It is my mother’s pen knife (pictured above) that I hold most dear among the items I selected (now over twenty years ago!) when my family members and I were disposing of her belongings. Because she used it every day: to open mail and adult-proof bottles, to clip a coupon from the paper, to move a reluctant button through its hole. Her hands touched it. This pen knife made her life manageable in small ways that nourished her independence, her freedom. It lived on her kitchen counter, within easy reach – perhaps dating to her eighties or her nineties, when her twisted, arthritic fingers were not up to the job. I found it where she left it when she left for the hospital with a broken ankle.
Mom raised me to make myself useful, although my ideas about how to do/be that and my actions have changed over the years:
change the diaper
change the oil
change my viewpoint
change my pig-headed idea
change how I look
change how I look
change how things
look change how things are.
change the world in ways large and small
without knowing which is which.
These days,
change my words, tone, intention,
sharpened or softened to
open a heart
set a boundary
fix responsibility
validate a feeling
challenge a lie
seal a bond
or break a connection
or
refrain from speaking and instead
listen
wrestle with myself and the world
give half back
even when it’s a head on a sterling silver platter
the very same one my Aunt Hecky used to serve the Thanksgiving turkey.
God spoke universes into existence.
As best I can in any given moment, I give up using words and silences to keep life
manageable, or even to be useful:
intent on keeping these universes spinning for a common good that the sensing being in me
knows
has life and love
and companionship in it.
Sara Eisenberg, August 11, 2025
