This simple sauce: twelve blueberries,
water, vanilla (no, I'm not going to tell  
all my secrets!) was everything I have 
learned about celebrating frugality.

A red-headed woman, my young mother, 
shining elegantly at a cocktail party
in a dress made by her 
own delicately beautiful,
 strong hands. 

One three dollar silk remnant, 
purchased in a little shop full of 
cardboard boxes, each bursting, 
to overflowing with fabric, and
texture, and color, high up on
 Upper Broadway, in 1961.