Too Much Heaven/ A Short Story

Chapter 5 / SUDDEN CHANGES

It's holiday season. I do love the flurries of snow. I just parked at work, walked over to my therapy session and back to my works parking lot just because I love to walk in snow. My therapist is retiring. Ms. A, or Abrams. She has really aged and has been frail for a long time. I don't go for me anymore. When mom passed, I only continued because my therapist loved seeing me. She would always spend most of the session talking about herself, her kids, her cattle, while I sat across from her quietly. She was so wonderful to mom and I. Never charging us from day one because when she heard what happened, she felt like she could make a real difference in our lives. She did, and I'll always love her.

I just spent a small fortune at the store. I always treat myself to expensive coffee during the holidays, and I get that real whipped cream in the aerosol can. I dump enough nutmeg and cardamom on top that I sometimes sneeze before I get it stirred in. I have to go back to work soon, but I have a couple hours to lounge around and read my woodcraft magazine. I grab the old issues from the library. I flip the switch and turn on my gas fireplace. It makes me miss our old real wood fire. As I lay grandma's throw over my feet, my toes poke through the spaces where the different stitch constructions bring the blanket to life. I think about how, in the winter, we always had big wood fire. It would make the house feel so safe and snug. The pops and cracks were my favorite thing to hear. In the summer I always wished I could mimic that sound somehow, just to hold me over until winter. I couldn't. When I was young I would lay one sheet of newspaper at the top of the fire. It would burn fast and the heat would direct a large section to float up through the fireplace. I would hurry and run outside just in time to see the glowing orange edge of the papers floating into the sky, onto our house. Floating and moving around like fire branded puzzle pieces trying to connect again. My favorite was when the burning paper still had a section unconsumed, the glow would last the entire flight until it hit the snow on the ground. I would run back in the house and add new sheets of newspaper, over and over, run out again, look up and just watch. Time stood still while my winter fireflies floated around our home. I guess the fact that I never burned the house down was proof it was miracle soil. It was one of many holiday joys.

Grandma taught me how to make pies. Grandpa told me privately that my pumpkin pie was even better than grandmas. I added an extra splash of half and half and also some vanilla bean enhanced sugar. I can't make a whole pie without anyone to share it with. I used to share it with our old dog Pepper. Old Pepper had grey hair since I can remember. I don't even know how old she was. She couldn't hear or walk. She couldn't even swallow her spit. It would just draw lines all over the wood floor like she was trying to communicate with aliens. Sitting here is making room for my memories to flood in. I don't really know how to handle it sometimes. I wish they would burn out like the paper on the snow, but maybe this is somehow better for me. I know things take time. I have to embrace the bad in life to be able to appreciate the good, I guess. It's like when lava meets the sea, it's gorgeous but dangerous and deadly. So if these embers inside of me have to run the course, and take more time to cool, so be it. It's probably good my therapy sessions are ending. Walking into the room is like stinging salt sometimes.

The snow is falling pretty thick now. The flakes are huge. I called today and told The Don I would be a little late. The Don would never fire me. He is actually pretty nice. I wonder, what if mom had stayed with him, maybe they could have had something nice. He tells me all kinds of things, but he has never mentioned mom except one time. Mom dropped me off at work just before she passed, and he was parking at the same time. They both pretended not to see each other. As him and I walked in to work he said good morning. We hung our coats and he began quietly asking the wall like I wasn't there, "do you think she meeses me?" I turned to him, surprised. He said it again, this time, looking down. "Do you think she meeses me?" in his thick accent. It caught me so off guard I panicked and I frowned instinctively while shrugging my shoulders. He didn't even look for a response. He moved into a new subject and walked away before my coat was hung.