And All Is Made Whole Once Again

Milk. I’ve got to stop and get milk. If we’re not out we, soon will be. I don’t want to, the trip is long and dark and wet, and another stop will just make it longer and darker and wetter. But if I don’t I’ll just have to go out again later. The turn signal makes an intermittent shiny yellow spot on the wet road in front of the car, the clicking too loud in my head. Cars coming from the four way stop in front of me space themselves as evenly as if some car-making machine rolls them off an assembly line, and I wait for a hole to slip through into the parking lot of the last mini-mart before the long climb up the hill to home. Once committed to entering the store, it gets a little easier. The anticipation worse than the act, as it usually is. My black rain coat, car-coat length -- anything longer makes me look even shorter -- is damp and sticks to itself and I have to stop under the awning outside the door and adjust it so it doesn’t get all turned around and hide my pockets. I’m going to need one of those pockets in a minute, the one with the $5 in it, and it would be very uncomfortable not to be able to find it when it becomes my turn to pay. All the other wet, damp commuters, with their six packs and gallon jugs behind me would start to press forward [she’s taking too long][she’s lost her pocket] and I can almost feel the pressure, them pressing their worry on my back, their concern that I’ll add time to their trip home. And I don’t want to add to anyone’s long trip home. The milk is in the back east corner, I don’t have to think about it, I’ve been here before. Grabbing a jug and I head up to pay for it. The line isn’t too long, just three or four people in front of me, and it moves quickly. I pay the checker not exchanging more than hello and money. I know the girls who work in the morning and we chat, but not the night staff, I’m too tired to get to know them. The rain feels wetter on the return to the car, but at least it’s already warmed up. Turning the engine over, I realize that this is the last leg, 8 more miles and I’m home on Friday, home for two whole days and my heart lightens enough to finish this trip. Just a little further now. Pulling the front door shut with my foot, my hand occupied with my purse and laptop and the milk, I feel the warmth provided by the forced-air furnace, it’s good furnace, it’s good to be warm. Hot water, warm air, conveniences comfort me. Those instant conveniences have reduced our patience, and reinforced our expectation of rapid comfort, have softened us but at this exact moment I am not concerned with the social implications of modern life, I am simply grateful. Issie doesn’t look up from her book as I enter. I get a sideways glance from Ella; she peaks at me from the corner of her eye. “Hello,” I say from the entry room, which is actually part of the main living area and not a room at all, and my children go on with their reading and their computing, not really acknowledging my arrival, not honoring that I have returned from a long and weary struggle to make the money to buy the milk and that I do it five days a week, so they can drink the milk, and sit in the warm air of the forced air furnace, and pay little attention to my arrival. What I really want is for them to light up when they see me, to show that they are happy to see me, show me that I matter to them. I don’t really need them to make the connection that my life is dedicated to their survival; that would be a bit much, to ask don’t you think? But, their indifference really blows my idea of what should happen, what I want to happen, what I expect. “Heelllooo?” I say dramatically, and a bit too loud. “Hi Mom,” Issie says from the over-sized, over-stuffed leather chair ten feet in front of me. Ella grunts from the bar that separates the kitchen from the dining room. Home. Home is where my children are, where my heart is, and where the forced air furnace blows. “Where’s Brad?” “He’s upstairs playing Halo on his computer.” Issie’s boyfriend has lived with us a few months. She’s seventeen, an old seventeen; he’s twenty-one, a young twenty-one. He’s easy to live with -- easier than Isabel. He’s quiet, polite and neat, and doesn’t ask to borrow money. He has a job that he goes to every day. Issie’s always been a one-guy-girl, never dated a bunch of guys, and Brad’s been her guy for over a year. They met over the Internet, friends of friends. Brad lived in the eastern part of the state of Washington. Washington is divided into two states, not by man, but by Nature. A mountain range runs north and south about a third of the way across the state, and east and west don’t even resemble each other. The west is temperate and wet. The west is all about water and lush vegetation is the natural result. The east, now that part is about dry -- desert, long rolling hills devoid of trees, you can see miles in every direction. Hot in the summer, bitter cold in the winter, Eastern Washington is a sub-state of contrast, where Western Washington is a study in green sameness. Brad and Isabel met in person a few times on pre-arranged, chaperoned trips, her taking the bus to Kennewick, staying with Jim, another part of their group, and his family or Craig and his. Sometimes Brad would come here with Jim and Craig and stay a few days. I don’t know when they fell in love, Iss didn’t share that part with me, but someplace, either here or there or over a phone line, they did. Brad didn’t have much in the way of immediate family; raised by his grandmother and a once in a while mom, he’d been on his own a couple years, staking out a small corner at friends houses, moving between frequently. He’d worked in a test lab for a while, making enough to get by, but had no real reason to stay in the east, and when he and Issie fell in love, he had more than enough reason to come west. Issie talked to me one night about him coming to live here. They had a plan. Isabel always has a plan; she was born with a plan. “Brad and Craig wanted to come over here, Mom.” “Oh?” “There are more jobs over here. And, well, Eastern Washington is so rural. They want to move here and get jobs and an apartment. But they need a place to land. Craig is going to live with his girl friend’s family. Mom, could Brad live with us for a bit, just while he finds a job?” I roll this idea around in my head a moment and find I’m pretty open to it. Issie’s pediatrician gave me some sage advice years ago which I’d adopted wholesale: “Be the place where they feel safe, let the kids come to your house, let them be who they are there, then you’ll always know where she is.” His advice struck me as so sensible, so simple, it was easy for me to adopt. Divorced for eight years, I only had me to consult on the decision. “When?” “Oh, it’ll be a month or so before they come,” Issie tells me. “And just Brad here, Craig has a place to stay?” “Oh, yah, he’s staying with Jess. It’s all arranged.” Her words are quiet, but her body is tensed and pushes, leans toward me, and I can tell this is important, this is one that if I say no, I’ll loose her. More hangs in the balance than shows on the surface. It always does with her, but over the years I’ve learned to tell the deal-breakers from the I wants, the passing fancies; it isn’t hard to tell the difference if you listen, and I’m listening, and I can hear. “He’ll contribute around the house, be part of the family?” “Of course he will, Mom.” “All right. He can come.” Issie lights up, “Thanks, Mom. We’ll do our part, and he really needs this place to get started, and it won’t be for long.” “Don’t worry about that, Iss. We have a lot, and we can share it. People are important, and we have room.”