Ornery

My ninety-year-old mother is getting stir crazy. She says to me:

• I’m too old to be alive.

I say:

• You’re too ornery for heaven and the devil knows you’d raise hell.

She laughs. She roars. She can’t stop.

• My mother said the good die young, the rest are too ornery.

That’s my grandmother, who was herself pretty ornery and died at a ripe old eighty-seven. Ornerier than Mom.

Ornery, it’s a good word. A word for times like this when the world is upside down. Time to get stubborn. Find some beans, seeds and flour. Happy for a quinoa stash.