Lynn Shapiro

These lilies became an accidental shrine on my kitchen windowsill above the sink, flanked by two photos of my mother, one at the age of nineteen, with windswept hair and determined optimism in her upraised chin and luminous smile, and the other at her 100th birthday, just six weeks before she passed away.

It’s one of the last photos I took of Mom, the hint of a smile in the crescent of closed lips, her vanity hiding missing teeth from a broken implant that couldn’t be repaired in time for her birthday party. She’s smiling, no mistaking that, but it’s a smile wizened by a lifetime of blessings and losses, triumphs and disappointments, with an abiding strength and abundant love.

Today, I notice for the first time that at nineteen, her two front teeth jut out slightly over her lower lip, a hint of buck teeth from sucking her thumb as a child. I remember when I was about seven and she was thirty-five, she wore a bite plate like a teenager to correct the overbite. After that, her smile was perfect.

Every time I go to the kitchen sink, which is dozens of times throughout the day, there she is. It gives me comfort to encounter her there, on my windowsill, to see her face across time, bookends of a life that lives on in our hearts. It’s only fitting to honor that life with lilies.