Another Installment of Rowan's Journey

Installment seven
Rowan was in the kitchen cooking the most delicious meal. Turkey, gravy, stuffing and all of the trimmings were on the menu. Joshua was coming home from college for the holidays. It was always the favorite holiday in their home, Thanksgiving. The house was full of the smell roasting turkey and veggies. The scent seemed to swirl around the house intermingling with the aroma of the pumpkin pies she had baked earlier. Rowan was proud of her pumpkin pies. She had two special ingredients that she refused to ever tell anyone. She also made sure that it was thick. She couldn’t stand pumpkin pies that were custardy in texture, no her pies had nice bites to them. When you sliced a piece you could see black speckles, from the spice mixture, throughout the orange brown filling. Rowan always used graham cracker crusts never that dry flaky stuff.

This year was special because Joshua was bringing home a girlfriend. He had dated in his years away at college but never liked a girl well enough to bring her home to meet the family. Maybe she would be the one? The door opened and there stood Joshua, all six feet two inches of him. He looked so much like a man, yet at twenty five he stilled had fine soft hair the color of white beach sand. It always reminded her of her honeymoon in Hawaii. Joshua stood there glowing with a radiant gold hue. “Mom”……..
“Mom”

“Mom”

“Mommy wake up”…..Rowan opened her eyes to see little Joshua standing over her. He was still his little three year old self. She had been dreaming. Rowan shook her head and rubbed her face with the palm of her hands. “Go watch a movie sweetie and let Mommy wake up” she whispered as the boy stared at her like she was from Mars. It took a minute for her to come back to reality and notice that they were at Wade’s house still, and that there was no electricity. Then the memory flooded back to her and she almost started crying. She would have cried if that little handsome boy had not been eying her like a hawk. His little sandy blond hair tossed to one side as he tilted his neck to look at her oddly. Joshua had the over exaggerated mannerism of a toddler trying to make a point. He would have really thought she was crazy if he knew what she had been dreaming. She felt disoriented as she tried to figure out what time it was. At this moment she would have also liked to know what day it was. She mumbled to herself “suck it up Rowan….we don’t have time now to fall apart.” She rubbed the boys head and grabbed him in her arms and snuggled kisses into his belly. “STOPPPPPPPP” he giggled as he broke free and ran to the other side of the room, “I donnnnn’t like that Momma.” She promised not to do it again “today”. She must have fallen asleep watching him play with the Mousetrap game. He loved that game and him and Wade could play it for hours. Personally she found it boring and annoying all of those little yellow and red plastic pieces. Putting everything together just to roll a marble through it seemed so tedious to her. The boys loved it though. It was more than likely her emotions that wore her out not actually the game. She must have only been sleeping for a half hour or so. Judging by the sun and the way the game looked at the moment. She apologized to Joshua and explained that she was dreaming. He smiled and went back to putting the finishing touches on the obstacle course before he was ready to run the marble through the gauntlet. He hollered with delight, “watch Mommy” as he let the marble go. Laughter flowed from him as it made every turn finally landing on the spot that would drop the net and catch the game piece man. Rowan could not help but laugh as Joshua jumped up and did a victory dance singing, “I did it, I did it, it only took a minute”. He was so proud of himself and at the minute she was proud too. How could she not like that game? The effort had to be worth the sense of accomplishment that beamed from his eyes.


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