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Beneath the Willow
She recognized the laugh. The sweet and carefree laugh that played through the wind. Echoes of a little girl who became so bitter with age. The past seemed to rush before her in a play of words and melodies.
She strolled the grown embankment and waded through the bramble and brush that seemed to reclaim a place she only played yesterday. She finally made it beneath the willow tree and sat on the old wrought iron bench. The old Victorian piece had gone down through two generations of her family. She felt centered and secure in its familiar presence.
Unlike her, the bench had barely aged. It had a few spots of rust to prove its antiquity. The dirty red flakes had corroded the legs and stray areas on the seat. It still held its luster; through decades of love and laughter, the old bench survived. It was still the snow white color in those time-forgotten areas.
She watched the limbs of the tree, the long braids of leaves swaying to and fro. She heard the laughter again. It was so easy to imagine herself at five years of age beneath the willow. Barely old enough to attend school, and so hopeful of the future she might have.
She had to smile when those distant ghosts came to meet her. They were bittersweet and reminiscent of a beautiful period of her life. Her memories grew vague with time; she could barely recall her frilly dress that she loved so when she was a child. The dress of a princess, her father had bragged.
Her mind had to go forward; she hated when the sweetness ended. It had to flow forth as time itself had done. She felt her emotions begin when the bad parts of her life came back. She briskly wiped a tear as it escaped her eye; there was no need for such nonsense.
The bad times started when her father died in the War. The Second World War marked the end of her brief childhood. At ten, she had to deal with a widow for a mother.
When she was young it seemed her mother dominated the weather. She was cold and unconcerned with her own daughter. But, was I the perfect child? She pondered her own shortcomings as a youth. She hadn’t been perfect, not at all. She was as stubborn and unyielding as Mother, yet she never knew it at the time. She never realized what a spoiled child she was. Rose sympathized with her mother after losing her second husband. No wonder Momma cried. She pulled a Kleenex from her purse.
She hated recalling the bad times, but they often held more weight than the good. Her mother didn’t allow her any freedom; she didn’t let her out of her sight. Looking back, she knew why. Her mother’s own mother passed away soon after the death of her husband. It would appear that everyone was dying. Rose couldn’t believe her rebellious and cruel attitude towards her mother. Many nights, she still lay awake and wished she could just have one more chance to tell her. I don’t blame you, you were a good mother.
Rose married, against her mother’s wishes, when she was fifteen. She eloped with a pathetic man who had no hope of being a real man. It was doomed from the start, a marriage of defiance to the devil himself. After three years of beating and cheating, she finally left.
Her mother warned her to come home, but she didn’t. Rose recalled her bus ride to New York City. There was nothing in Ragan Falls for a kid who wanted to rule the world. She may’ve been a legal adult, but she had been a child mentally.
She went through another bad marriage before finding the one she wanted. A man who she’d grown up with had vacationed in New York. He traveled down the street and she met him; their romance and marriage lasted forty years.
As she grew older, she visited her mother at times. She brought her own children to see their grandmother. Yet, there was such tension. Rose wondered why she held such a weak and wasted grudge; her mother hadn’t actually done anything to her. Her mother wasn’t perfect, but she wasn’t a perfect mother herself. It was after her mother’s death that she realized perfect parents were figures of mythology.
Her mother passed on five years earlier. She left quickly and unexpectedly. It was gone; she could never tell her mother anything again. Her tears flowed more as she considered what that meant. After years of looking for herself, and thinking of herself, she neglected to do one of life’s most important duties: she neglected to be a daughter.
She sat in the wrought iron chair and watched the water, just as her mother had. Wishing her mother could come back for a few minutes. Wishing she had been a daughter when her mother sat beneath the willow.
