Going Home

Part 9

Grace felt terrible for Josh. What a thing to have to cope with at seventeen and on your own. A tear sliding down her face, she whispered “I’m sorry Josh. I can’t begin to imagine what that was like.”

Looking at her Josh lifted his hand and wiping away the tear with his thumb said flatly “I survived.”

Grace nodded. “Yes you did but now they’ve made contact how do you feel about it?”

His emotions still raging, Josh looked away and replied in an angry tone “God I don’t know Grace, I didn’t think they’d ever contact me.”

“Well maybe they need to speak to you for a reason?”

“So what, something happens and all of a sudden they want to talk to me. Is that a good enough reason for me to talk to them? They’ve never bothered to contact me before. Why should I speak to them now just because they’ve found they need something from me?”

Grace was surprised by the extreme bitterness in Josh’s voice. His feelings about what happened were obviously complex. She knew he felt guilty about the accident, but it was clear he was also angry at his parents for their reaction.

Keeping her voice even Grace tried to help him work through it. “Josh it may be that they wanted to contact you before but after a while didn’t know how. Maybe whatever is going on now gave them the push they needed to finally do it.”

Josh looked at her quickly then away and sounding scathingly said “yeah right.”

“Josh it happens, sometimes after a while it’s just too hard to reach out, sometimes it takes something exceptional to make you do it. Think about it could you have contacted them?”

Josh turned his head and looked at her in silence. He realised that maybe she had a point. He certainly couldn’t do it.

Seeing he was at least listening, Grace continued.

“Okay let me ask you this why did you put their number in your phone?”

Josh looked away and didn’t answer. He didn’t want to admit even to himself why he did that.

“Well maybe deep down you wanted them to contact you?”

Josh looked at her but still doesn’t speak.

Grace sighed “Well anyway now that they have, you have to decide what to do about it. It seems to me you have two choices, either you decide that you never want to have contact with them and ignore the call and change your number. Or choice number two, you try and work things out with them so you can all move on and you can come to terms with what happened. Josh this may be your last chance to do that. But it’s up to you.”

Thoughtful, Josh just continued to look at her.

Going Home

Part 8

Holding him Grace waited until Josh broke the embrace. Then as he pulled back she gave him a quick kiss before speaking. “Josh I can’t tell you what to do that’s got to come from you but I’ll support you no matter what you decide. Okay?”

But Josh couldn’t think let alone make a decision and it was driving him crazy. So rubbing his hands over his head in frustration he replied with discernable anger “but that’s the problem I don’t know what to do.”

Grace was silent for a minute. Clearly Josh’s emotions were raw and she didn’t want to make things worse but if she was going to help him she needed more information. So with caution, she asked “can you tell me what happened with your parents?”

Josh flicked his gaze around and looked at her, his face an angry mask. He knew he had to talk about this but knowing it didn’t make it any easier to do. However his anger was not directed at Grace and seeing the concern in her face it subsided somewhat. Then looking away and leaning back on the couch again he sighed and said “nothing happened.”

Grace just looked at him waiting for more. But when it became clear he wasn’t going to continue she said in a quiet voice “come on Josh something must have happened.”

Josh shook his head and said in a flat voice “no, after the accident they didn’t speak. Not to me, not to each other, or not that I saw. Not to anyone. After a while the silence was worse than anything they could have said.” Josh stopped and took a deep breath, fighting to get himself under control before continuing. Remembering those horrible silent months before he left home, hurt more than he could say.

Watching him closely Grace saw the pain in Josh’s face and reaching out to hold his hand, she gave it a squeeze.

Turning his head to look at her for a minute Josh continued. “They couldn’t even look at me and when I tried to speak to them, they just shut me down. I knew they blamed me, hell I blamed me. It was my fault and none of us could live with what I’d done, so I left.”

The School Yard

It was three fifteen in the afternoon. Mandy got out of her car and went through the usual checks on her appearance, making sure every detail was correct. As always at this time of the day, her nerves were getting the better of her. She hated going into the school yard to pick up her daughter and couldn't wait until she was old enough to meet her at the car.

