Dash O' Milk

I never liked it when Mam was insecure about things; it left me in those situations where I had to feel something other than that ‘semi-permeable brick wall’  that Olly-Boy told me to keep up. God, he must’ve felt smart saying that; he sure would’ve plotted that one for weeks. So, Mam told me not to worry about her troubles, and to leave the anxiety for those with ‘more years on their brows’ or whatever it was. As she’d put it; “you’d best worry about that bloody Olly-Boy and his antics, he’d turn friends on each other for a chuckle!” I knew Mam was diverting the attention to keep me from getting up in her business, and that bothered me. Not the bit about the diversion, no, the idea that she thought I cared enough to involve myself in her doings. Truthfully, I wanted to brew her up some leaves (‘with a dash o’ milk, for hearts o’ silk’), sit her down at the table, and have a right confab about what was bothering her; that’s what I wanted to do. But I remembered what Olly-Boy had taught me about how one was to conduct oneself around one’s old-folks; he was adamant on that. I had to be a stone-cold warrior; stone-cold, to ‘assert my independence’ or something of the sort. So, I marched right up to Mam, and told her to keep her woes to herself. “Mam, I’m not here to empathise with your problems; I’m a stone-cold warrior, I tell you, stone-cold”. I knew Olly-Boy would have been proud of my delivery. I even paused in the right places just like he told me to, to emphasise the syllables. Just like he said, I swear. But my Mam didn’t bow down to my strong, independent self. She didn’t. Then she started to cry. I told you, I never liked it when Mam was insecure about things, and so her weeping got me so confused that I bolted out of the house and out the gate and around the trees and along the gravel and up to Olly-Boy’s house. Even before Pap cleared off, and Mam wasn’t so dicey, I would’ve still made this ‘run of liberty’ (as Olly-Boy entitled it) whenever my brick wall of stone-cold strength got so much as a chip in the clay.  Olly-Boy was sitting up on his porch smoking up one of those crummy half cigars. He looked over at me and grinned: “The run of liberty? You letting your old-folks play heart games with you, you stone-cold warrior, you?” I didn’t know how to respond. I told him about my mother’s tears, and how they ‘compromised the integrity of my brick wall’. He didn’t care anymore; ‘I wasn’t warrior material’. So you know what? I decided I would go home to make Mam the cup of leaves, and let her cry on my shoulder. Of course, it wouldn’t’ve changed nothing. 

A warrior, I say.