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She didn’t seem to notice and continued softly, almost reverently. “I notice you. I can tell by the way you hold your head, your posture, the tightness around your eyes, and the way you smile if you’re content or struggling.”
My head snapped up, and I met her eyes.
She nodded sadly. “And I know you’re struggling. I wish you would talk to me.”
I forced a smile. “I’m okay, mom. I’m a bit worried about this promotion.”
“Yes,” she interrupted, seeming relieved. “I knew it would be too difficult for you to leave Brayleigh as often as this job entails.”
My stomach bottomed out. What must she think of me for wanting this job?
“No, mom. I want the job. I’m worried I won’t get it, and if I do get it, that I won’t do it justice.” I sat back in my seat and held my hands up to ward off her next words. “In any case, right now it’s just an increase in travel, not a job change. That’s awhile off yet.”
“Thank goodness. Brayleigh is much too young to be without her mother.”
“But not without her father.”
She shrugged. “It’s different.”
The front door swung open, and my dad rumbled into the kitchen before I could reply.
His gaze swept between us warily. “Stop discussing things you know you’re going to disagree on,” he admonished, then turned to me. “Your mom only wants the best for you. Remember that.” He then looked pointedly at my mom. “Maureen, stop talking about husbands. She’ll get married when she finds someone worth marrying. Not worthy of her because that’s an impossibility, but worth marrying. There’s a difference, peaches,” he declared. “I’m going to freshen up. Planting a smacking kiss on my mother’s mouth, he smacked her butt and teased, “Get my dinner on the table, woman. My stomach is about to eat itself.”
I stole a peek at his rounding belly, but he caught me and laughed as he left the kitchen, warning me, “Don’t say a word!”
I smiled at my mom, and she grinned back at me.
If there was one thing we could agree on, it was how much we loved my dad.
Two hours later, I took my place amongst my team, settled myself into position, and waited for the opening strands of the music to fill the studio.
Like fragile tendrils of light, the notes wrapped around my body, prickling my skin with goosebumps, stroking the length of each muscle, waking my sleepy limbs. My arms reached for an imagined promise while my legs propelled me forward before wrapping one around the other and closing me in upon myself.
After only a minute, my emotions organized themselves into thoughts.
Neck stretched back, my arm extended gracefully to the side, I thought about choices, and the privilege of having them.
I swept forward, gathering the wind as I ran. With my arms falling to my sides, I turned my palms upwards. Up on my toes with empty arms but open hands.
I didn’t have what I always wanted, but I would open myself to receiving other gifts from life.
As the music faded to a whisper, I hit my knees. Steadily, the volume rose and I soared with it, coaxing first one arm to the sky, then the other. Lifting to my feet, arms aloft, the strength in my legs drove me into the air where the music rang out victoriously.
Full and empty.
The music filled me, pushing out every errant thought, every worry, every shame. Locking me out of my head and sending me into my body, feeling its’ strength, hearing its wisdom.
The body needs to move.
We are not built to remain in one place.
And I determined no matter the initial discomfort, to help Brayleigh adjust to a new schedule. To push myself to do the same.
I would not encase myself in beige.
It was only once I lay in bed and closed my eyes that my brain spit out the information I had smothered.
There was a vast difference between my mother’s walls and mine. Frames of all sizes broke up the utter sameness of her life into manageable pieces. Pictures of me growing up. Candid family pictures, not the posed kinds with a professional photographer. Pictures that strangers took at Disney, on the beach, in Paris, at my graduation. Photos of my parents out with their friends, on weekend getaways, so many more of those in recent years. Old pictures with their parents, long dead and gone. My mother’s walls, a visual scrapbook.
