Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: TRIP (08/25/22)
-
TITLE: Needing Her | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jennifer Percell
09/01/22 -
LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE
SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT
ADD TO MY FAVORITES
My shift lasts five more hours, there are so many customers clasping their fliers and digging through the bins of 'buy one get one free' merino wools that I have no doubt we will reach our sales goal. For a project in my graphic arts class, I had designed something we could actually use. Maggie was happy with my work; she had mentioned she'd be needing an assistant manager. That would help pay off my school bills, but I always thought that graduation would mean going home. I miss home so much.
“Ball and Skein” was a bohemian yarn shop. A two-story house just off Main Street housed the shop, three classrooms and a studio apartment in the attic. My first day on campus I had explored and found my paradise in these blocks of artsy boutiques and bistros. I set my heart on a job teaching knitting and crochet classes. By my sophomore year I had the job and the attic apartment. Maggie had become my mentor and confidant. Her gentle presence took the edge off my homesickness but everything in the store reminded me of my first mentor.
When I was five, she began to teach me all I knew about fiber arts. We spent hundreds of Saturday afternoons playing with yarn and making sketches of our own imaginary patterns, lovely daydreams shared by a lonely child and her gentle comforter.
I walked to the window to straighten the collar of the third mannequin, the one who wears our first published pattern. When the final draft of our pattern book, Saturday Daydreams, arrived I promised myself I would go and show it to her in person, but there was never time to get away. Classes and work were my excuses, but fear was the real issue. I had been away so long; would she be the same? Was it best to remember her how I loved her most and not how the years had surely changed her?
She always told me to create as much beauty in the world as I possibly could. She would be delighted with how I have followed that wisdom. She deserved to see the book, her name above mine on the cover. A seven-hour flight, and my fear of her age, her frailty, the weakness I hear in her voice when she calls every Saturday, all cripple my best intentions. If I run fast enough into my busy-ness my fears will fade.
“We sold all of the merinos! Your advertising skills just doubled our monthly gain!”
“Oh, Maggie, that's great, if one flier can do that much will you let me try a website? We are the only store on the block without one.”
“Yes! You have earned a website, and a week off.”
Maggie's gift of a week off was completely unexpected. For graduation, she explained, as well as an expression of her gratitude for what I had accomplished at the store. I knew the credit for making Ball and Skein more successful was not mine to accept. I had only channeled the creative initiative instilled in me by my dear guardian.
The time had come.
Flights were available, Purl the cat was boarded, and my bags were packed. The Uber driver made small talk, was I going to the beach? My heart was too full to explain that this trip was much better, I was going home!
Eight hours later I arrive. The nursing home is drab, just as, and I realize I have wasted three years of chances to bring her joy. I hated moving her here, I hated selling our home, and I let those sorrows rob us of so much time. I stand in the door of room 120, I watch her as she looks out the window, I see flowers, brightly colored blankets, baskets of yarn, the extensions of her beauty. All that I feared was gone, is by the grace of God, still here.
“Grandma.”
The smile crinkles her eyes, dimples her cheeks, and in her strong, warm hug, I find home.
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
Accept Jesus as Your Lord and Savior Right Now - CLICK HERE
JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel.