Painting By Numbers
‘What Mom has, is a bad case of Wanderlust’
My older brother Emerson had shared with my twin and I twelve years ago, on arrival at our fourth house in Boston.
As we’d stood at the foot of the four steps leading up to the front porch; our small hands clutched tight in his slightly larger ones and three pairs of identical green eyes wide at the huge redbrick house in front of us, he had explained what he’d overheard when Mom and her last boyfriend Robert, had been arguing the previous week.
Mom had something called ‘Wanderlust’, he’d told a six year old Forrest and I.
He wasn’t sure if it was fatal but he said it explained the small round pills we saw her taking each morning. He didn’t know the ins and outs of what would happen to Mom, but he knew she’d been to a doctor Merriam-Webster and they’d confirmed it.
I’d taken a large gulp and blinked so hard the tears gathering in the corners of my moss green eyes had no choice but to retreat.
I was six, and a six year old wouldn't dream of questioning someone that had made it to double figures.
“Arizona” Forrest breathed heavily, waving his hands frantically in his face as we stood at the foot of the dozen or so steps leading up to our new Brownstone; sans ‘the genius’. “Who the fuck moves to Arizona? In August?”
I shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my jeans with a shrug, and tried desperately to ignore the beads of sweat I could feel rolling down the back of my neck and steadily tracing my spine beneath my tank top.
"Moms 'wanderlust' is out of control"
My older brother Emerson had shared with my twin and I twelve years ago, on arrival at our fourth house in Boston.
As we’d stood at the foot of the four steps leading up to the front porch; our small hands clutched tight in his slightly larger ones and three pairs of identical green eyes wide at the huge redbrick house in front of us, he had explained what he’d overheard when Mom and her last boyfriend Robert, had been arguing the previous week.
Mom had something called ‘Wanderlust’, he’d told a six year old Forrest and I.
He wasn’t sure if it was fatal but he said it explained the small round pills we saw her taking each morning. He didn’t know the ins and outs of what would happen to Mom, but he knew she’d been to a doctor Merriam-Webster and they’d confirmed it.
I’d taken a large gulp and blinked so hard the tears gathering in the corners of my moss green eyes had no choice but to retreat.
I was six, and a six year old wouldn't dream of questioning someone that had made it to double figures.
“Arizona” Forrest breathed heavily, waving his hands frantically in his face as we stood at the foot of the dozen or so steps leading up to our new Brownstone; sans ‘the genius’. “Who the fuck moves to Arizona? In August?”
I shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my jeans with a shrug, and tried desperately to ignore the beads of sweat I could feel rolling down the back of my neck and steadily tracing my spine beneath my tank top.
"Moms 'wanderlust' is out of control"