Christmas
day dawned cold and gray with dirty slush covering the streets and backyards of
the city. In the small house, a tiny woman went about her daily chores as if it
was not the most celebrated holiday in Christendom. It was like any other day
because she was alone, and the familiarity of doing routine tasks gave some
semblance of order to her life.
She had been
thinking all morning about one of her children. A year ago he dropped out of
college and came to her and said “Mother, I’m going away for awhile. I
won’t call you or write. Please don’t try to find me or contact me.” She
had let him go in her characteristic manner, always understanding of human pain.
Her children were no exception to the rule of individual freedom that she
believed everyone was entitled to.
She did not
hear from her son for a year, and this morning, perhaps because it was
Christmas, she felt more uneasy about him than usual and her heart was heavy.
Putting on her coat, she picked up the trash to take it outside and went through
the basement to avoid the steady, cold rain that had begun in the fall.
Preoccupied
with thoughts of her absent son, she almost missed the tiny dried flower huddled
in the corner of the wintry, wind-swept yard, but pausing for a moment to look
around the gray landscape, her mind’s eye saw the perfection of the only
remnant of summer phlox in the garden before she saw it with her eyes.
Each petal was
still intact despite the ravages of wind and rain. The fragile flower had
withstood the elements of nature and, though somewhat changed by the natural
aging process of all living things, it still retained the perfect beauty of its
first blossoming in the warm spring sunshine.
A sense of
overwhelming peace filled her soul and her spirits soared for the first time in
many months. It was an omen. A sense of well-being filled the woman and her
thoughts were no longer anxious about her absent son. She gently plucked the
flower and took it inside where she sprayed it with gold paint and placed it in
a glass, supported by tiny multi-colored ornaments. It was her only Christmas
decoration. She put it on the piano where she looked at it often during the
afternoon and evening.
A few days later the letter came. It was from her son. He wrote his mother many things about the year he had spent away from her. At one point he was without food and shelter and had gone to the mountains to die. But he didn’t die. He withstood the cruel elements of nature and the even crueler ravages of the desolation of human spirit, and he had survived. Much as the fragile phlox that was a messenger of hope to his mother on Christmas Day.
“I got a
tattoo,” my only daughter said to me over the phone from college. “Now
don’t get crazy, it’s only a teensy weensy red rose.
“Where,” I
said.
“We-l-l-l, it’s
just above my bra line.”
“So much for
off-the-shoulder wedding gowns,” I said icily.
“Oh, Ma, I’ll
probably never get married anyway.”
“I’d
say you have a better chance of getting a job in the circus now,” I replied.
“But it
makes me feel so free.”
“I’ll bet
it wasn’t. How much did it cost?”
“ You
don’t want to know.”
“Who did
it? A man or a woman?”
“It
was a really neat guy. He’s semi-famous. He had a bit part in a movie once.”
“Don’t tell me, let me guess. “The Rose Tattoo?”
“I knew you’d
say that. I’m going to hang up
now.”
“No don’t hang
up. This is fascinating. I want to hear more. What are you going to do when you
get tired of it? You know you change your mind as often as you do your hair
color.”
“I’ll never
get tired of it.”
“No?
I’ll give you three weeks. This is not like the tattoos you used to get in
bubble gum, you know. It won’t wash off. What about the needle?” I said.
“How can you be sure he used a clean needle?”
“I bought my own
needle. It was brand new. You know, Ma, I could have done something worse.”
“Like
what?” I said.
“I could have
gotten my nose pierced.”
“Not if you ever
wanted to have Christmas dinner at your grandmother’s again,” I said. “And
speaking of your grandmother, you better not tell her.”
“Why not?”
“Remember when you got
the second holes in your ears and she said only streetwalkers wear more than two
earrings at a time.?”
“I know, I know. If God
wanted holes in my ears he would have put them there.”
“So what’s next?” I
asked. “Maybe a heart with ‘Mother’ tattooed across it?”
“I’m not a sailor,”
she said. “What are you laughing at?”
“I’m just
thinking about when you’re 90 and in a nursing home. Can’t you just hear the
nurses snickering about the old dame with the rose tattoo on her boob?”
Date Last Revised: 02/14/2003
Copyright©Janis Osborne 2003