she almost missed it. the item was tucked in between anna mae ridgeway, age 79, peacefully in her sleep of natural causes, and sharon williams, age 26, mother of two, head-on collision with a drunken driver. (he was treated and released with minor cuts and abrasions.) isn't it peculiar how people conveniently die in alphabetical order?
good riddance to bad rubbish, she thought out loud and finished her second cuppa. reading his obituary made the last sip of her orange juice taste a little bit sweeter. it also made her stop and think about how the years had rolled past more quickly than she ever imagined possible. each a little faster than the one before it: twenty thanksgiving turkeys, a hundred twenty birthday cakes, one radical mastectomy fifteen years ago, a hysterectomy just last summer.
there were no more spelling bees or math contests, holiday plays or basketball games to fill the pages of her daytimer™. she had attended every one, almost. she had been room mother dozens of times and planned more than her share of homeroom parties at the elementary school. her sons were tall handsome men now... caring and gentle husbands, good providers, wonderful loving fathers. she had done her best with each one. she had tried to instill a sense of responsibility in each little boy, encourage him to develop his own personality and inspire him to use wisely his special talents. ah, her little babies all grown up... where had all the years gone?
but her boys had not left home yet, not really. she could not retire her role of mother hen. her four little babies (they would always be 'her little babies' regardless of their ages and sizes) were in and out of her back door like whirling dervishes. she was amazed the screen door remained on its hinges. the refrigerator door, too, for that matter. the boys did the house things and chores she no longer could do for herself. and almost every friday night since her youngest had his second baby she heard, 'mom, would you baby-sit for us tonight. we need some time alone. how did you and daddy do it? find time, i mean...' she never said, 'no.'
her oldest grandsons were starring in this year's christmas pageant. she would go there and watch them in their angel costumes which she had been recruited to make and beam with pride and clap the loudest and grin all over herself from the bottoms of her feet to the roots of her hair. she would elbow the people seating to her right and left, and gleefully announce for all to hear as she proudly whispered, 'those are my grandsons.' she had been the same way with her little boys, embarrassing each in turn on more than one occasion. now a whole new generation of little ones would fill her schedule with plays and recitals. she would attend every one, she hoped and prayed.
she was a grandmother nine times already. the newest only six weeks old, round and soft and pink. she had been in the birthing suite when her namesake arrived. finally, a girl. what an experience. they do it differently than when she had endured the pains of giving birth in sterile, klieg lighted, delivery rooms with industrial puke green tile walls, and no one to hold her hand and huff and puff with her ('his-almighty-self' had been squeamish at the sight of blood). she was a proud grandmother indeed.
a grandmother. imagine that. all those years... her voice had a deeper timber now. her chestnut tresses now silver. her eyes no longer robin's egg blue. they too had turned grey like so much of the rest of her. yet her skin still yearned for the caresses she had never forgotten from that day when she frolicked nude and was touched by the sun in the meadow of wild flowers with her only true love. her lips still ached from the kisses she dreamed they shared each night. her body still trembled with the delicious...
then she saw her sitting there in the front row. she heard the churchly organ music piped in from a speaker hidden in the potted palms. she smelled the clawing fragrance of the floral blanket resting upon the mahogany coffin. someone she did not recognize was intoning something about 'the dearly departed.'
"'dearly departed,' my ass," she thought but not out loud for anyone to hear her uncensored opinion of the man now resting in peace on pale grey satin sheets. yuck! he deserved racket and confusion and thunder claps. he had been a possessive person clinging to his marital rights like a tenacious bull dog. he never intended to free his wife from his bond. never! lung cancer had turned that trick for her instead, at long last. he had been fond of holding forth to anyone dumb enough or drunk enough to listen that lesbians were unfit to raise children. she wondered just who he had thought was raising his children. was his wife not a lesbian as long as she was married to him?
she walked down the short aisle between empty seats and rested her hand gently on the woman's shoulder. a touch like a whisper. their eyes met. they smiled into each other's heart. spoke volumes without uttering a single syllable. then she leaned down to hold this woman in her arms once again. a lover's hug like the one they shared that late summer's day twenty years ago in their field of wild dreams and sweet flowers...
Saturday, 09 March 2002 11:28:40 AM -0600