50. The mothering-est mom.
{Mel}
Mel bustled around her house, packing her knitting bag for a day caring for her son: a good book, her favourite tea, as well as the Nyquil packets she used to treat her husband when he was down with a cold and fever. She found her youngest planted in front of their gaming system in the basement; a cheerful Black woman was making a cake on the screen. Mel thought Bea was watching YouTube? She couldn't keep track of what her daughters did on screens anymore.
"Bea honey, can you look after yourself today? There's casserole in the fridge or noodles you could put on for lunch."
Bea gave her a smile from where she was curled under a knitted blanket, her cozy yellow hoodie keeping her matted curls in check. "Where you going, Mom? Christmas shopping for me?"
Mel laughed. "Honey, your gifts are all bought. Don't go in my room when I'm gone unless you want to spoil the surprise." Bea's eyes sparkled but Mel thought she could trust her to obey. "Jon's down with a migraine and cold, and the men have to work," Mel explained. "I'm going to look after him for the day."
"Look after Jon?" Bea asked a little incredulously.
Mel's heart gave a little bump of anticipation. Jon never asked for help, but she often thought he looked like he was carrying a heavy burden. "Even grown men need moms sometimes," Mel said. Even though grown men don't always like to admit it.
Kurt met her at the door of her sons' house, unusually drab in his paint-pattered work clothes. "Thanks for coming, Mom," he said, bending to wrap his long arms around her shoulders in a hug. Smiling, Mel squeezed him back tight. She was not at all tired of hearing that word Mom coming from Kurt.
"Happy to help," she said and felt his relieved breath under her arms.
Kurt gave her a rapid run down of symptoms and meds, and watched her set a matching timer to the one counting down on his phone.
"This is the key to the med box," Kurt said, showing her a small key on a pom-pom key ring, and using it to open a lock box in the middle of the kitchen table. "These are Jon's." He held up an unassuming prescription pill bottle and rattled off the dose. "Please lock this all up when you're done."
His blue eyes glanced at her, pausing at her puzzled expression. This was a lot like the med procedure at Jon's work house, but that was for the safety of the children. Surely Misty the cat wasn't going to get into their bathroom cabinet. "Why is this all locked up?" Mel asked.
Kurt only hesitated a second. "Because my husband is a recovering addict, darlin.' It's best if none of this is in reach when he gets low." He closed the box and locked it, handing her the key.
Mel tucked the key into the pocket of her elastic waist jeans, a little buzz of anxiety tickling her stomach. She could profoundly relate to those two sentences. These days she was usually up to managing her own meds, but there had been months and years when her husband did it for her, painstakingly refilling the seven little compartments every week and checking that they were empty at the end of the day. Sometimes she needed help and she'd had to become okay with that because she loved her life.
At her anxious silence, Kurt leaned in, rubbing her arm and kissing her forehead. "Don't worry," he said quietly, smiling into her face. "I'm taking good care of Jon. I just need help today and this queer has no trouble askin' for help."
Even heading to a construction worksite Kurt smelled like a man who looked after himself, floral and spice lingering around his body. Mel laughed a little. "You're a rare man, Kurt," she said. "Thank God for you."
Narrowing his eyes in a smile, Kurt shoved his colourful hair underneath his cap hat. "Sorry there's not much food in the house. Help yourself to oat-y shortbreads--there's plenty of those!"
When the front door closed, Mel sighed out her breath, setting her knitting bag on the kitchen chair and taking in the beautiful evergreen tree, the massive armchair and the sinkful of dishes. This house that her boys had restored and kept up together made her enormously proud of the men they had become. As she climbed the stairs, Misty trotted out of one of the bedrooms, stretching, and then sitting with her tail curled around her paws to watch Mel curiously.
She had never been upstairs in Jon's house. When she and Pete visited for a meal, the main floor and washroom were cleaned and polished--Jon's personal living space was a mystery to her. For that matter, Jon's whole private life felt like it was removed from her by entire city blocks and had for years.
Mel had no fears about being alone in her old age--Jon would be there if they needed him. Her son made every effort to maintain what her mom-friends would have called a very close adult relationship with his parents.
Mel knew Jon better than that. There were worlds behind the smile Jon reached for when he was with them--he gave them his public face. She'd known him his entire life; she could still see the edge of her son's vulnerable feelings and sensed when he was struggling but if she asked, Jon would say, I'm fine, Mom. And that smile would break her heart a little. Because she knew what it felt like to say that when you weren't.
She could see that Jon had given Kurt the key to everything about him, and that eased her mind a great deal. Perhaps there was just a time when a child outgrew his mother--now she could be sure that he was still being loved well.
