Peculiarly Lauren

The cottage on the hill

as the smoke settles in, the fog clearing view. Sit a family humbly around a fire-stead. Each one popping their paper crowns out from long plastic tubes. Mother stirring a pot of home made carrot soup. Dad trying to read inaudible directions to a train set their little girl had begged for. The rain down pour again reminding them that would it be better to watch from inside... or to join and rejoice in the water the earth was giving to wash away all the dirt the week had left it.

their oldest curled up on a tweed arm chair with Taylor Jenkins Reed. The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Solitude by Billie holiday plays softly as -the woman who made this all happen. Mashed potatoes with an iron maker. Life wasn’t always like this, the woman who made all of this happen’ didn’t leave home till the age of 22. Working her ass off as a Red Cross employee. Dealing with trauma from soldiers whom had lost limbs and then had to rebuild their life from scratch. The iron maker that she pounded against the fruitless peels placed her in a trance. Jamie the man she had married, whom she helped walk again after becoming a double amputee.

those long hour shifts, those long nights at the clinic. Reminded her that there is and was a beginning before this. Just as she entered the dining room did she realize that she never imagined a life like this and then being able to feed her babies food she learned how to cook because she grew up with an absent mother. A mother who left at the age of 2 and a father who didn’t care to know her. 

This woman who made all this happen and then some help from her husband. Smiled through her tears as the light in her children’s eyes lit up at the sight of their mother making a night for them to remember. This was the life of a family whom lived on that cottage on the hill. Their hands bore the calluses they had received as gifts placing the stones one by one. Closer to their forever home. This was the woman who tirelessly cared for her girls. For the family that lived in the cottage on the hill.