MeeMaw jumps at loud noises. Firecrackers, guns, exploding balloons...these all startle her. One other thing makes her jump. The soft "whoomp!" of a can of biscuits being popped open. She always asks me to open a can of biscuits for her, and as I turn to the task, she always puts her fingers in her ears and turns away.
They say that men marry their mothers and that women marry their fathers. Psychology is largely a godless dung-heap, but there are some interesting things I've noticed through the years, things about how we do tend to be attracted to people who share strong characteristics of our different-sex parent. MeeMaw is very much like my mother in many ways.
One of those ways is the fear of the exploding canned biscuits. Every single time Mother has made canned biscuits, she has asked me to open the can, and she has turned away with fingers in ears, or at least made some noise of her own to drown out the report.
But Mother will never again jump at the sound of a biscuit can. I am growing weary with the lists I make in my mind. At three a.m., I am very good at making such lists. Lists of things that Mother will never again do in this life. And lists of things that I enjoy that Mother cannot enjoy because her own daughter dumped her into a hellhole, and because my legal hands are tied to do anything to rescue her at this moment.
If you never pray for me again in your lives, please pray for Mother, for God to intervene and provide a way for us to rescue her. The billows are passing over our heads right now, and all seems dark.
