the seams on the track, rolling over the faint gaps, circling, as my spoon circled the inner rim of the stock pot, blending the seasonings into the broth, as my mother had, as did my grandmother, and my great-grandmother. I remember my mom recounting how her grandmother taught her to make soup, a simple base modified for whichever ailment was in need of a cure, the same one she taught me. She watched her grandmother sauté the onions in butter at the bottom of the pan, my mother atop a stool with built-in steps, one her grandfather had made so she could help stir in the ingredients. Or was this something I read as I cleaned out my mother’s house, a memory transcribed in a journal, a recital? It was all beginning to blur together; a rotation of wheels spinning, of pots stirred, of meals made, of living, left, and gone, rounding back to a glimpse of an impression I thought I once had.
Bailey Scroggins leads an itinerant life. In and between each place, she writes. She and her husband consider Hudson, NY home base.
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