Hefty’s mom slumped in her seat. She nestled into the “mom-shaped” dent in her couch. It was always the same seat: left-hand side, yellow couch. Her living room was boring. It played tricks on her chemo-brain. She noticed a figure hiding in the bookshelves in the living room. It was untouched for a while. She lurched herself up out of her mom-divot, aching in every tendon and walked over to the bookshelf.

It was a box from long ago, from another world really. She pushed aside the pictures on the shelf, revealing a dusty cardboard shoebox. It said “mamo’s Keramika”. The smell brought back memories. Inside were five vases. Each in different shapes, with the same pattern. These were the vases that her mamo created for the 50th anniversary of the Ukrainian resistance against Sovietism. In a moment, Hefty’s mom was a little girl again, alive and thriving. She remembered all her friends were seeing Star Wars every weekend at the cinemas. That year was an important year for Ukrainian immigrants. Especially Ukrainian immigrants that had shot across the pond to America, to Brazil, to Canada, Argentina, and to Britain.

And this particular ceramic pattern her mom made was different. Just plain different. A new, sleek shape, and a new pattern. A square-laced ribbon with flickerings of complimentary colors: ancient steppe Oranges, and Indigo-Blue squares, shifting down in parallel symmetry.

Incandescently, it was beautiful.

And it was hard for Hefty’s mom to see that pattern.

That summer was the summer everything changed. Hefty’s mom was an impressive young woman. She tried as hard as she could to impress mamo. An A+ student (2nd in her class), a leader in the Uki scouts. A model teen, and… to her mamo, it wasn’t good enough.

“You like drawing? Malyvanya? How are you gonna make money off of that?”

“Mamo, it’s different nowadays,” young Hefty’s mom quipped, “it’s a whole new world in America. It’s not like YkpaIHa. I’m telling you.”

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“And I’m telling you,” Mamo said as she started to grab at her sketch books, “that you’re going to school and your going to study-”

“-Art.” young Hefty’s mom said. The room went ferociously silent.

And as it went silent young Hefty’s mom noticed the vase. The indigo-blue against the orange. Her mother in front of her new vases. How she loved her mother’s artwork. It inspired her to become an artist. That’s why she was going to attend college at School of Visual Arts. Full ride. Impressive, no Mamo?

Mamo wasted not a second longer, and launched at her daughter, fists crinkled like chicken claws. She wrapped her nails into young Hefty’s mom’s brunette scalp.

“Biology you’re going to study. Do you hear me?

That’s what you’re gonna study,

and don’t pretend you’re taking that full ride.

That arts school isn’t going to help you

find a life? You understand?”

Tears dumped through the young girl’s face like a water balloon. She couldn’t tell if it was the physical pain, or the emotional daggers tearing her apart.

“But mamo, you’re an artist!”

She saw the Indigo-Blue and the Orange. At this, her mother tugged her off the bed, and started kicking her. A few good ones. Once in the gut.

“You’re. Never. Going. To art school. If you want my money. You hear me? Do you HEAR me?! You’re going to St. Lawrence with your brother. He’ll keep an eye on you there. Just like high school. Don’t you EVER think otherwise.”

Hefty’s mother lay there. Emaciated by her biggest cheerleader in life.

“You’re not like the other girls… You can’t just go marry off to a doctor,” Mamo said, “You’re not pretty.”

Hefty’s young, just-a-teen mother lay there as Hefty’s grandmother, Hefty’s cheeky, wonderful grandmother just shook her head. Shook it in her old Ukrainian disapproval.

And then Hefty’s mother saw the vase on the ground as Mamo walked on out, shaking that head of hers. The vase, the one her mother made her, with the indigo-blue and the orange, was on the ground, broken in two. Little white-powder puffs burst on the hard wood floor. They were explosions of spores.

She already knew what Mamo would say…

“I’ll make you another one.”

Not the fucking point, Mamo! Hefty’s mom said under her breath. Not. The. Fuck. Ing. Point.

Not.

The.

Fuck.

Ing. Point.

Hefty’s mom was back in her chemo-body. She realized that for nearly a full minute, she couldn’t feel her chemo pains. She had tears building up by the creases of her eyes. That pattern was truly more painful than all the chemicals the doctors pumped into her heart.

It was an intense and unfixable kind of pain. Mostly, and most importantly, because that indigo-blue and orange vase was a symbol. It was the last time Hefty’s mom and Mamo were friends.