Mother

MOTHER
BY K C SOMMERS
©APRIL 4, 2012

Chapter one 

My heart was in it but my mind wasn’t. I stared out the bay window into the darkened gloom. It was ten am yet, rain had set in. In the distance I could see the edge of the rain fall. Lighting was heavy in the sky. “Oh”, I jumped!
“Aunt Carol, are you all right”?
A voice that seemed to come from a distance call, and then gradually the words came clear. It was my nice Sybil. “Aunt Carol, are you all right”? Sybil asked once again.
I just turned my head and looked at her and smiled, as if that should have been enough to satisfy as the answer. From the window bench where I had been perched I had seen a lighting strike off in the far distance. Perhaps it struck the trees, it often had. It was nature’s way of clearing out the over population of forest.
Living in the northwest was a beautiful experience growing up. North and west of Sisters Oregon high in the hills that overlooked rivers and miles of green forest and the scars of my fellow man.
Sybil came and set down opposite me, not saying a word to one another we turned and looked out the oversized window my father made in his workshop. Grand dad, my father and his four brothers built this home for my Grandmother. That was two life time’s ago. My dad was the only survivor now sixty seven.
Sybil pointed into the distance. I said, “I see it. It must have been from a lighting strike”.
“How bad do you think it will get”?
I shuddered knowing the truth about forest fires. I didn’t like to say what I knew. It was indeed a fire we could see the smoke. She sprang from her perch ran from my room after turning right , then down the hall two doors and into my mother’s room. I reluctantly followed I reached mom’s room and froze at the door seal. Sybil had picked up my mother’s binoculars, aiming them into the gloom and now what looked like impending doom. There was a fire break so I wasn’t much concerned, I don’t know why; maybe I was upset about my mother’s funeral that took place yesterday. My Mother now rests on the mantle next to her parents.
Rising and falling, up and down Sybil was flexing her ankles, up and down. She was athletic; many times I too exercised my calf muscles in that same way. She was my sister’s kid after all and she favored me mostly and I guess that would mean our mother too. I remember mom liked to hike and running was natural for her, that or biking. From a toddlers view I remember her as she pedaled her bike towing me and then later my younger sister behind her until we could join our older siblings on bikes of our own. Dad and grand-pa were the best of friends, except during football season, basketball and yes baseball too. Mom always exclaimed if they ever agreed on any sport our home would be boring. Dad and grand-pa did agree on one or two things when it came to sports. The both hated soccer and disliked golf, and hockey well I won’t tell what they said about hockey, partly because I like it.  Dad, well he played golf and still does, as funny as it was, I suspect dad and grand-pa just needed something to argue about.
Sybil was staring out mom’s bay window focusing on the ever growing cloud of steam and smoke. I not willing to enter was standing at the doorway, I leaned my head to where it rested on the doorjamb. I loved to watch my nice doing her thing, it was like a window to my past and my childhood now lost. She was dressed for the funeral in a pair of slacks a vest that even had a jacket and it fit as it was made for her curves and knowing her mother my older sister Emily, it would have been tailored made and cut to show off. A power suit I heard Sybil say at the funeral dinner. That is what Emily would have called it too my big sis the stock broker.
I watched as Sybil stopped in midair, standing on the ball of her feet I watched her slowly sink her heals back to the floor. She picked up her cell phone from her suit jacket pocket and on speed dial she pressed send then raised the phone to her ear. “Hello! Yes this is Sybil Sims; I am calling from my Aunts home on old paint road”. The voice on the other end must have said something like they knew where she was calling from because my nice acknowledge, “yes that’s right, I mean correct. From my Grandmothers bedroom window I am watching the beginning of a forest fire. I believe my Aunt Carol watched the lighting strike about 5 minutes ago and it’s rapidly getting bigger”, she paused, “what? Oh I’m sorry I am looking south towards Sisters”. The conservation officer had known about the blaze and things had been set into motion already the fire tower spotted it and because of the dry lighting in the area they were on close watches.
Sybil was 13 she had loved the forest, the nature of it all was part of her life, and furthermore she was truly born in the right state. I didn’t know then but had always suspected that one day she would become a conservationist.
I turned from the door as Sybil turned to watch me step from view. Not far down the hall I heard her speaking to what sounded like one of her friends. I stopped and leaned with my back to the wall and sunk down to the floor, just three feet from my mother’s room. From the first floor I could hear laughter from my father come up from the open stairway. I heard my father laughing, again forcefully this time; at some lame joke I suppose. Probably something stupid my brother-in-law said no doubt. “Humph Sybil’s father is such an A_”, I said lowly. I never finished it you know that word how undignified; to actually think it, and really mean it and yet still just couldn’t bring myself to ever use bad language.  I leaned my head into my knees as I brought them up; I closed my eyes.