Over Afternoon Tea

Tea is not only a drink but a ritual over which people have been relaxing, talking, and catching up on each other's lives for centuries. This blog is intended to serve as a virtual cup of tea, helping me keep in touch with friends and family in my physical absence.

Mama's Spirit

They waited five years.
They were young and inexperienced and they hadn't much money. So they waited five years, and worked, and saved. They bought a car and a house. Finally she got pregnant, and they paid the money in advance to the hospital, because that was the way you did it, in those days, and then the insurance company paid you back.
At seven months she quit work. "You won't have any insurance, you know," they told her, and she said it was all right, they had insurance through her husband's job. She was glad to go home.
And then his company failed. He lost his job, and the baby was born. Two weeks later, baby was back in the hospital with pneumonia, and they had nothing. His parents wired money for her hospital bills.
He found work as a tree-trimmer, but winter is the rainy season in Texas. If he could've worked every day they'd be fine, but half the time he was home. He was still looking for something better. Her conscience ate at her, a gnawing dread. Finally she went to him.
"Do you want me to go back to work?"
There was a long pause. "Do you want to go back to work?"
"I'd almost rather give her up for adoption," she said, exaggerating like she often did when very upset.
"We'll find a way," he said.
He found a new job, and they never looked back.
Twenty-five years later, is it any wonder I chafe at my desk, wanting to be home with kids?