Just a Little Thing
It was very late one spring night in 1949
when I arrived home. The hall light was still burning, welcoming
me.
My girlfriend and I had gone to a movie
downtown in Toronto. (Movies in those days started with a newsreel,
a cartoon, and then a "double feature". When the second
movie was finished, everyone stood at attention and sang "God
Save The King".)
As usual, when I arrived home at night,
my mother's bedroom light was still on. I stopped at her door
and we remarked on how warm it was out and she asked about the
movies. My mother wasn't usuallly this talkative and I was really
tired. It wasn't the best idea, I concluded, to stay out that
late on a work night.
As I was saying goodnight, my mother said,
"Mmmm, I can just taste them," and smiled.
"Hmm? Taste what, Mom?" I asked.
"Oh, I was just thinking out loud,
I guess. I just have a craving for a snack. Imagine! A snack at
midnight," and her dark-brown eyes sparkled as her face lit
up in a smile, thinking herself foolish, I guess.
It was late but here was someone who was
always doing things for others and to get her a couple of cookies
and a hot drink was such a little thing to do for her.
"I'll get you something, Mom,"
I said.
She looked at me and started to laugh.
Impishly, she giggled when she said, "But I'm really craving
green peas. I can almost taste them, honestly!"
"Peas? Fresh peas? Cooked?"
She nodded and we both broke out laughing.
My mother had never let her hair down, with me, like that before.
When I stopped laughing, I said, "Then
green peas it will be." I went downstairs to the kitchen,
looked in the Frigedaire and pulled out a good handful of peas,
shelled them, cooked them and put them in a cereal bowl and let
some butter melt over them as I climbed the wooden stairs again.
It was such a little thing but Mom was
so pleased. She sat up in bed, a pretty pink bed-jacket on over
her nightie, looking like a young girl who had just been crowned
"Queen for the Day".
"Mmm, these are just how I tasted
them," she said in her funny Irish (or maybe Dutch) way,
and we both laughed again when she realized what she had just
said.
"Goodnight, Mom. Enjoy!" I said
and blew her a kiss from her doorway.
"Thank you, Joan. I can't remember
when I have ever tasted anything so good."
It may have been a late night but I slept
soundly, feeling a closeness with my mother, and knew that because
of just a little thing we had shared a special moment together.
Joan Adams Burchell (copyright)
"Image courtesy of www.PicturesNow.com"