“Are you
sure you are okay with going?”
Mike sat
with his hands on the steering wheel. In
the back seat his seventeen-year-old son was already plugged in his iPod,
earbuds firmly planted in his ears, oblivious to anything going on around him. His eleven-year-old daughter was sitting on
her side of the car reading one of the books she had checked out of the
library. It was her own brand of
shutting out the world, one her parents had trouble arguing against.
Ten years
ago, when his older sister, Lily, moved away he was glad she was gone. Her highhanded way in dealing with the
aftermath of their parents’ accident had infuriated him beyond all reason. At the time he felt she was too cold, too
bossy, too insensitive to the wishes of the rest of the family and even of
their parents, or at least of their mother.
Lily had fled the family home right after high school, moving into an
apartment with some friends and never looked back. Oh she would show up on the holidays, breeze
in, make the rounds and leave shortly after dinner, to meet up with her
friends. Lisa was too busy during those
years trying to keep up to her sister’s flamboyant high school persona and
maintaining the grades she needed to get into the college of her choice to
spend much time at home. It was Mike who
spent his free time lending his mom a helping hand around the house and yard
while their dad was traveling for work.
Mom had shared a lot of her inner thoughts with him as they tended to
the gardens, yard and house together. It
brought them closer together and Mike felt he knew both of his parents better
than either of his sisters and he should have been included in the decisions
about the funeral arrangements and the division of what they left behind,
especially the one particular item, passed down through their mother’s family
for generations.
In the
brief pause of quiet reflection, he reminded himself to let go of the
past. It was over and done with. Time for a new beginning as his wife had said
several times over the last six weeks when they discussed renewing contact with
Lily. When Lisa had called him to tell
him Lily and her family was coming to visit, his first reaction was to feign indifference, telling Lisa he didn’t care and to not count on him making time
for their sister when she arrived. Lisa
had not argued, letting his wife talk to him.
She had not said much, simply letting him know how important she thought
it was for their children to know their cousins and Mike agreed with her. He just didn’t know if it was in him to forgive
Lily and look past her dominating, manipulative, self-serving personality.
He shook
his head, reached out and pushed the start button, turning on the engine. Enough, he told himself, if we are to heal
this breach in our family I need to stop thinking of Lily in those terms and
look for the positive, the charm, the person who, I know, would stop to shepherd
a family of ducklings across the road and hold up traffic for a half an hour
until they were safely on the other side.
“I’m
okay. It will be okay. Let’s go have fun at the beach.” Mike said backing out of the driveway and
pulling away from the house he and his wife had lived in for the past eighteen
years.
To be continued...
