On Solitude

I want it back, that moment I heard the teakettle’s whistle and caught a whiff of aluminum and ozone – like a storm that passed – and the bitter scent of black tea in the air. The pour into the china teacup, the faint clatter of the spoon against the porcelain as she stirred in the thick cold milk,  the gentle thunk as the spoon came to a rest on the saucer. A relief for her, that cup of tea after a day delivering babies, and I often thought the mewling yawp as those infants emerged lingered in her soft brown curls, sliding down her shoulders to her heart, and so when I asked my mother what labor and delivery was like, she sipped her tea, put down the cup, and said, Hard, it’s hard, and it gets harder. She smiled, a wan smile as she gazed at my young body, untrammeled by sex and love. I didn’t understand what she did, that babies grow up and leave, and having known their soft cry and warm bodies, being alone was that much harder. Now that I do, I wish to go back and say, I am always here even when I’m not, because that mewl is now in my curls. My hands search the air and in the distance I hear it, the soft clink of a spoon against eternity, as she stirs the vapor, letting me know she hears me. I don’t remember a time she didn’t. Tomorrow I will buy loose-leaf tea, dust off her bone china teacup with the forget me knot pattern, and I will wait for my visiting son to ask, What is labor and delivery like?

Catherine Parnell is an editor, teacher, and co-founder of Birch Bark Editing. Her publications include the memoir The Kingdom of His Will, as well as stories, interviews and blog posts in Orca, Grande Dame Literary Journal, West Trade Review, Tenderly, Cleaver, Free State Review, Barnhouse, The Brooklyn Rail, The Rumpus, The Southampton Review, The Baltimore Review, and other literary magazines, as well as various newspapers and newsletters.