A PROMISE I DIDN'T WANT TO KEEP -FLASH FICTION

Would you be willing to keep a promise that impacted generations?

I promised myself I would do it on January 3rd, 2023. Today is that day.

Should I be true to a promise I made twenty-three years ago?

The calendar crinkles as I nervously pass it back and forth between my hands. Twenty-three years ago. I am not the same person who made that promise. I have no connection to her. Are we one and the same?

Twenty-three years ago, I was a mere twenty-year-old who thought I knew everything. I chased boys. I partied. I lived for only me. Today, I live for more than just me. I live for an elderly mother, who has become a widow with failing health.

I live for five children who underappreciate me.

I live for the lady down the block to who I give rides.

I put off yesterday for today; twenty-three years ago, believing it would never come.

Cough. Cough. The gremlin rips through my chest as I cough up green goop. This happens more and more. I hold my chest as if that will stop the pain.

I look in the mirror. Where has the youth gone? Where is the sweet skin that attracted so many admirers, now pocked, wrinkled, and tainted with brown spots?

Twenty-three years ago, I didn’t care about anything.

But now I do.

But is it too late?

Yes.

No.

And it won’t be easy. I don’t know if I can go through with this.

I go into the nursery and look down at my sleeping grandbaby. Rachel, my daughter, enters the room and wraps her arm around my shoulder.

“She needs you to do this,” Rachel says, pointing to the sleeping babe.

I wipe the tears from my eyes.

“She needs her grandma.”

Twenty-three years from now, I will be sixty-six. I don’t feel that old, but my granddaughter will always see me as ancient. Will I still be around to watch her blow away the best years of her life? Perhaps she will be better than me. Maybe she will make something of herself. Her mom has yet to make wise choices. I guess I didn’t give her a good role model for that.

“Well,” Rachel says, putting her hands on her hips.

I don’t want to do this. In the last twenty-three years, only one solid companion has been in my life. Only one place I could turn for joy.

For sorrow.

For familiarity.

What will I do without it?

A craving slams me like a ramming garbage truck, slamming into me, then ramming again.

“Just one more?”

Rachel shakes her head.

I pull the pack of cigarettes out of my purse. My lifelong companion. Rachel opens her hand, and slowly, painfully, regretfully, mournfully, I put the cigarettes into her hand.

“You are doing the right thing.”

“Am I?”

I don’t know.

But I do know.

This is right.

I have failed. Myself.

I have failed Rachel.

I cannot fail my granddaughter.

“Your turn,” I say to Rachel.

She pulls a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and empties both packets into a bowl.

“You stole my mother,” she screams at them as she shreds them like a mole clawing through the ground. Rachel looks possessed, unleashing years of anger and embarrassment on the cigarettes. She pours cleaner on the tobacco mess, then dumps it in the outside garbage can, bowl, and all.

Cough. Another cough rips through my chest, and I brace my leg as I try to breathe.

“Here’s to another twenty-three-plus years,” Rachel says. She grabs my hand. “I know this is hard, but we will do it together.”

We hear my grandbaby cry within the house.

Rachel is right. Our posterity deserves this. My mother deserves this. I deserve this.

I squeeze Rachel’s hand. “To another twenty-three years!”

And I set out to keep the promise I made twenty-three years ago.

I wish it hadn’t taken me so long.