Take My Sunshine by M.E. Glinz

Author:M.E. Glinz [Glinz, M.E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Moongate Press
Published: 2024-01-09T00:00:00+00:00

24

December 13th, 1990

“Now, Mom,” I muttered as I scurried around the living room, picking up Dad’s stack of books on human anatomy and tossing them into a collection of his other trinkets I’d collected into a bin, “please try and talk to Dad about acting at least a little bit normal—Allie’s not used to people who are emotionless and robotic.” I tossed a statue of Shiva that typically graced our piano into the bin as well. I winced as it clattered against the textbooks. Dad was not going to be happy.

My mother was a beautiful but tired woman. Where baby blue eyes used to shine, now left a dull ghost of its color. The bags beneath her eyes were poorly covered to regain a youthful appearance, but her makeup was unsuccessful at hiding her fatigue. And although the gray hair of age had not speckled itself in her mane of ginger, the shade had lost its luster, making my mother look like she belonged in a sepia photograph.

“I can try,” she said, grabbing a new bag of pull-ups from the storage room. Already I could smell the stench of whatever Kit made in his pants.

“He’s still not potty-trained?” I asked as I grabbed the package for her before Kit could fall out of her arms.

Mom sighed and brushed Kit’s dark hair out of his eyes.

“I’ve been trying, but it’s getting even harder for me to get him to leave my arms for a second, let alone use the toilet on his own.”

I knew my mother loved Kit, my youngest sibling, who was almost three, but she had been all in career mode when she became pregnant for him, having thought her days of being a new mom were over after Jared, who was five when Kit was born, that she felt so unprepared to be a mother again to a baby.

“What do you do at work?” I grabbed Kit from her arms and carried him over to the changer to clean him up.

“Hold him as I take pictures. Sometimes I use him as a point for the little kids to smile at.” Mom watched over my shoulder as if she was criticizing my art of changing pull-ups.

I gave a forced laugh and paused to glare at her.

“I can change a pull-up on my own, you know.”

“Okay, okay!” she said with a chuckle.

My mother and I had gotten along well when I was growing up, much closer than I was with my father. Mom was a natural parent, which was easy to feel as a child and tell as an adult watching my mother parent my younger siblings. My dad did not have a parental bone in his body, and I knew it bothered my mom. Part of the reason I wasn’t so keen to have Allie meet my family was because of that tension. I barely came home anymore; I didn’t want to witness my parents’ marriage falling apart.

“When will Allie get here?” Mom asked, and as she moved toward the kitchen, I was reminded of how different my home was to Allie’s.

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