The Blue House

One afternoon arriving home from school, I was excited because we had two weeks off for Christmas vacation. As I walked into the house and glanced into Mom and Dad’s bedroom, I noticed the drawers from their dresser were pulled-out and emptied on the floor. I called out for Mother, but the house was silent. I ran out in the back yard where I could see the workers in the distant field. I ran as hard and as fast as my legs would carry me until I reached Mom. Gasping for breath, I told her that the drawers in her bedroom were emptied all over the floor. The look on her face I will never forget. It was a look of anguish mixed with pain. Not physical pain, but pain of a deep sorrow. Her face was sunburned from working outside in the weather, her nose was red on the tip from the cold, her lips were chapped and broken, and I could see the tears welling-up in her eyes. I always thought of mother as being a pretty woman, no wrinkles and her pretty smile. She was still pretty, but I could see that working outside in the weather coupled with the stress in her life had added years to her appearance. Mom didn’t say a word to me, but told the man-in-charge she needed to go home. I remember when he asked if everything was okay, she shook her head, “Yes”, but the obvious answer was “No”. He offered to weigh her sack of cotton bowls and promised to bring her wages by the house that afternoon. We headed home without talking and I watched Mom walk into the bedroom and pick- up her little red box where she had carefully stored away her wages for the last several weeks. The box was empty! I saw the tears that she had managed to hold back start to fall as she put her hand to her mouth to control her sobs. At that point, I began to cry, not for the loss of the money, or the ram shacked bedroom, but because I loved Mother and, for the first time in my life, I felt real pain, Mother’s pain, and I didn’t know what to do. So, I cried. I remember her pulling me up into her arms and comforting me as only the love of a mother could do. At that time, I could not completely understand the depth of her pain because I didn’t know the full story. I didn’t know, she was saving money so her children could have Christmas presents under the tree on Christmas morning. I didn’t understand that all her hard work in the fields to furnish a happy Christmas for her children was all in vain, and she had no backup plan. I didn’t know what she knew then, and shared with me many years later, that it was Dad who staged the break-in and used the money at the local tavern.