Reversal of Expectations

The cottage was quaint and cozy, warm with a thriving fire in the fireplace. It was cold outside, snow had fallen and had stayed on the ground like a clean white blanket. Myra sat in her mother's rocking chair near the window ccasionally glancing up from her knitting to look outside when she heard the wind howling. Her mother sat across from her on the other side of the room on an expensive loveseat that her father had given as a Christmas gift. They both kept their eyes and ears on the fire, each one taking a turn and putting another log in to keep the fire going whenever it seemed to be fading out.

Her mother set the book she had been reading down on the coffee table and stared at her daughter. Noticing the mistakes she was making in her knitting, and noticing the slovenly way she had let her hair fall around her beautiful face.

"Did you even brush your hair today?" her mother sharply questioned. Myra looked up into her mother's face, stung by the tone of her mother's inquisition, and thought about the answer to the question. She could not speak right away, feeling intimidated, so she just shook her head no and blushed a bit embarrassed.

Her mother sighed a deep sigh of disappointment as she stood up and walked out of the living room area and to the wash room. She found the brush beside a small mirror and before returning to the living room with the brush she looked at her reflection in the looking glass. She had gotten old. Her skin was wrinkled with many years. Her eyes looked tired. Her teeth's whiteness had faded from her smile and crowned her head instead with grey hair. She was not the young woman who married Myra's father all those years ago. Who had brought him a son and daughter to live in this cottage and who had been the homemaker and mother to those children. Then her thoughts returned to her daughter. She had become an old maid. Thirty five years old, never married, and still sitting at her mother's house though her brother and father were both gone.

Myra had put her knitting down into the basket near the rocking chair. She watched her mother return with a brush from the wash room, approaching slowly as to show Mrya she need not feel threatened.

"Let me brush your hair," her mother said lovingly, "You are such a pretty woman and you simply don't care."

Myra moved from the rocking chair to the ottoman near the loveseat. She sat on th ottoman while her mother sat again on the loveseat and began to brush Mrya's long light brown hair.

"Your curls are beginning to fade out," her mother commented as she ran the brush through the fine thick hair. Her daughter remained quiet, simply enjoying the attention.

"Whatever happened to that young man who came calling for you last month?" her mother questioned as she continued to stroke the brush softly against Myra's scalp.

Myra was indignant for a moment feeling terrified by her mother's topic of discussion.

"He did not come calling Mother!" she stated aghast, "He was simply interested in a blanket and once he saw that I had no blanket crocheted, he was quite done with the inquiry."

"Don't be so coy and silly," her mother prodded, "You are a beautiful woman and when he saw you he took interest. But you are so... " her mother paused loking for the right word.

"I know," Myra helped her feeling admonished, "So gaurded and cynical."

"Yes," her mother agreed, "They give up once they see that about you."

"No one will ever love me as well as you and Father," Myra stated confidently.

"I won't be here forever," her mother told her with a cautionary tone.

"Then I shall stay here in the cottage with the memories of you and your love."

"No," her mother said, sad that her daughter would consider that. "That's not what I want for you. I want you to love, the way your father and I loved."

"I can't stand this conversation Mother," Myra protested, "I don't want to. They will hurt me and break my heart. I'm too old for that nonsense."

"Now you say you are too old. When ten years ago, you said you were too young. You didn't want to have children. Why?"

"I don't see how I can do any better than you and father," Myra said.

"That's not the point," her mother demanded yanking the brush through a knot a bit roughly.

"Ow," Myra complained snatching the brush away from her mother, "That's enough."

"The time will come Myra, and you need to change your attitude." her mother said standing up from the loveseat and walking out from the living room towards her bedroom. "Goodnight."