On a hot summer afternoon, after a day of playing in the sun but before retiring to play video games, my mother would always shower. She loved spending time with us on those rare free days when all five of her girls were home, and she wasn’t working one of many jobs she held down simultaneously to provide. Our job was to set the living room up, since she didn’t understand and wasn’t willing to learn how to work the equipment. She would emerge in a puff of steam and a waft of perfume. Unwilling to wear shorts outside, those days she was even willing to don a light summer nightdress. We each peeled off at different times in the night, smart enough and independent enough to dictate our own bedtimes. With a yawn, I’d announce my departure. My mother was never short on hugs, pulling me in and holding me, understanding of the importance of that contact. Rich vanilla and rose and a creamy, heavy shea butter: the last things I’d smell for the night.
When riffling through the cabinet before moving out, I discovered the exact lotion she would use. Her ‘yes’ when I asked to take it was distracted, unaware of the significance. Although, I don’t use it much.
In a cinderblock bathroom an hour’s bus ride out of the inner-city, there’s a full-length aluminum mirror hanging by two screws. Unrelenting rain pounded on the roof as a girl, twelve, peered into it. Her arms shook, weak from the exhaustion of pulling her way up cliffs. Amelie was on a hiking field trip with her quirky charter school, who believed that traipsing through forests during a spring rain storm was more of a teacher than a chalkboard. The laces of her only pair of tennis shoes lay untied, dripping with mud, but her fingers had grown too icy in the rain to tie them up again. The hem of her jeans was torn where another student had stepped on it while Amelie helped them up a ledge. Her only jacket was dripping onto the floor and torn in several places from burrs and the scrapes of passing sticks. Luckily, Amelie’s shirt was unharmed, but was too flimsy to stop the creep of cold from chilling her to the bone. Her stringy curls would certainly take hours to untangle. Amelie shivered, and looked into her own eyes. Truly the star of the entire appearance was Amelie’s wide grin and the bright, wild look in her eyes that only true adventure could bring.
Forever Writing,
quill rose