Mel glanced into each room, recognizing Cary's spare, immaculate bedroom and a bedroom that seemed to be serving as Kurt's second closet--it looked like Mr. Dress Up's tickle trunk had exploded over the bed and floor. She was not surprised that the bed seemed too buried in scarves and blouses to imagine the other man sleeping here. When Jon told her 'permanently engaged' Mel and Peter had understood 'already doing all the things a married couple would do.' Privately they grieved that there was no wedding to celebrate, no chance to publicly bless Jon and Kurt as they wove their lives together, but they would celebrate and bless however they could. It seemed to Mel and Peter that God was okay to be in the mess with them, so they could be there with their children too.
She slipped inside the last closed door, careful to be quiet and shut the door quickly again on the daylight spilling from the hallway.
She held onto the doorknob, waiting for her eyes to adjust. Jon and Kurt's room smelled like menthol and beeswax and underneath that, the strong male musk that she'd had to adjust to in her first year of marriage, when she was no longer just seeing Peter on dates but also going to bed with him every night. The smell underlined yet again that her son was a fully grown man and the sweet milky baby years she'd had with Jon were long past.
She picked her way over the untidy floor to the massive bed heaped with a duvet and pillows. She could make out the pale shape of the back of Jon's bare shoulders; her son's face was tucked into his arm, his fingers loose on the back of his neck, and she could hear the soft sound of his sleeping breaths. She leaned over and laid her hand against his forehead--no fever. Reassured, she crept out of the bedroom to leave him be until his next round of meds.
In the kitchen, Misty twined around her ankles while Mel set the kettle on for tea. Her son's sleeping form stayed with her as she picked a mug from the cupboard. There were a few of her old tea cups here, she discovered, probably rescued from the donation box by Cary.
When Jon was a baby, back-sleeping had been in vogue. Every night she would lay Jon's warm, floppy body down on his back with a blanket rolled on either side of his crib to keep him from turning over--and every morning she would find him flopped on his stomach with his face tucked in his arm, exactly as he was sleeping now, in his adult bedroom upstairs.
She laughed to herself, tucking her feet up in the massively comfortable arm chair beside the Christmas tree. That is to say, every night that they could get Jon to sleep in his crib at all. In the first months after his birth Judah had been a busy toddler and Jon's favourite place to watch all the action was a snuggly pouch she'd worn across her body. Most often he slept in that pouch on her, one chubby fist wrapped in her pony-tail while she made snacks for his brother or talked on the phone to her mom, his fair eyelashes peacefully touching his peach-soft cheek whenever she would glance down to check on him.
When his brother Judah was born, two years previous, the post-partum depression had been bleak and she and Peter had both braced for another season of the same darkness with the birth of their second son. In the first days home, Mel had felt understandably exhausted, physically and mentally, a little foggy at times, but the black cloud of depression stayed away.
Judah had been fascinated by his baby brother' tiny fingers, his jerky kicking legs, his soft coos and hearty giggle. Mel could honestly say Jon's birth marked the beginning of some of the happiest years of her life--before there were any signs of leukemia, when they were dirt poor but rich in love, living in a tiny apartment just up the block from her mother.
When her phone alarm went, Mel opened the med box, counted out Jon's next dose and locked it again. Licking her thumb, she drew a cross over the metal top of the box, saying the prayer she used to dedicate oil for blessing, cleansing and healing:
Jesus take this humble thing and make it more in your powerful goodness, for your good and the good of your people.
She thought of her sons Cary and Jon dipping into this box when they needed help, when they were in pain and at the end of themselves, and she prayed that Jesus' kindness would draw near to them in those times and add His healing to these medicines.
In the dim bedroom, Jon was stirring restlessly, hands opening and closing into fists. Mel sat on the edge of the bed beside him, and her weight seemed to alert Jon to her presence for the first time. He made a soft, strained sound and turned his face, opening his mouth. Mel laid the pills on his tongue and put a straw in his mouth, holding a cup of water for him to drink like she had when he was a child. Jon's throat moved, but he didn't open his eyes.
"Thank you," he said in a hoarse voice.
Mel touched his forehead--a little clammy but not blazing with fever. His face was tight and creased with pain. "Would a cool cloth help?" she asked.
At her voice, Jon's eyes slitted open, looking at her. He was silent for some time, unmoving, then he rolled away and buried his face in his arm again like he'd decided she was a figment of his imagination and anyways he was too drugged up to care.
Sighing, Mel got to her feet and slipped out of the room, resetting the alarm on her phone.
One of the things she had not been able to persuade Cary to let go of was an old rocking chair he now kept in the corner of his sparse room. It was hardly large enough for Cary's big frame, but he kept it like he might need her to sit and read to him to fall asleep like she had some nights in the first year he'd come to call her Mom. He likely didn't know it was the chair she nursed her babies in--he just treasured it because it was her chair.
Mel went down to fetch her knitting bag and a fresh cup of tea, then settled into her old rocker to knit a few more rows of a cardigan for Bea. Tabitha wouldn't wear her mother's hand-knit clothing, but her youngest loved them all, bless her heart. Bless Tabitha May's heart too--all her children were so different, Mel felt she needed a different parenting course for each of them.
