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In my experience, they slipped under my armor and into my heart then lost interest. And I found myself even lonelier for the brief reprieve.
According to my watch, I had three hours to kill before dance and I couldn’t tolerate three more minutes. Which is how I found myself yanking on my dance gear and heading to my mom and dad’s for dinner.
My dad pushed the mower across the grass in the complicated pattern he’d taught himself years ago. At the sight of him, my smile stretched wide across my face.
He wore a baseball cap with a kitchen tea towel tucked under it to protect his neck from the sun.
At six o’clock in the evening.
In September.
Movement from the porch caught my eye. I turned in time to see my mother twist through the front door with a tall glass of iced tea.
I sighed as she skipped down the steps and waited for him to get close enough to take it from her hand.
She stood smiling while he drank it back, then took it from him when he was finished.
With a wave in my direction, my dad continued his weekly landscaping routine.
Our yard was not large. I was reasonably sure he would not expire without a drink in the twenty minutes it took to mow it.
Irritation prickled my scalp. I smoothed my hair down as if coaxing the quills of a porcupine back into submission. I reminded myself I invited myself over and had no right to barge in and criticize.
Even if I secretly wanted to whisk my mom away on a one-week, all-inclusive vacation and leave my dad to fend for himself.
“Hello, peaches,” she greeted me with a squeeze and a kiss on the cheek. “It’s nice to see you so soon.” She bustled me through the door. “Would you like an iced tea?”
“Sure, mom. Thanks.”
“If I’d known you were coming, I would have made one of your favorites,” she admonished.
“It’s okay, mom. I’m not here for the food.”
Her eyebrows rose as she set the already sweating glass on the table. “You’re not going to eat?”
“No, I am. I’m just not worried about what it is. I came to see you,” I explained.
She didn’t answer. Instead, she sat down across from me and studied my face. “You’re sad.”
I blew out a huff. “I’m not sad.”
“You look sad-”
“Well, I’m not. It’s a nice day. Brayleigh’s at Lucky’s. I’ve got dance rehearsal tonight and thought it would be nice to visit you.”
The walls, painted the same damn boring beige for decades, closed in on me. It occurred to me that my walls were just as bland, and I wondered how I’d never noticed it before.
First thing after work tomorrow, I was hitting the paint store.
Looking around, I challenged her, “Don’t you ever want to make a change? Does the beige really thrill you that much?”
She looked at the walls as if seeing them for the first time. She cocked her head and laughed. “You did not get your creativity from me. I swear I don’t even notice.”
“Whatdoyou notice, Mom?” I asked gently. Curiously.
She sat back in her chair, momentarily surprised before cocking her head to the side and thinking. “I notice your dad, his emotions, the sound of his footsteps. They always announce his mood before I even lay eyes on him.”
I hung my head in disappointment.
