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The boyfriend doesn’t know about frozen waffles. He doesn’t know that when you stack them five high and dust them with cinnamon and powdered sugar, they will get my mother out of bed on a cold afternoon. The boyfriend doesn’t know that a cigarette and a cup of coffee calm her when she starts to shake, and he doesn’t know that watching I Love Lucy reruns gets her to laugh and improves the day immensely.

My mother is my fix-up project, not his. My life is predictable, constant, when it is bookended by one fix-up and then another. I buy carrots and cabbage and peas and puree them into soup so she’ll eat something other than Ring Dings. I turn off the gas on the stove after she has fallen asleep with the teapot boiling itself empty. And I feel strong in the fixing. That’s the thing. I feel strong in the fixing.