Midway through her timer's countdown (three rows done on the variegated back of Bea's sweater) the door to Jon's room nudged open. Mel stilled her rocking, wondering if she needed to get up to check. Jon's bare shoulders emerged, much lower than she'd expected. He was crawling, slowly, to the bathroom, his head down so she couldn't tell if he even had his eyes open. She heard the sound of him peeing, the flush of the toilet and hush of the sink and then he was crawling back across the hall again, disappearing into his room.
She got up to make sure he made it into his bed, opening the door in time to see Jon burrow his face into his pillow and pull himself on top of the rumpled covers with a low groan. Quietly, Mel eased the covers out from under his collapsed body and pulled them up to tuck him in. Jon heaved a sigh and she leaned over and kissed his pale forehead.
At this, Jon's eyes cracked open, looking at her through his lashes. His hand came up, touching her hair falling over her shoulder. "Mom," he murmured, as if naming her to himself.
"Hey Son," Mel said gently. "Do you need anything?"
His forehead creased and he took a slow breath, closing his eyes. "Head hurts. Gonna sleep."
"You do that, honey," Mel said. "I'll be here if you need anything." She wasn't sure if he was awake even now.
{Jon}
The first thing Jon noticed as the haze of meds lifted, was the avalanche in his head had finally come to a stop. He uncurled, opening his hands and touching the back of his neck and then pressing the top of his springy, unwashed hair. Little pebbles and rivulets of sand still crumbled but the main landslide of pain had settled.
He eased onto his back, blinking at his room. There was light peeking around the curtains of his room...time of day uncertain. The same day, he thought. It took a moment to retrieve the next piece of information. Monday. His holidays--he could just lie here until the sun went down and Kurt came home.
Except he was a little bit hungry and very thirsty.
The next thing Jon noticed was the sound of steps coming up the stairs. He frowned, rubbing his forehead. Who was here? Kurt hadn't skipped work to babysit him, had he? Disorientated, he tried to think if he'd had another round of meds since he'd woken in the middle of the night. He would remember pain waking him up to take them, wouldn't he?
The door to his room opened and his mom slipped in, surprisingly light on her feet. Jon sucked in his breath, staring at her soft form in her nubby knitted wrap sweater and greying ponytail spilling over her shoulder in his dark, messy bedroom. He'd been sure she was a dream earlier.
Mel's face brightened. "Oh good, you're awake." She held up a glass of water and a pair of pills. "I have your next round of meds--do you think you need them?"
Jon tried to shove himself up and immediately regretted it as a wave of black shoved him back onto the pillows. Biting back a swear, he pressed the heels of his hands into the seam in the bones of his face right above his eyebrows.
"Honey, take it easy," Mel said. "You've been down most of the day."
"What are you doing here?" Jon asked. The question sounded harsh--his throat felt shredded and his nose was still stuffed. This stupid cold hadn't run its course in his body yet.
There was a 'click' of the water glass beside him. "Kurt asked me to come," Mel said softly.
Jon dug his knuckles into his aching face. What the hell had Kurt been thinking, inviting his mom over on a day he was flattened with a migraine? Nothing was clean, there was no food in the house and he couldn't even stand on his own.
He tried to make spit for his dry throat. "How long have you been here?"
"Well...since Kurt left for work this morning. Around eight-thirty?"
He squinted at her, standing with her hands folded uncertainly beside his bed. When are you leaving? He just had the presence of mind not to ask that out loud--but he was back in the land of the functioning now and it was his job to look after himself. "What time is it? How many pills have I had today?"
"It's three-o-clock now. This will be...let me see...six in the last twelve hours."
Carefully, he rolled over and propped himself on his elbow, taking one of the pills off his bedside table and drinking most of the water. He nudged the second pill back towards her. "Thank you." He just met her worried eyes for a second. "I'm good now, Mom. You don't need to stay." His voice was hoarse and he eased his head onto his pillow.
"I'm happy to stay until you're back on your feet," Mel said. "I don't expect the men back until six."
Jon sighed. He would not be back on his feet before then, if this residual headache was any indication. He felt his mom tug the blankets up around his shoulders and tuck them in more securely.
"Are you hungry at all or do you just want to sleep?"
"I'm a little hungry," he admitted.
"I'll make you some toast," Mel said.
His neck twitched, tightening. "Please check the bags. For my bread. Cary still eats wheat."
"Of course," Mel said. "Your husband showed me all that this morning. That's quite a good man you have there, dear," Mel added fondly. "I'm becoming quite attached to Kurt."
"Yup. He's something," Jon said wryly. Right at the moment he felt as though Kurt and his mom had teamed up on him and he would have liked to give his partner a piece of his mind.
3172 words.
*What did you think of the glimpses of baby Jon? I was very much thinking of my experience with my own babies, more than a decade ago now...
Why do you think Jon is angry that his mom is here?
Four chapters left, lovelies! Thank you for the reads and votes; I'll see you on Saturday. ♡*
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