When Willow opened her eyes the next morning at her father’s house, she couldn’t help but think that she might never see her mother again. It had already been nearly a week. She ghosted through another day at Robert Kansas Elementary School. Through another afternoon at her father’s with word searches and her CD player and completing her checklists. Until, that evening, the doorbell rang and it was her mother. Rosie looked as lively and cool as ever in her slightly tattered knee-length floral-printed dress and red lipstick.
Asher burst past Willow and hugged his mother’s slender leg without even a pause.
“Hi, Mommy!” he cheered through a toothless smile.
Rosie stretched her arms out for her daughter with Asher still wrapped around her calf.
But Willow still had sadness, confusion, anger, hopelessness, frustration and longing in her heart and in her blood. And she was not ready to relinquish that sadness. That anger. That confusion. That hopelessness. That frustration. That longing. All of these terrible, terrible feelings that had been swirling around inside of Willow for the past week.
Willow stood there in the doorway of her father’s house trying to digest what it meant that her mother was standing right in front of her like nothing happened. Trying to decide how to feel. What to say. She wanted to untether the questions that were stuck in the back of her throat and just blurt them out. She wanted to ask so many things. So many big, important things.
Where were you?
Why did you leave us here?
Why didn’t you tell us?
Why did you fall asleep on the couch?
What were you trying to say to me up in the willow tree?
Where were my Pixy Stix when I needed them at school?
What are those things in your drawer you didn’t want me to find?
But the questions were stuck. And Willow was all quiet.
So Rosie stole the silence.
“Oh, get over here, you noodle,” Rosie said casually to her frozen daughter. And Rosie tilted her head to the side and looked straight at Willow’s eyes while she said it.
And so Willow did. She hugged her mother like she was asked but she did it with open eyes. And as Willow got into the back of her mother’s car, her fears stuck with her. Fears that she’d had somewhere deep down for some time but were now illuminated. Fears of a life without her mother in it. Fears of an existence where no one understood her. Fears of a life without her mother and her mother’s love. Fears that allowed her to rebound right back into Rosie’s love as the sounds of Prince flowed through the car.
But when her mother made a left turn instead of a right out of Rex’s street and Willow felt adventure coming, she couldn’t help but fill up with excitement. An excitement that allowed love to take over all those icky things inside of her. And as love took back over, as Rosie took back over, all the sadness, the anger, the confusion, the hopelessness, the frustration, the longing disappeared. It was so easy.
Willow looked over at Asher to see if he had similarly sensed adventure, but he was just clicking his feet together and watching his shoes light up.
Willow looked up at Rosie but could only see her mother’s eyes in the rearview mirror. They looked big and full. Now she knew for certain that an adventure was coming.
“Mom, where are we going?” Willow asked, trying to shout over the music.
And Rosie tilted the rearview mirror down to meet Willow’s eyes and get a clearer view of her children, prioritizing the view of her children’s faces over the view of the cars traveling on the road behind her.
“Yeah, Mom. Whewe awe we going?” Asher chimed in though he wasn’t sure why.
When Rosie rolled down the windows and sped up without an answer, both Asher and Willow lit up, certain they were in for an adventure. They bounced up and down in the back seat of Lili Von and let their mother bring them back into her life.
“Where are we going? Where are we going?” they chanted in staccato and in unison as the car sped up faster.
“Where are we going? Where are we going?” they continued, now pounding their palms on the leather seats to the beat of their own chant.
Rosie joined in on the same choppy cadence. “I know where we’re going. I know where we’re going.” She honked the horn to that same beat.
And then, through a deep belly giggle, Asher forced out a “TELLLLLLL USSSSSSS!” with a screeching volume and enduring breath that surprised everyone in the car.
Rosie stopped the car on the side of the road, turned around and opened her big brown eyes as wide as they could go.
“Hang on to your hats and jackets. We’re going to the beach.”
“HOORAY!” Willow and Asher rejoiced in unison out the open windows while they swallowed the wind and swayed their hands above their heads to “1999,” as the taste of salt took over the cold air.
And when they got to the edge of the sand, Rosie pulled her noisy blue car with its googly eyes to a stop. Willow and Asher were already out of the car and sprinting around the shoreline. They looked like two windup toys with their legs zipping around beneath their hips. Rex had wound them so tight with homework checks and chore requests while she was gone, and they were finally releasing it all right there on the sand of Sandbridge Beach.
