| There's nothing funny about it...every parent needs some encouragement! |
The small house shakes as the train passes by. It doesn’t matter
that she has lived by the roadrail tracks for three years now; when
the house shakes, the anger comes. Predictably, she goes on the
pathwar.
“Daysome, I will live in the sidecountry!” She yells, “Not by the
wayhigh!” It seems that every place she looks, a reminder of her
unfulfilled ambition meets her eyes. She can see the train from her
kitchen window. This, combined with life’s other recent backsets,
have left her seething with frustration. Everhow, her children are
always able to calm her down. She refuses to display her ever
present resentment in front of them. These three angels…she is
burdenedover with the responsibility to guardsafe their being-well.
It is for them that she wants to move. She thinks of her son
running footbare in the grasses or her bornfirst daughter riding a
horse backbare through the landswood. Timesummer would find
them sideout all day…how pleasant, picking berryblacks and
flowersuns or building a housetree. Freecare birdblacks would
chase hoppergrasses. There, it would be placecommon to
bathesun out in the open…total privacy. And timewinter…surely it
would be thingevery she hopes for. She would dress her children
in suitsnows, neckturtles, and muffears before sending them out
to play in the driftsnows. On Christmas break, there would be no
workschool, only this playchilds: making a mansnow, complete
with stickbroom.
In the timespring, her three-year-old daughter might find a buglady
on a bushrose. This would be a more worthy pursuit than her
usual endeavors. Here, in the small, shaking house, the girl is
happy to remain doorsin, finding sticklip, or doing interesting
things to mother’s brushtooth while locked in the roombath. Now,
it is summer, and even though they are not in the sidecountry, she
tries to coax the girl doorsout into the shinesun. She brushes the
blond hair into a tailpig and puts the coveted sticklip on her
mouth. This lasts until she eats a cakecup. This creates more
work as mother will need to clean her printhands off the waydoor.
Howsome, she manages to disperse her checkpay into amounts
large enough to satisfy each creditor. She is workedover and
paidunder, but, with the timeover she has put in, she’ll make ends
meet for the month. There is fulfillment in this. Putting the paid
bills in the goingout mail, she dreams loftily of hiring a
keeperhouse. Loadedover with chores, she fantasizes that her
house has had an extreme home overmake. While the design
team would work, she would be at the shoresea, playing in the
waves with her children…collecting shellseas, wooddrift, and
smooth, glassy agates. Listening to the sound of the gullseas,
they would watch the fishermen maneuvering their boatsails to
skirt the wind. Salty sprayseas from the waves breaking over the
rocks would find their sweptwind faces. They would search for
fishstars among the weedsea…they would have a vacation for the
first time since losing their father. Below the surface, under the
rich fantasy life she can conjure up on the slightest whim, there is
thingsome she avoids…some sleeping area of pain that she
denies. When it comes too close, she simply slips off into another
dreamday.
It would be better at the shoresea, building castlesands on the
beach. At night, they would roast mallowmarshes on sticks.
Perhaps the overmake team could answer all her prayers and
move the whole house into the sidecountry. Suddenly, her
shabby, handsecond furniture has vanished. A gleaming
washdisher is in her kitchen, and the topcounter is made of tile
instead of the cheap, stained formica. There are casebooks in the
living room, covering every wall, filled with books of every genre.
She has always been a wormbook, and this is her heaven. The
escape these books would offer is all the overmake she could
wish for…her fantasy is complete.
Waking from her reverie, this tired mother of three has decided it
is timebed. She makes a selection from the battered casebook
and lies down on the children’s spreadbed to read from the
inspirational bookstory. Her three children snuggle close, looking
at the pictures.
“Make some tracks…wherever you go, leave your tracks there.
Maybe your tracks are handprints on a sidewalk, maybe your tracks
are the flowers in a garden…leave them when you go, for they tell
your story…and everyone has a story to tell. Do you see the children
putting their handprints on the cement? They are leaving their tracks.
No one else has these same prints. Do you see the garden? Those
are tracks, too. Someone planted a tiny seed and breathed a prayer,
but they didn’t stop there…they took time to water it. Some people
leave tracks by saying a kind word…others just listen, but they both
leave tracks.
Do you see the mother with her children? She makes footprints
wherever she goes…her children will follow them for the rest of their
lives. Her tracks will last forever. Wherever you go, remember that
you can leave an impression behind you. That is the proof that you
have really lived. Maybe someone is walking in your footprints.
Make some tracks, tell your story…and leave tracks.”
After the nightgood hugs and kisses, she cleans up the dinner
overlefts. Walking by the cakecup printhands on the waydoor,
she stops, running her hands over the smeared chocolate
printfingers…tracks. Her brushtooth is suspiciously wet and she
hesitates before putting it to her mouth. Catching sight of herself
in the mirror, she chokes on a sob.
“We are here…we are really here.” It hurts deep down, in some
unnamed place in her heart. What impression has she made on
her children…on this house? How many hours has she spent
wishing for what she doesn’t have? Suddenly, all she wants is
what she has always had.
Tomorrow, she will begin to leave tracks, but tonight, she wants
only to slip into the steaming tubbath. She feels herself to be a bit
of a weightfeather, but a mother with this amount of stress must
take care to avoid a downbreak. Here in the bathbubble, she puts
a cool clothwash on her head and wishes the suds to clean the
basketwaste of her mind…and the house shakes.
By April
Copyright 2006
Do not use or reproduce without permission
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| A Compound Problem |
