Her sharp whistle sounds through the dry and dirty pines. Her fingers fall from her lips to hang patiently beside her. She pauses, listening for their approach.
She steps through her little door and out into the late morning light. Her round face squinches into a happy map of lines as she stands atop the rusted, retractable little staircase. Her crows-feet squinted eyes peer between the trees. She whistles again, then waits.
Bushes rustle in the distance. The rustling nears, and with it the sound of many quick, short breaths and a pitter-pattering grows to a gentle thunder. They emerge, dusty and panting, and covered in burs that momma will patiently pluck and maybe with tics which she will tend to yet chide them for.
They are greeted with coos, My babies, my babies. She descends the little steps to meet them. Despite her warnings, her little ones cannot resist reaching up to hug their momma. Despite the dusty paw-prints they make on her white-worn jeans, she cannot resist reaching down with her one free hand to tussle the fur on the backs of their sun-warmed necks.
She waves them off and begins a stiff walk around her tiny home, her ankles still sore from the coolness of the night. She fills their water bowls, then, with an athletic-sounding, hee-Yah, she bends to pick up the other four bowls. The food bowls, each with their own colorful pattern and engraved name, are judiciously filled and returned to the ground in their usual line. Her little ones are already sitting, waiting, salivating, yet behaved. A moment passes. Ok! They dig in.
They will not be occupied long, yet momma makes her way to her morning seat in the sun and shade, to sip her coffee and warm to day. A single seat sits under the retractable awning which juts out from the starboard side of her 6-wheeled home which now stands on retractable little struts. She falls into a folding chair, takes a savoring sip, then places her mug and her heels beside each other on the plastic table before her.
So reclined, she listens to the chirping of distant birds and the sweeping of the breeze in the tree-tops. Only for a moment though, for her thoughts begin to wander beyond the trees and closer to home.
With another effortful, Hup!, she throws her arms forward and sits upright. She reaches for the newspaper, not quite current but current enough. She reads a few stories easily, absent-mindedly, but at a story about the president and his short-comings, her eyes and her thoughts drift back to the tree-tops. My son should be president, and he’d do a better job than
She turns back to the paper. She distracts herself until the Travel section reminds her of her daughter’s girlhood obsession with New Zealand. Momma laughs to herself, I wonder if she still dreams of going. Maybe she’s there now. In her day-dream she sees her daughter and her son hiking together on some picturesque mountain. Whenever she imagines her children’s lives, her two babies are always together, looking out for each other.
She has not spoken with her daughter in years. Her daughter decided long ago that conversation with her momma was too painful. When they used to speak, they each saw in the other their own failure and heard only disappointment and defensiveness. For years, with regular words, unwittingly weaponized, they tore each other to tatters. It was easier to be strangers.
Her son calls a few times a year. Not for very long. Not for long enough. He ends his calls with, Well, momma, I’ll let you go, as if she has other things to do than catch up with her first-born. She lets him go, without a fuss, so she doesn’t make him regret calling.
She almost never has any visitors. There isn’t room for any. Of course, family and friends are welcome to come over for dinner, camp beside the cottage (her endearing name for her mobile abode). She appreciates the company. However, her visitors, each in their own subtle way, express so much pity for her meagre means, her solitude, her motorhome, her circumstances, she wishes they would go back to their stationary homes and happy marriages.
Now she has upset herself. A wet nose nudges her forearm. Her little ones are back around her. She is not alone, but she has no one else to ask, Why can’t they understand that she chooses to be alone because she gave more of herself to the man she loved than he was willing to give her until like a candle she burned out. Why don’t they see that she happily sacrificed every penny she had to ensure that her babies’ lives were full of opportunities and experiences like she had never known. From the day her son was born, her life and her money and her means and her circumstances were for her children. They will never understand that I never needed much. That I never needed more than my little ones to be happy.
Cheyne Minto
December 2019
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