Willow and Asher chased each other to the top of the dunes and fell into the sand with their arms extended. And when they saw their mother walking toward the water, they rolled down the dunes without caring about the sand in their hair and their shoes and their pants. They ran across the beach and caught up with Rosie. And Willow got right up next to her mother and watched her red toenails sink under the cold sand and reveal themselves again as they walked closer and closer to the water. Farther and farther from everything else.
Rosie handed Willow and Asher each a kite and made eye contact and smiled with each one of her children as she did. She instructed Willow and Asher to hold the spool in their right hands, the string in their left hand, and then to run, run, run as fast as they could. To go, go, go and feel free. Rosie jumped up and down and cheered after them as they ran down the empty beach.
And as Asher took off, the wind scooped effortlessly underneath his kite and lifted it right into the early twilight. But Willow’s little stumble caused her purple kite to dip straight into the sand. She threw her body down in frustration as she watched Asher’s kite wiggle around high in the sky. And then Willow looked up at her mother. Up at her mother, who was looking right back at her lovingly.
And soon Asher’s legs got tired, and after Willow buried her kite entirely underneath the sand, Rosie taught her children how to find the perfect skipping stones. “Flat and long,” she said as she rubbed her fingers across the smooth stone she took out of her bag.
Willow noticed that the way she caressed that stone was the same way she tickled Willow’s arms. Kindly. Gently. Deliberately. She noticed how her mother touched that stone, a thing without any feelings, a thing she just met, a thing that should mean nothing to her, in the same way that she touched her daughter.
But, even still, Willow walked down the beach as the cold water washed over her toes and back into the sea. She bent down, felt a stone, tossed it aside, took two steps, bent down, felt a stone, added it to her pile, took two more steps, bent down, felt a stone. She felt happy and calm in the monotony of it. Happy and calm in the presence of her mother again. But when she picked her head up to return to her mother and Asher, it was just sky and sand and ocean and her pile of rocks. No Asher. No Mom.
No Mom.
No Mom.
No Mom.
No Mom.
She dropped all the smooth stones from her arm and ran back in the direction she had come from. She stumbled and splashed with every other step. And when she arrived at the parking lot, there was still no Mom. No Asher. No Mom. No Mom. No Mom. No Mom. No Mom. No Mom. Just more sky and sand and ocean.
Willow froze in her place. Toes buried in the cool sand. Hair twisting in the ocean breeze. Heart in a knot. A warm puddle formed below her and she stared at the empty beach.
No Mom.
No Mom.
No Mom.
No Mom.
But after only a few long seconds, Asher and her mother emerged from behind the dune where they were gathering their own handfuls of stones. Willow and Rosie made eye contact. And for a second they were both frozen in their places in the sand. Frozen until Rosie saw Willow’s wet purple leggings and winked and skipped back toward the car.
When Rosie reemerged from the trunk, she was carrying an extra pair of purple leggings, a few logs and a brown paper bag full of s’mores fixings. And then, like magic, Willow was sitting in dry purple leggings in front of a roaring fire with a golden marshmallow drooping from a stick perfect for roasting. Rosie pulled out her secret s’more ingredient, bacon bits, and the three of them licked their sticky fingers as the sun dropped behind the horizon.
And then, when the purple twilight succumbed to near darkness, Willow looked up at her mother and her eyes said so plainly, Let’s go home.
And so they did. They drove straight home. To Rosie’s home that Willow had missed so much.
* * *
And as soon as Willow walked through the front door, she inhaled the smell of the walls. The patterns of the wallpaper. The glow of the lights strung around the windows. She felt safe and taken care of when she was back at Mom’s. And as soon as her mother kissed her on the mouth before they all walked upstairs, Willow felt all of the love that she had been missing wash over her again. She felt all of that unadulterated, concentrated, rejuvenating, specific, manic love. That kind of love that her mother, and only her mother, could give her.
And even though Willow washed the sand off her toes all alone in her bathtub, and Mom didn’t invite her into her bed, she still fell asleep almost happy. Happy because she was back at Mom’s. But not entirely happy because it was so eerily quiet all around. Not entirely happy because she was all alone in her bed with no idea what kind of pajamas Mom was wearing.