This Life Is in Your Hands_ One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone - Melissa Coleman [17]
“All I need is rest and more support from you,” she countered, a tad hormonally, in Papa’s opinion.
On the good days it was hard to remember what the bad ones felt like. On the good days, the world was full of beauty. The weather cooled, the pace of the farm slowed down, and we tucked in for winter. There was time again to nurture ourselves. Mama woke in the mornings to the comfort of nursing, the hormone oxytocin relaxing her nerves as the milk relaxed mine. The drug of motherhood. The weight and shape of my body in her arms, the smell and smoothness of baby skin a balm for all sadnesses.
Papa came into the farmhouse followed by a gasp of cold air, the stomping of boots, and the skittering of Normie’s paws on the wood floor.
“Wait till you see what happened to the blueberry field,” he said, popping up the ladder to the loft bed, dressed in his warmest much-patched down jacket.
“What?” Mama asked, propping on one elbow to reveal her sleep-weary face and matted hair. Papa’s blue eyes met her brown ones with a twinkle, the touch of premature gray in his hair a foil to the youthfulness of his mood.
“Get up, come see,” he said, disappearing down the ladder. A thrill lit up her spine. It was cold even with the stove roaring, the thermometer recording lows of twenty below at night. Mama dressed herself warmly and put me in my snowsuit, setting me into the blue canvas and aluminum Gerry child backpack that had taken place of her sling and squatting to slide it onto her back. Outside the sun was bright against the cold air, the barren ground frozen. Papa had fetched a bushel basket for harvesting, and inside was a coil of twine.
“What’s that for?” Mama asked.
“You’ll see,” he said. We followed him and Normie through the dormant garden, past the skeletal rose-hip hedge and the well pulley, up the lane by the orchard, and out to the sign Mama had carved with their names over a year ago. Across the main road, the expanse of the blueberry field opened up in maroon undulations to the sky.
“Look,” Papa said. The low area in the center of the field had filled with water during recent rains and frozen with the sudden drop in nighttime temperatures to form an Olympic-size skating rink.
“Perfect black ice,” Papa explained, running to slide across the smooth surface, mimicking skating strokes in his work boots. Like Skates, he’d played hockey growing up, once even competing at Madison Square Garden for a high school championship. Normie skittered on his paws, his legs splaying out of control, as Mama stood by the edge, watching Papa’s joy, afraid to risk falling with me on her back.
“Here,” Papa said, placing the bushel basket down on the ice. He pulled out the twine, fed it through one of the staves of the basket, tying the two ends in a knot to make a loop, then lifted me into the basket. I reached up with mittened hands, unsure at first, as the basket began to slide forward.
“See?” he said. He pulled a little faster, and Mama slid beside, clapping her hands and smiling to encourage me. The surface was black and smooth as opal beneath her feet, and the weight of her body disappeared as she ran-slid after us.
Norm gave up slipping on the ice to sit panting on his haunches, and Mama stopped to join him, pulling her camera with the rainbow strap from the case attached to the Gerry pack. I was flying in the basket across the pond behind Papa, my laughter coming in spurts. Papa looked back, grinning, his brown balaclava tipped up. The sun flashed in the blue, blue sky as Mama snapped a photo.
What joy it is to be alive, Mama thought, to have a handsome husband and a laughing young child. But as she felt the glow of happiness spread through her body, a voice inside couldn’t help but whisper, This joy will not last. Why should it now, when it never has before? Someday, this photo will be all that remains.
She tucked the fear away and laughed into the sky.
Chapter Two
Livelihood
Eliot working