slept for three hours, dead to the world, and woke feeling refreshed.
Sue was still sleeping when I stirred. It looked as if she hadn’t moved a muscle from the way she first had lain down. Something impish in me wanted to tiptoe over and find a feather to tickle her nose or her bare feet.
Instead of disturbing her, I studied the frescos on the walls and then turned over and eyed the paintings on the ceiling. The clouds looked light and dimensional, as if they actually puffed out from the ceiling a few inches more than the rest of the painting. I loved the shade of blue in the sky. It was a soft, soothing, reflecting-pool blue and added coolness to the room.
From the open windows rose the echoing call of a young child. The voice was so loud that Sue’s eyelids fluttered. She turned over and went back to sleep. Rising andgoing to the open windows as quietly as I could, I looked down on the piazza. The ancient capped well in the center of the cobblestones had become the meeting place for two women and four busy children. Two dark-haired boys wearing shorts and brown leather lace-up shoes with white socks were riding tricycles in circles around the well. Two girls had a rope and were organizing a skipping game, with the taller girl calling out her instructions with universal big-sister authority. Her loud voice had found its way to our quarters and echoed off the high ceilings.
“What time is it?” Sue asked.
“Ten after four.”
“You’re kidding. Wow, I can’t believe how long we slept.”
“You have to come see this,” I said from where I stood by the window looking down on the piazza. “Look at these children.”
The two mothers stood with their arms folded across the front of them, chatting, nodding, and keeping a maternal eye on their little ones. The skipping rope game was in full swing, and the tricycle racers were picking up their speed.
I don’t know what Sue was thinking about, but I guessed it was the same thing I was thinking. We were mothers of young children once. And now they are grown. I thought back to when my daughter, Callie, was that young. She was twenty-six now, as independent as allget-out and yet faithful to call me regularly. She had been to Dallas four times to see me in the two years I’d lived there.
Callie and I “grew up” together, just the two of us, tucked into a tiny house in Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota. She and I moved into the cottage when she was five. It had been my grandparents’ summer place, and they had left it to me in their will with a request that I never sell it but give it to Callie. I did, and she still lived there with a fat cat named Max and a steady stream of houseguests every summer.
When Callie was seven she asked if she could “paint” her room. She painted a bright yellow sun in the top corner and lined the bottom edge with rows of blue and red posies. From the ceiling she hung five paper butterflies on fishing line that fluttered about whenever the windows were open, welcoming the breeze off the lake. That was apparently the start of her graphic arts career, which was now in full swing at a greeting card company only twenty miles from home.
I remembered all the afternoons Callie and her friends would ride their bikes the four blocks to the lake. I would stand at the front window watching until their bobbing ponytails turned the corner on Mercury Avenue. Callie was an independent thirteen-year-old, and I was a nervous cat. I would make myself busy for an hour or less before I returned to the front window with furniture to dust orlaundry to fold while I continued my vigil.
“Women are the same the world over, aren’t they?” Sue stood beside me and looked out the window with a tender gaze.
“Yes, we are. And you know what I think? I think what those women are doing right now is a beautiful work of art. Someone should make a tapestry of that or paint a wall with scenes of mothers watching their children play.”
“Aren’t you poetic! Come
Sue was still sleeping when I stirred. It looked as if she hadn’t moved a muscle from the way she first had lain down. Something impish in me wanted to tiptoe over and find a feather to tickle her nose or her bare feet.
Instead of disturbing her, I studied the frescos on the walls and then turned over and eyed the paintings on the ceiling. The clouds looked light and dimensional, as if they actually puffed out from the ceiling a few inches more than the rest of the painting. I loved the shade of blue in the sky. It was a soft, soothing, reflecting-pool blue and added coolness to the room.
From the open windows rose the echoing call of a young child. The voice was so loud that Sue’s eyelids fluttered. She turned over and went back to sleep. Rising andgoing to the open windows as quietly as I could, I looked down on the piazza. The ancient capped well in the center of the cobblestones had become the meeting place for two women and four busy children. Two dark-haired boys wearing shorts and brown leather lace-up shoes with white socks were riding tricycles in circles around the well. Two girls had a rope and were organizing a skipping game, with the taller girl calling out her instructions with universal big-sister authority. Her loud voice had found its way to our quarters and echoed off the high ceilings.
“What time is it?” Sue asked.
“Ten after four.”
“You’re kidding. Wow, I can’t believe how long we slept.”
“You have to come see this,” I said from where I stood by the window looking down on the piazza. “Look at these children.”
The two mothers stood with their arms folded across the front of them, chatting, nodding, and keeping a maternal eye on their little ones. The skipping rope game was in full swing, and the tricycle racers were picking up their speed.
I don’t know what Sue was thinking about, but I guessed it was the same thing I was thinking. We were mothers of young children once. And now they are grown. I thought back to when my daughter, Callie, was that young. She was twenty-six now, as independent as allget-out and yet faithful to call me regularly. She had been to Dallas four times to see me in the two years I’d lived there.
Callie and I “grew up” together, just the two of us, tucked into a tiny house in Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota. She and I moved into the cottage when she was five. It had been my grandparents’ summer place, and they had left it to me in their will with a request that I never sell it but give it to Callie. I did, and she still lived there with a fat cat named Max and a steady stream of houseguests every summer.
When Callie was seven she asked if she could “paint” her room. She painted a bright yellow sun in the top corner and lined the bottom edge with rows of blue and red posies. From the ceiling she hung five paper butterflies on fishing line that fluttered about whenever the windows were open, welcoming the breeze off the lake. That was apparently the start of her graphic arts career, which was now in full swing at a greeting card company only twenty miles from home.
I remembered all the afternoons Callie and her friends would ride their bikes the four blocks to the lake. I would stand at the front window watching until their bobbing ponytails turned the corner on Mercury Avenue. Callie was an independent thirteen-year-old, and I was a nervous cat. I would make myself busy for an hour or less before I returned to the front window with furniture to dust orlaundry to fold while I continued my vigil.
“Women are the same the world over, aren’t they?” Sue stood beside me and looked out the window with a tender gaze.
“Yes, we are. And you know what I think? I think what those women are doing right now is a beautiful work of art. Someone should make a tapestry of that or paint a wall with scenes of mothers watching their children play.”
“Aren’t you poetic! Come
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