This is another post in a series, about a woman named Amara. Every Friday I will post another segment in this story.
Amara followed Joy through the doors, and to the elevator of the professional building at rapid speed. She had now begun to experience that familiar feeling of her knee swelling and throbbing.
Once in the office of Dr. Faw, and once Joy had informed the Vulture-lady receptionist of her mother’s arrival, they were quickly ushered into a sterile examining room. Before they were able to be seated, Dr. Faw walked in.
The next memory that Amara had was that of sitting in her living room, her foot up on a stool, with an ice pack on her knee. It felt as though she was just startled awake from a solid sleep, and did not know what day it was, or where she was, or anything leading up to this very moment.
Amara looked around the room, all looked as it always did. She saw the setting sun outside her large bay window, noting that it was mid evening. She looked down at her knee, saw the dirt on her pants, started to feel it’s throb, and the cold of the ice on it. Now how did that happen without my knowing it? She wondered, worriedly.
Surely I should be able to remember what caused this pain in my knee, or at least my getting the ice on it. Now, what day is it? I do not even remember that! What was I doing before this moment? What did I do all day? About my knee, how did this happen? Where did it happen?
With every question Amara pondered, only more questions surfaced, with not an answer or clue in sight. Anxiety was setting in, not due to her knee, but due to her not remembering.
She decided to call Joy to see how her day was, and maybe she would give Amara a clue as to what she had been doing all day.
As the kids did their homework, and Joe was gone on yet another business trip, Joy poured herself a steaming hot cup of tea.
This was not a mug, but a china cup, complete with saucer. She had received this beautiful pair when she was just five years old, the same age as her Jessica. Her grandmother, Ellie, gave it to her for Christmas, the last Christmas before Gramma Ellie died. They said she died of a heart attack, but those who knew and loved her, knew that she died of a broken heart on Valentines Day of the following year.
Her husband, Joy’s lovable Gampa Carl, had died just months before of a major stroke, and Gramma Ellie was so very lonely, so very lost without him.
Oh how wonderful were the memories Joy had of her Gampa and Gramma. She had spent weekends with them in their immaculate old Victorian home. Baking cookies with Gramma or finding treasures in Gampa’s vegetable garden. He could grow anything! And, if he plucked it from his garden, Joy would eat it. Gramma made the best blueberry and raspberry pies. There was something magical about the crusts of them, that no other person’s pie crust could duplicate. Joy would spend weeks with them traveling the countryside down the east cost, from their home in New Brunswick, all the way to Orlando, Florida, where Joy was able to meet all of the Disney princesses that had captured her imagination. That was her best, and last trip with them. Just a week after their return, Gampa had the stroke, and died immediately.
Joy’s memories of this special pair filled her heart like no other childhood memories. Really they were the only special memories of childhood that Joy could remember. Her memories from her own home, with her mother, father and brother, well she just did not seem to remember much. But, those days were filled with the memories of her brother being ill, and her mother caring for him, and her father working a second job to pay for all of the medical costs racked up by her brother’s treatment.
Joy was startled out of her childhood memories by the ringing of her phone.
itsawonderfilledlife 