Mother

Weekend Freewrite (1).jpg

This is a freewrite from the weekend 3 prompt challenge. The prompts are above.

Mother

My mother was doing that thing she did. That thing with the rag in the sink.
She kept scrubbing and scrubbing. Her shoulders drawn up almost to her ears. Bending over and scrubbing and scrubbing. There hasn’t been dirt in this sink for a long time since that is what she does. My mother. The mother who used to laugh and sing and never care if there were dirty dishes in the sink if there were people to talk to or a garden to tend or so much better things to do than doing dishes or cleaning house.
Where is that mother?
Tears are forming in my eyes as I see her scrubbing and wringing the rag as if she could squeeze some meaning out of it.
Just wring it a bit more and surely the world will make sense again?
Or if the sink is clean and cleaner, it all will be okay. The sink which is never dirty because now, she doesn’t cook anymore. She barely eats. Nothing, nothing can be dirty in the house now.
I try to come often and be with her for just a little bit.
I so want to talk to her again Actually, not to or at her. I do plenty of that.
I want to talk with her again like we used to do all the time. Hot summer days when I was sitting in this very chair. Sweating but loving it! Everywhere else I went was air-conditioning and my mom wanted things to be natural
Well, she was okay with a heater - but only when it was really cold.

It was a hot day when we were waiting for my brother to come back. He had been in Colombia and finally, he was coming back. My sweet little brother my mom always worried about - ever since I can remember.
He had gone there to find himself and we often didn’t hear from him for months at a time.
Not that atypical for him anyway since he doesn’t like to talk too much to anyone - well, he likes to talk to us. But only when he feels like it.
Add being in the jungle or hanging out with people who are doing the back to earth thing and don’t believe in electricity and such - communication was not always something easy to do for him. Even if he wanted to.
Five years!! 5 years since we saw him last and we were waiting to pick him up from the airport. The plane was 2 hours late and those two hours seemed to be such long two hours.
My mom had gotten up early to get the house ready for him and to cook his favorite food. We kept checking if the plane had landed since it didn’t make sense to go early to the airport. Parking sucked over there.
We were just about to check again when he called us and said that he was on his way to our house with a friend.
We were so excited to see him in twenty minutes!
Mom turned the coffee machine on to be able to brew some good espresso.
In Colombia, my little brother who never, ever liked coffee, had become a coffee connoisseur.
Something he and my mom would have in common. She loved coffee ever since I can remember and according to her, ever since she could remember.
The machine was on and we even had backed some bread using his recipe. He had made a name for himself as a baker of delicious bread.
The recipe was a bit scrawled and hard to read and we were laughing about the way he writes with both his left and right hand and nobody can read it in the end.
The bread was sliced, the yummy butter and marmalade at the table and we thought that it was about time for him to be at the door.
“Oh well, there must be traffic. Usually, it doesn’t take so long to drive from the airport.” We told each other.
My mom was distracting herself by cleaning the kitchen. It is hard to wait when you have nothing to do.
We kept on talking as she took a rag from the cupboard and started cleaning the sink.
That is what she was doing when we heard a knock on the door. Two Policemen told us what happened. They say that it was fast.
My mom kept on scrubbing and wringing the rag in her hands. She couldn’t stop and still can’t.
I want my smiling mom back.