A Slice of the Story

This four day weekend has afforded me the opportunity to relax and enjoy the unofficial kickoff to summer. Memorial Day weekend has also allowed me to focus my attention on my second favorite activity (tennis is tops): writing. I began writing a new story this weekend that I would classify as a mystery. I have absolutely no experience in writing mysteries, nor do I often read them. It should be interesting to see where the story goes, but I am keeping it light-hearted as opposed to the more serious tone of my current work-in-progress.
Speaking of that work, I'm throwing this slice of A Way For The Rain out there to my blog readers. It's one of the more dramatic scenes and highlights the romantic element of the story. I think perhaps it won't make sense outside the context of the story's plot, but it's a very short, straighforward scene worth sharing.
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I want to grab his arm and demand, “Don’t let me go”. It is too late now. Dylan slowly turns to face me. We volley some messy words over the messy bed. The tone of our voices is imputed to the gray night, the unplayable conditions.

Then he stops speaking and looks back out the window. He catches hold of the curtain like a captain grabbing his sail. I hold my eyes on him until he turns to face me. This time his speech is matter-of-fact and friendly. He is my old tennis partner telling me his available time to play a set.

“You’re too good to me,” he calls out as if an actor in a play. I notice for the first time his hands are shaking.

Startled myself at his boyish jumpiness, I listen intently as he goes on.

“I just need to get away for awhile. We’ll see what happens,” he says, leaving our relationship suspended in the air and hanging by a thread.

Tears are ignited, burning the back of my eyes. They fall from my eyelids until they reach my cheeks. There they remain cold and hardened candle wax.

“Don’t you love me?” I plead with a trembling tongue.

Dylan scratches the side of his face. “No, I don’t think I do,” he stiffly emits.

His timid eyes show remorse. I always thought Dylan had mettle but this conversation changes the image of my tennis partner. When the water was tough, I thought Dylan would still be swimming. His final words stay with me, cornering me forever.

Love, Mom

“You’re the driving force in my life”

            There are countless ways our mothers reaffirm their love for us. From bandaging our bruises to cultivating our character, our mothers’ best interests are always our own. How many of us remember receiving those little love notes from Mom in our school lunchboxes? I hope most of us remember those small gestures. It is the smallest gestures that stay with us long after the Christmas presents, the birthday parties or the trips to Disneyland (not that I can speak from experience on the latter).

            Every Autumn, my mother would attach a handwritten note to my tennis gear. Her familiar print penmanship, with the loopy M’s and L’s, were comforting reminders of my mother’s love during an away tennis match. The notes would sometimes wish me luck, my mother knowing I was nervous about a particular match. Often, those decorative cardboard notes would be simple ‘I love you’ declarations. The best of my mother’s notes were the creative kind. She might wrap a package of peanut butter crackers with ribbon and write kind words using each of the letters in my first name. Loving. Intelligent. Nifty. Determined. Incredible. I’d sit on the bus with the surprise note stapled to my brown lunch bag and think “how clever of her”. It still surprises me every time I discover a caring note from Mom.

            We may not even be aware of all the ways our mothers show their love or influence us. It’s impossible to thank them for all the small gestures that go a long way in making our lives a little more comfortable. If my mother is anything like your mother, you probably feel the same way. How do we show appreciation for the women who love us enough to think of clever ways to fulfill our needs? I suppose for some of us, we give back to our moms when they are able to see us enjoying ourselves. My mother attended most of my tennis matches in high school. Perhaps being able to see me play tennis, a game she taught me, is my thank you to her. In some way, that is probably enough. But as children of wonderful mothers, is it enough for us?

            Mom- I love you, for all the small gestures: the times you made sure I had enough athletic tape to wrap my toe, the afternoons you spent baking cookies for my team, and the drives home from my matches.

“Whenever I was down, you were always there to comfort me”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8KnHK1NskY