Reflections

In my freshman year, we had to write an object based narrative. I drew a pair of sunglasses and a young couple.

            “Where did you leave the packaging tape?” I asked folding the flaps of the Uhaul packing box down.

            “Here, sorry about that,” said Brandon as he held it outstretched in his hand.

            “Thanks sweetie.”

            I fumbled around, finally finding and peeling back the seam and sealing off the box. I took a sharpie and scrawled ‘office stuff’ on the box then pushed it off to the side.

            “What do you want to do with all this stuff?”

            I turned, almost tripping on a pile of miscellaneous stuff waiting to be sorted. I looked down at the box with curiosity before kneeling down and asking

            “Where was this?”

            “Over in a corner,” Brandon said, “Why?”

            “I don’t know what it is, that’s all…” I started “but it must not have been unpacked when I moved in.”

            I pulled back the flaps, looking in at a box of old pictures and trophies from my room.

            “I thought this stuff got lost when I moved into the dorm at Villanova…” I said, a smile ebbing at the corners of my lips. Brandon pulled a blue trophy out of the box.

            “Yours?” he asked, grinning.

            “Yeah,” I nodded.

            He whistled and looked into my eyes. That stare, it always got to me. It was so intense, so deep. His bright blue eyes went straight through me.

            “What?” I asked, blushing.

            “Nothing,” he said looking down, pausing.

            He laid those eyes back on me then said,

            “I just never figured you for a cheerleader.”

            “Oh, that” I said, gigging.

            “I’m hungry,” he said “I’m gonna go get something to eat… Want anything?”

            “A PBJ would be nice,” I said.

“Ok, I’ll be back in a few.” He said

            I listened to the steady beat of his footsteps as he receded to the kitchen. I didn’t know why but I felt uneasy about moving. I had just married Brandon and he had been offered a much better position in New York. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to move, I just felt uneasy, like maybe I was missing something. It was silly.

            I put those thoughts aside and looked ahead, back into the box. Damn, if this wasn’t a trip down memory lane. Noticing a pair of sunglasses sitting on the bottom, I picked them up. I smiled, gingerly wiping both lenses clean with my tee shirt. I remembered these. These were my moms, I thought, picturing them framing her gentle face. I grinned remembering the time I had tried them on the dog. The dog didn’t agree with my plan. My mom had chuckled as she took them off the poor thing. The memories brought back more images of my mother. I had never really noticed how attractive she was. She was my only role model back then. She raised me all on her own. My father left her before I was born. She never let me feel unloved, though. She always made me feel special. We were inseparable. When all my friends couldn’t stand to be seen with their own parents, I couldn’t let go of the one I had. I thought back to that day when I was little and had placed the glasses on my face and had asked my mom why they were so funny. I said ‘mommy, how come things look funny in here?’ She had simply smiled and said, ‘Someday things won’t seem so funny, at all, my dear… you’ll see’ I didn’t understand her at all… I missed her so much. She died of cancer a few years after I graduated from Villanova. I took it hard. I didn’t know what to do with myself without her. I put the worn glasses on my face once more, half hoping to see my mom on the other side of the lens. Instead, I saw my new husband, standing in the entrance to the attic, smiling curiously at my new eyewear, as if he had been there for a while.

            What’s more, I thought was that the image before me was crystal clear, no blur and no humor.

            “Everything ok?” he asked sitting down beside me and putting a hand on my shoulder.

            At once my mother’s words sank in. Everything seemed right. It all made sense… The words floated around in my head and I thought to myself…Someday is today.

            I looked up at Brandon and said,

            “Yeah, I think this box took me down memory lane and I figured something out.”

            “What’s that,” he asked, giving me that stare again.

            “That you, me this marriage; it’s the first thing that has made sense since my mom died.”

            He smiled knowingly and just like my mother had done, he reached forward and gently pulled the glasses off of my face.

            “I love you” he said and kissed me.

            Later that month we moved into an apartment in New York and soon grew accustomed to life in the city. Things made sense, they really did.

            Before we left, though, we both went to my mother’s grave and left a bouquet of flowers and a pair of sunglasses which had been engraved on the inside of the band. Engraved, was a simplistic message. It was but seven words: Mom, I found someday. Love you, Bridget.