Serenity’s Soul
February 2, 2010
Dear Serenity’s Soul,
We all have been working hard in our vegetable garden. We grow and sell the vegetables to the local grocery store. Today, My mother and I were the ones to make the delivery in the shelter van. When we got there, we were warmly welcomed by the store owner, Mr. Lee and his wife, Sarai.
I went off to the side to help stock what we brought, while Mom kindly talked to Mr. Lee. They were happily talking, and I enjoyed seeing the smile on my mother’s face. Then I heard Mr. Lee ask how Steven was doing. I stopped and listened more carefully to their conversation. You see, Steven was my father’s name and such a question was unexpected. I saw my mother glance over at me, as she avoided his question.
“That is our daughter, Monica.” She said with a smile on her face.
I just stood up straight, smiled, and waved.
Mr. Lee smiled and waved back. He and my mother continued to talk and briefly reminisce. My curiosity was going wild.
When we left the store, I didn’t say anything on the way back to the shelter and I didn’t want to force my mother to tell me something she wasn’t ready to tell me. To my surprise, she told me on her own.
The night was quiet, the moon was gentle, and it felt like the perfect night to dream a perfect dream. But before I closed my eyes, my mother wanted to do something she remembered doing when I was a little girl and the night was the same as this one. She wanted to slowly, calmly, and sweetly brush my hair. We both sat on the side of the bed and I turned around, just as I used to do, and she took my long black hair into her hands and brushed it with love while she spoke to me.
“I had a hard and unhappy childhood, so when I turned eighteen, I left my house in a hurry. I didn’t have a place to go, but I found this little house here. At the time, a woman and her daughter lived here. The daughter was Francis, and the woman was her mother. Francis was around twenty years old, and her mother was ill. Her father had left the home long ago, so it was just the two of them. They allowed me to stay, and I helped out around the house and became like a second daughter. Francis and I went to work at the grocery store which was then owned by Mr. Lee’s father, and Mr. Lee was a young man at the time. We met a woman there that left her husband, and needed a place to stay so we told her to come home with us. Then as time went by, our house became the shelter for women who needed help. One day, when we went to work we noticed that a new stock boy had been hired. He was about twenty-two, tall, dark hair, handsome, friendly. When he looked at me, he would smile and his green eyes would light up. I knew I loved him, but of course I didn’t tell him. About a week later he gathered up the courage to say something to me.
“Hey, um, I’m Steven….Steven Corbin.” is what he said in a kind of goofy way.
But he looked me straight in my eyes and he smiled, and I smiled back at him as I tried to count the sparkles in his eyes.
“I’m Laura Owens.” I said in a low, shy voice.
“And the two of us stood there and talked, and laughed, and though we only knew each other for several minutes…it felt like we had always known each other. That was the beginning of a brand new life; a brand new chance to understand love.”
Then she stopped brushing my hair, turned me around and gave me a kiss on my forehead.
“I do love you.” She whispered.
“I love you too, Mama.”
Then she left my room, and as I sit here now and write this, I can feel the need to rest coming closer and closer to me. My eyes will close this night, but this night is a perfect night to dream a perfect dream.
Goodnight,
Monica