Ever since that first morning, a month ago, when Ellie had started prep, Mandy had been aware of a huge divide in the parents milling around on the basket ball courts.There seemed to be two distinct groups of parents. Those that were blonde, thin, fashion conconscious and beautiful and those that weren't. As far as Mandy could tell, there wasn't any middle ground, you were either in one group or the other. Ellie being her only child, this was Mandy's first foray into a school since she was a student herself some twenty odd years earlier. Naturally as a parent her perspective was entirely different now, but she couldn't help feeling some of those same emotions she'd experienced back then as she looked around those gathered to see their child off on the beginning of their school journey.

Mandy had never been part of the popular group at school and it had always made her feel like she wasn't good enough. Leaving the school environment she had nearly forgotten those days. In her working life she was judged on her efficiency and competence, rather than her appearance and that's the way she liked it.


Pushing her short dark hair behind her ear she spotted a mother of a girl in Ellies class that she had spoken to briefly a few days ago. Mandy knew from Ellie she had three children, with the one just starting school, her last. Deciding not to stand by herself for once she moved towards the other mother.


"Hi" Mandy said in a quiet voice as she stopped next to the other woman, facing the stairs where the preps would come down to meet their parents.
The woman turned her head and smiled "hi, it's Mandy isn't it? Ellie's mum."
Mandy smiled, pleased with the welcome, "yes. Sorry I don't know your name, but I feel like I do know your daughter Brie, Ellie talks about her all the time."
The woman laughed "same here, all we hear about is Ellie. I'm Ronnie."

"So when do we get to just wait in the car?" Mandy asked with a smile, but nore than a little serious.
"Had enough of the performance already?" Ronnie asked with a raised eyebrow.
Tilting her head, not sure what Ronnie was referring to, Mandy looked at her with a question in her eyes.
Ronnie grinned and gestured with her head at the group of blond women, all either in tight fitting sports wear or wearing short dresses or expensive jeans and high heels, standing on the other side of the court "the perfect show" she said.
Surprised, Mandy was silent for a minute, then a slow smile spread across her face. "Pretty much" she admitted.
Ronnie laughed "I totally understand, trust me. It's the same every year. Just when I think it will be different with this child, that the parents will be different, a new crop of them appears."
"I thought it was just me" Mandy whispered "that I was seeing something that wasn't there."
"No" Ronnie said still smiling "it's there alright. They are nice enough really, it's just that they have a tendency to make us mere mortals feel rather inadequate."

Mandy nodded and looking back over her shoulder at the group of women, she realised that even though she had changed from child to parent not much else about school had.

Going Home

Part 7

Grace didn’t know what she had expected Josh to say, but whatever it was, it wasn’t that. She was shocked into silence. She knew Josh hadn’t had contact with his family since he left home after the accident that killed his brother. No wonder he looked shattered when he read the caller Id.  He had suffered unbelievably because of that incident and the emotions that call would have stirred up must have been overwhelming. So easing her way into such a sensitive subject she asked “how would she know your number?”

Josh shrugged “no idea, through the police force I guess.”

“And how did you know it was her?”

Shrugging again Josh looked away as he admitted “I put their number in my phone when I first got it.”

Grace raised her eyebrows, but didn’t comment. She realised that the only reason Josh would have done that was if he hoped that one day they would make contact. From the one time they spoke about this she got the impression that he didn’t want anything to do with them but maybe that’s not the case. So broaching the main issue with caution, Grace asked “so what do you want to do now?”

Sighing Josh sat back against the couch. He looked over at Grace for a minute and then reaching out pulled her into his arms. Holding her close to his body he said into her hair “I don’t know.”

Technology

Technology. While it is an amazing time saver and can do things we never thought possible, when it doesn't do what it is supposed to, is there anything more frustrating? The day before yesterday, for some reason known only to it, my laptop decided it didn't like me anymore and without warning, stopped working. In the midst of typing a document, it kindly told me it was not going to respond anymore and it wasn't kidding. It wouldn't do anything.

Now if there a more frightening sentence to see at the top of a computer screen then I haven't seen it.  As I looked at the half a dozen or so documents I had open at the time, it filled me with dread. I am the first to admit I don't know much about the working of computers in general but even I know that you shouldn't shut down a computer with things still open because you can lose any unsaved work. So what was I to do? I couldn't close anything because it wasn't responding and the only way I knew to attempt to remedy that was to shut it down and reboot. Disaster.

