Sheila:
I walked over to my mother’s new house the next day, hoping that the conversations she and I had begun might continue. Mother had been so angry with me. She’d kicked me out of the house, but then Shama had allowed me to stay. Shama had done even more than that. She’d softened my mother’s mood, allowing mother and daughter to get past the bitterness on my side and her resentment for my earlier words.
As I knocked at the front door and waited to be invited in, it surprised me to know how jealous I felt of Shama. The young woman seemed to have a gift, an understanding of how to smooth things out. I’d believed her ,at first, to be vapid and unfeeling, but that wasn’t true. After a few hours, I realized that there was a great deal more to Shama than I’d first realized. The young woman was truly compassionate.
I remembered how she’d calmed me down, brought me cookies and all the coffee I could drink. She’d listened to my whining, my complaints, even the sad saga of my distrust of my husband. No one had ever listened to me like that, not as thoroughly or as caringly. But why had I told her all those things? She was a stranger to me, the thorn in my relationship with my mother.
No, that wasn’t true. I was the thorn. I’d almost ruined everything while Shama had been calm and gentle, despite the horrid things I’d said about her and to her.
Perhaps it was her nonjudgmental face that had pulled my sad tale from deep inside me. Shama did have lovely eyes that seemed as therapeutic as a doctor’s medicine. And she’d never displayed any condemnation or attempted to discard my words as overly emotional or frivolous.
Did Shama know why my mother and I hadn’t spoken in all these years? Did Mother discuss such things with her?
It was only a moment or so that I stood at the door before a friendly smile greeted me and welcomed me inside. And it wasn’t my mother doing so. It was Shama.
My mother was right that I’d been the one at fault. Mom had told me once that Steven was not the right man for me to marry. I’d been so outraged back then, I’d ignored her all these years. But, I was sure now that Mother had been right. I shouldn’t have married Steven.
Yet, my outrage had severed our relationship.
“Did you sleep well?” Shama asked.
The tone of her voice, her innocence of her query, her earnestness . . . Shama was doing it again, wrapping me up in the web of her concern. Did I deserve that? Definitely not, but I needed it.