REUNITED
I was a fool to ever leave your side. Me minus you is such a lonely ride.
It was almost Halloween, and behold, the wicked witch from the North came calling. It would be a day that rocked my little world upside down and inside out. But it would also be a day of reconciliation.
“Tommy, Tommy! Stop!” I heard someone yell.
I was delivering the Clinton Democrat newspaper on my route as usual that day when a wild looking lady came running out of a house, shouting my name. I was around fifteen years old.
“Stop! I want to talk to you,” she shouted.
Now, I always tried to throw the paper as close to the front porch as possible, but sometimes one would go astray, so I figured I was going to catch hell for one landing in the bushes, or a mud puddle. I stopped, expecting to get scolded.
“Tommy, I’m your mother,” she said.
Whut?… My mother? Did she jest say she was my mother? I thought. Or maybe she said she knew my mother.
“Tommy, I am your mother and I want to talk with you,” she repeated as she came toward me.
Time stood still, as all I could do was watch her as she approached. I stood there dumbfounded.
Must be something wrong with my hearing.
Why would this strange woman claim to be my mother? I’d never seen her before.
I finally snapped out of my trance and took off, like a bat out of hell, thinking that this woman must be some kind of a witch. I suspected she wanted my hide for her witches brew. I looked back over my shoulder to make sure she hadn’t hopped on her broom to chase me down.
But she was just standing there, watching me high-tail it down the street like a scared jackrabbit.
Now this kind of shook me up, as you might imagine. For the rest of my route and all the way home, I couldn’t shake how she looked and what she had said. I didn’t say anything to anybody when I got home, but I lay awake most of the night wondering why this strange witchy woman would claim to be my mother.
The next day on my route, at the same house, the witch swept upon me again. She was a restless spirit on an endless flight.
“Tommy, Tommy, please stop. I just want to talk to you. I’m your mother,” she said again.
Now I was totally convinced that this woman had to be a witch. I put the pedal to the metal and high-tailed it out of there before sparks could fly from her fingertips.
But that evening, at the dinner table, I worked up the nerve to tell the folks what had happened in the past two days.
All of a sudden, it got very quiet. You could have heard a pin drop. Finally, Mom broke the silence when she started choking on the bite of pork chop she had just taken.
“How cun Tommy have another mother?” My oldest sister Sandy asked.
“Girls, go to your rooms,” mom said.
“But we haven’t finished eatin’,” all the girls said in surround sound.
“I said go to your rooms. NOW!” Shouted mom in that ‘I mean it’ tone.
She then looked at dad and said, “suppose it’s time we told him.”
“Tell me whut,” I cried, having no idea what they could be referring to.
Dinner and my life were interrupted that evening, as a whole new world was suddenly revealed.
Excerpt from my two books available on Amazon:
‘The Comeback Kid”: http://www.amzn.to/1bWV44N
“The Abduction Chronicles” https://amzn.to/2zxmYJN
Thomas L. Hay was raised in the Golden Valley of Clinton, Missouri. He is a graduate of the 1961 Clinton Senior High class. He spent four years in the U.S. Navy as a Radioman aboard the USS Hancock, during the Vietnam war. He retired after a 39-year career with TWA/American Airlines. He currently resides in Lake Waukomis, Missouri, with his lovely wife, along with some hyperactive squirrels, too many irritating geese, and a few cranky old catfish.
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