days preparing Grandma’s birthday meal.
Our family abandoned the celebration.
She’d cooked twenty-three portions.
And I needed people willing to eat them.
It was less an invitation than a summons.
To my surprise, people arrived quickly.
Two cars were already parked when my husband reached home.
One neighbor brought wine and several relatives who happened to have no dinner plans.
A woman from a book club I’d attended two years earlier brought her teenage son and a bouquet of tulips.
Word spread rapidly.
It felt like a protest expressed through
