Home -- flash fiction

“Good morning Ms. Jenkins. Did you go home for the holidays?” he asked over his shoulder as he stepped away with the empty pill bottle.

She thought about that. Spring was such a beautiful time for a holiday. School was out for a week, always enough time to go home. Things would be blooming. The folks would have vegetables growing strong. Lettuces and peas would already be coming off. Forsythia would be done, but the tulips and daffodils would still be blooming. Her mother must have had umpteen varieties of daffodils. Mom always said they looked like bits of sunshine.

She lost her forsythia last winter. Too dry and too cold.

Dad would be ready to put out his tomatoes and peppers, if he hadn’t already. And his potatoes would be big and strong. He liked to have fryers big enough for fried chicken Memorial Day weekend and new potatoes. That was his aim. And corn on the cob fresh from the garden by Fourth of July. He never planted his corn until after Easter, though. When the ground was warm.

She hadn’t missed an Easter at home in she didn’t know how long. First, trips home from college, then with Jim and the children. Except those two years in a row when James Jr. had the three-day measles. Twice.

Jim built her two raised beds. Four feet by eight feet. And she had a long planter on the south end of the deck. That was her “salad bar.” She planted it full of all kinds of lettuces. Just broadcast the seeds. The raised beds, she planted in an organized fashion. Her dad always took great pride in straight rows. Once a farmer, always a farmer.

She had to wait until after Mother’s Day to plant here. Except the lettuces. She just threw a sheet over them. Nights it got too cold. They’d had a nice big salad fresh from her deck, Easter Sunday.

“Here’s your prescription,” he said as he came back to the counter. “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear if you went home this year.”

“Not this year,” she said as she slid her card. It had been a difficult year. Emergency trips home. “Not this year,” she repeated. “This year the children and grandchildren came home.”