So to say I was worried would be an understatement. But with no other course of action open to me, I crossed my fingers, closed my eyes and prayed that all would be well as I pushed the button to restart. I don't think I even breathed for the few second it took for it to boot up, then I felt like crying as it seemed my worst fears had been confirmed. Instead of the usual messages indicating it was starting in the normal manner I got a window saying the computer had problems starting and was attempting to repair any problems. AHHHH. This looked worse than losing anything I'd just been working on and hadn't saved. It might mean losing anything I'd done since I last backed up. I hadn't done a back up for five days. AHHHH.

As panic set in and I was struggling to work out what to do, in walked my saviour. He'd know what to do. He could always fix my computer problems. In handing it over to him, I felt better already. However it turned out this problem was even beyond him, and as I began to hyperventilate, I madly tried to retype all I could remember on another computer.

But after a sleepless night, luckily with the light of a new day, came hope, in the guise of an expert. With his advanced knowledge and skill, not to mention a bag of magic discs, he had things back on track within minutes. My computer started up as normal and all my documents were still there, safe and sound. I let out a breath I had been holding since the night before, on a sigh. All was right with the world again. Or so I thought. As the expert went off to rescue someone else, fighting the good fight against the trials of a fickle technology, I was ready to start work again. I settled myself down, laptop on my knee and clicked on a document, itching to pick up where I'd left off, ready to let my imagination have free reign so that my fingers could follow. But what do I get, an error message, AHHHH. I hate computers.

Going Home

Part 6

Hearing the front door open and close Grace got up and walked to the living room door. She was glad Josh was back but she wasn’t sure what to expect and looking at him standing just inside the door she tried to gauge his mood. But unfortunately Josh wasn’t giving much away so she waited.

Josh’s head was still all over the place but just seeing Grace eased the turbulence he felt a bit and looking at her, his expression solemn, he slowly covered the distance between them. He was glad she there and wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight. More than anything he needed something to hang on to. He felt like he was drowning and the warmth of her body next to his gave him solace. Then dropping his head next to her’s he said quietly “sorry.”

Relief flowed though Grace and caused her to hold him just as tightly "don't worry about it’ she said. She was just happy that he wasn’t pushing her away anymore and hoping that meant he was now ready to talk about whatever it was the was going on, Grace moved back. After looking at him for a moment, she grabbed his hand and le him into the living room. On reaching the couch Grace sat down with her legs curled under her. Still holding his hand she pulled Josh down to sit next to her.

Looking at him she could see in his eyes the turmoil he was feeling and asked with concern “are you okay?”

Josh looked down at his hands and nodded but didn’t speak.

Studying his serious expression for a minute she asked “can you tell me what’s going on?”

Leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees, Josh rubbed his hands over his face. He didn’t know where to start.

As the silence stretched Grace gently prompted him “who was on the phone Josh?”

Then finally looking back into her eyes he replied in a grave tone “my mother.”

Sigh

“Keep an eye out for a parking spot” Nina said to her fifteen year old daughter sitting in the passenger seat, as she tried to watch the traffic streaming all around her and scan the curbs for movement at the same time.
She got no response.

Glancing over Nina sighed and reaching out pulled the nearest headphone cord out of her daughter’s ear.
“Hey” Laura yelled, angry at the interruption to her listening.
 “Watch for a parking spot” Nina repeated with as much patience as she could muster.
“Why” Laura asked “I don’t even want to go.”

Sighing loudly this time, her anger peeking through, Nina said “you’ve made that abundantly clear. Stupid me, I thought you were old enough now to be able to do something for someone else without complaining.”
Laura glared at her mother.
“It’s not going to kill you, you know” Nina said.

“You sure about that? I read on facebook the other day about someone dying of boredom.”
Nina rolled her eyes as she continued scanning the streets for a spot to park, craning her neck to look along the other side of the road “you can’t believe everything you read you know?” she said “particularly if it’s on facebook.”
Laura scowled “how would you know? You don’t even go on it.”
“You sure about that?” she said in a parody of her daughter’s words. And as an indicator went on, on a car in a spot just in front of her, she turned and smiled at her “here we go.”
“Oh yay” Laura said, sarcasm dripping from her words as she put her ear piece back in and turned away to look out the window.
And in what felt like a perpetual expression of late when she was dealing with Laura, Nina sighed and parked the car.