Where She Sat

I was twelve years old when I saw my mother cry for the first time.  I will only see her cry one other time, five years later, when she and her boss have a falling out at the job she devoted 6 years to, even though it didn't pay as much as the same job would somewhere else.  She came home sobbing that day.  She really loved that job. This time, she sits alone outside to keep others, especially her children, 15 and 12, from seeing her close-kept tears.  I knew she was out there only because the back door squeaked whenever it was opened and the blinds that draped over its window would clamor in protest of any secrecy. The impish back door was our only way outside unless we wanted to intrude on my grandparents living upstairs.  It was early springtime.  Mom took her cold cereal outside in hopes of the sun drying her face. I like to think that the last bits of snow from the melancholy wintertime jumped to her eyelashes as a desperate attack on the coming spring.  I know that’s not true, though.  The gleam on my mother’s face was not from melting snow falling from her eyelashes. For I could see it was raining where she sat.