Fifty Seven Years

                         

  Fifty-seven Years

                     
                                       
    The shiny convertible pulled into the nearest available parking space, just as it has nearly every Sunday for the past thirteen years. He sat there for a moment listening while one of his favorite songs came to an end. When it was over, he turned off the air-conditioner and the engine, then got out. It was eight-thirty in the morning, and the sun was already roasting everything it touched, including him; just another typical Fall morning in Florida. He hated going to the nursing home. A building filled with residents who were now mere hollow shells of who they used to be, his mother one among them. As he signed his name to the visitors’ log, he reflected upon his own life. A life filled with pain misery and a seemingly endless parade of misadventures.   

    As a child, he grew up the hard way, with regular beatings at the hands of his father. His mother chose not to intervene lest she become the object of his wrath. All children need discipline from time to time, but in many cases the discipline was sheer brutality. At the age of thirteen, Christmas and birthdays ceased to be celebrated. His mother took out her frustrations upon him also; she never conveyed warmth or affection towards him. At the age of nineteen, he was free of them. Yet the scars remained.

    All of this negative reinforcement possibly steered him to a wild life of drugs, theft, imprisonment, broken marriages, and despair.
There was the occasional bright spot, such as the birth of his daughter, and a couple of recognitions from one of his employers. The best of which, for using a crane to save a man’s life who was seriously injured while working the graveyard shift on an aircraft carrier.

    Twenty years ago, his life took a significant turn for the better. Fate intervened and took his life to a new place, somewhere he had never been before. A place of true happiness, honesty, and dare I say it. True love, the kind of love that only comes around once in a lifetime. At first he feared it, but as time went on he learned to trust it. His wife became the most loving and loyal person he had ever met. He feels privileged and honored to be her husband, and over the years she has calmed him, and he is a better man because of her.

    Today as he did nearly every Sunday for the past thirteen years, he will visit his mother, and attempt to cheer her spirit. As he walks past the wheelchair bound residents, he smiles and waves and wishes them good morning. A simple act of kindness that will be forgotten in mere seconds, once he enters his mother’s room.

    “Hi mom! How are you feeling today?” She looks up from her breakfast tray. A plastic knife in her left hand, as she struggles to spread butter on her toast. “Hi Joe.”
   
    “Why are you still in bed?”

    “I had a dizzy spell yesterday. They say it’s because I’m pregnant.”

    “Mom, you know darn well you’re not pregnant. You’re not even married anymore.”

    “I know, and I told them that. They’re nuts around here.”

    “Yeah, I know they are. It’s been a long time since you got pregnant, and look what happened. You wound up with a big galoot.”

    She chuckled, “Yeah, a big galoot.”

    “Let me help you with that.” He spreads the butter and cuts the toast into small squares. After all of these years, he felt happy of how his life has turned out so far.

    “Mom.” She looked straight into his eyes. “I’m happy you had me.”

    For the first time in his life, and without breaking her gaze, she uttered.

    “I’m happy I had you too, Joe.”

    She went back to eating her breakfast. Meanwhile, a wave of emotion swept over him. This little wrinkled woman, who had always resided in a dark place in his heart, had finally reached out and touched him in a way he had never known before. And there, in the fall of his fifty-seventh year, his scars were finally swept away. It had simply been, the nicest thing she ever said to him, and she never even knew it.