Don worked road construction, a heavy equipment operator by day, rancher/farmer
    by night.  Their crops were hay and cattle.  Sharon did part time secretarial, but she
    was mostly home, and so was Clinton, running the farm.  

            I was at the time, jealous of her.  
            Since then, I have come to wish I could, if possible, mold myself from her
    examples.

            Having nothing to compare it to, I was jealous of their affection for one another,
    this mother and son. I felt insecure and threatened by their intimate bond, their
    friendship, their confidence in one another; they shared secrets, good and bad, things
    to the most personal nature.  They shared the work, they shared the crudeness of the
    farm and they shared the rewards of it as well.  But most of all, they shared respect
    and warmth that came of such genuine nature, I was both in awe, and in fear.  Fear
    of the worst kind, the invisible kind – the fear that I could never compare to her, I
    would never, ever, in my  wildest dreams stack up to the example set forth by her to
    her son of what a mother, and wife, and woman should be.

            I discovered later she had similar anxieties concerning me.  Strange how those
    things work.  I had no way to know it back then, but she saw in me the future
    daughter in law that possessed the ability to take her son from her -- to replace her in
    certain ways she could neither control nor compete with.  

            She was threatened too.  

            I had no idea.  And back then, even if someone had voiced that to me, I would
    not have understood any of it and am sure I would have passed it off as, "That's
    stupid."  giving no merit to her heart's most secret sadness.  I may have even been
    ignorant enough in those days to pump up in a secret gloat of selfishness and
    imagined endowment.  I'm glad I suppose now, that I didn't know.  Some times we
    are best left to our ignorant devices, because possession of certain knowledge in the
    hands of amateurs could be a dangerous thing.

            So it was, the days of those summers passed.  Out of school he worked the hay
    and the cattle. I lived there on the farm with them.   We found chance to take the
    horses out, galloping far and fast, our hands out as wings, reins hanging freely
    across the animal's necks -- they would gallop, racing, nostrils flaring, their hooves
    beating the prairie sod and with unconscious accurateness, avoiding the leg breaking
    prairie dog holes through no control or steerage from their
    riders.  We would gallop and our eyes would water from the speed of the wind and
    the sand kicked up by the pounding hooves; we would race, becoming one with the
    beasts, putting our blind and total faith in their ability to maintain their feet beneath
    them! And we would race, challenging one another with unspoken threats,
    electrifying threats passed between us as we moved in speed and rhythm!  We would
    race, until the horses had raced themselves out and slowed to a canter, a bouncing
    trot, then a walk while their labored breathing beneath us would slow in snorts and
    tosses of their heads, swishes of their tails.  We too would catch our breath,
    exhilarated by the thrill of the run, the adrenaline, the passion, and find soon a place
    to stop, remove the saddles, lay out blankets and cool down under the Colorado
    Mountain Sunshine in grass that smelled warm and sweet and wild, with prairie
    wind drying our steamy bodies.  



            We would be alone.  Miles it seemed from anything, and miles it seemed,
    countless, trackless miles from time and space and reality or even the existence of any
    other thing in the world but the emotion of it all as we laid in that grass together.

            Thereupon the sun would start it's curved decent towards the Front Range,
    promising to bring darkness. There were cattle to feed.  There were irrigation lines to
    run, water to divert, water to dam, water to release.  Reluctantly we'd saddle up
    again, walking home slowly this time, not racing towards that land before time, but
    walking back with little conversation towards the world.  

            Sharron would be in the barnyard.  We'd be late for chores but she would not
    express any more to us than joy at our fun.  Never did annoyance cross her face that
    I had kept him out too late and she had to do work alone, hard work, dirty work,
    with out his help. Just laughter and joy and gladness at our plainly adventurous ride
    in the tall grasses.

            Two years ago I laid in my bed with a young man at my breast; we were laying
    still, searching each other’s faces, deeply entranced in the beauty we found there.  It
    was quiet and intimate and special of a sort of specialness I had never felt ever in my
    life beside any other person man or woman.  

    I laid looking him, looking into his eyes and marveling at his utter perfection and I
    thought to myself, "Some day, there will be another woman here, laying naked beside
    you and bearing her breasts to you, gazing in your eyes and marveling at your
    beauty and you will love her and forsake me for her love if I am not careful.  She will
    adore you as I adore you, and even in ways I cannot; she will comfort you in my
    absence in ways no woman can ever comfort a grown man of her own flesh; ways
    that will thrill you and encourage you and please you and bring you home again to
    her.  Some day you will be a husband and father, but I will always be your mother,
    and I hope for the ability to be one who can greet you, unselfishly, and with out
    jealousy, but with joy and gladness for your love of life and love of your woman,
    instead of with annoyance for being late to do chores."

            Some of the chores in life we are obligated to toil in do not include labor of the
    body in work that is productive to the pocketbook, but instead, labor of the body
    productive to the soul, and I hope I remember that Sharron taught me that.  I hope
    that when my son rides in late, with a sparkle in his eye and a blush on his cheek, I
    hope I can greet him with  joy and with gladness that he has found some love in the
    tall grass of the open prairie.






Written By and Property Of Shawnee Johnson Reese
Copyright July 3, 2000
All rights reserved.
On Mothers and Sons


By Shawnee Johnson Reese
Copyright July 3, 2000
.