Healing Tea

by Sheila Horgan

  “You didn’t screw up anyone’s life. We’re all fine. We’ll figure this out. Have you talked to a lawyer?”

  “Basically, the lawyer says if I don’t get an ass for a judge, and if everything works out the way it is supposed to, chances are good I’ll never have to take Evelyn into a prison. Basically because he is a father she’s never met, and who shouldn’t be out of prison until she is old enough to make her own decisions.”

  “That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?”

  “Sure, it sounds great.” I couldn’t tell if there was more disdain or sarcasm in her voice. “So, even if I can keep my daughter away from him — which is only possible if everything goes well, and we all know how often everything goes well — every time he gets bored and is sitting around in prison with nothing better to do, he’s gonna do this to me again. I’ll spend every extra penny I have, and if everything goes well, he goes back to his cell and figures out a new way to harass me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I did this to myself. I married him.”

  “Yes, but, Suze, you got Evelyn out of the deal, so no matter what happens, we’re ahead.”

  “Thanks. I need to be reminded of that when I’m feeling sorry for myself. By the way, we aren’t telling Gran any of this. She will insist on paying for the lawyer, and I don’t want to do that.”

  “Your family, your call.”

  “After it all calms down, I’ll talk to her.”

  “What does A.J. say?”

  “Nothing that I can repeat should we end up in court.” She smiled.

  “Maybe Jessie’s sister knows someone who could help.”

  “Maybe. For now, I’m just gonna have my lawyer file the papers and see what happens. She told me that no matter what, there’s always another way to approach it.”

  “Okay. If I can do anything, you promise to let me know?”

  “You’re already doing it. The lawyer said moving in with you and A.J. was actually a good thing. She said it shows how family oriented I am, and even though it was Barry who beat you up because of me, you still like me, so I can’t be all bad.”

  “Really? Maybe it’s time to find you a new lawyer.”

  “She didn’t say it that way, but that’s what she meant.”

  “So when does all this happen?”

  “She’s going to file paperwork in the next couple of weeks. Then it just depends on how things work their way through the system. She said we might have to have an evaluation done, stuff like that, but I’m not worried about that. I might have terrible taste in husbands, but I’m a damn good mother.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “Keep reminding me, because even as I say I’m a damn good mother, that little voice in the back of my head whispers, if I’m such a good mother, why did I pick Barry as a father?”

  “Life isn’t about the mistakes we make. It’s about the way we deal with those mistakes.”

  “You sound like your mother.”

  “Thank you.”

  A.J. came back down the stairs. “She’s all set. I changed her and got her into her crib.” He put the baby monitor on the table. “You okay, Suze?”

  “I will be. Thanks.”

  “Anything we can do…?”

  “Yeah, Cara already volunteered that.”

  A.J.’s smile made my heart skip a beat.

  He’s such a good man.

  TEN

  EVER GET SMACKED in the head with a good idea? It happened as I walked from the bedroom this morning.

  I’m not going to say it was my mother, because there are so many people who think that kind of stuff is silly. I’m not willing to lose what little credibility I have in this life when I’m not one hundred percent certain, but it was really weird, and it was very Mom-like.

  I was walking from the bedroom to the kitchen when something caught my eye. It was a little piece of paper sticking out from under a roll of shelf liner I’d stuck up on the shelf so I would remember to line the drawers under the stairs.

  The piece of paper was not there when I stuck the shelf liner up there. How do I know this? Because I am me. I cleaned every shelf within an inch of its life. I also checked the shelf before I put the liner up there. I was worried if there was something on the shelf, the liner would roll off in the middle of the night, and I would have a heart attack, or worse, I’d wake up Evelyn.

  The night before, I’d put up a new shower curtain in the extra bathroom. I had the clear shower curtain, and then I had this really pretty white-on-white flower curtain. The whole bathroom is white on white. I love the way it looks. You can completely change the look of the room with just a couple of accessories. About three in the morning, the whole new curtain and rod came crashing down. I’ll say one thing for my house. It has great acoustics. No matter where you were in the house, it sounded like that rod was crashing down on your head. It took forever to get Evelyn settled down again. I felt terrible.

  Anyway, the writing on the little piece of paper was not in my mother’s handwriting. Obviously. If it had been, that would have been beyond anything I can deal with, and I would have screamed so loud and long you would have heard it. But what it said was something my mother would say all the time: No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted ~ Aesop.

  It dawned on me that statement pretty much sums up my mother. Mom knew that to be true and lived it every single day. Little acts of kindness eventually added up to something important. There are a whole bunch of O’Flynns. I know that we do the random act of kindness thing that was a trend a long time ago. Every O’Flynn — except maybe Seamus — goes out of their way to do something nice when they see the chance. How about if we made a commitment? Every one of us makes a promise to do something lovely for a stranger every day for the next year.

  I called Teagan and told her about my idea.

  “What if we write them down, kind of like we did for the memory box?”

  “I don’t know if I like that idea, dingleberry. Mom used to say that when you start keeping track of your good deeds, it becomes more about feeding your ego than about doing a good thing.”

  “I just think doing something like making the memory box would be a motivator and make us accountable.”

  “Okay, how about this: we put a coin in a jar every time we do a good deed. Maybe we’ll get competitive and not only do more good deeds, but we’ll also raise some money for a good cause. How about we create a bunch of containers so that we all match, and make them completely opaque so that we can’t tell how much is in there. Then we put in a coin every time we do a Mom deed. Say, a quarter?”

  “I don’t think it matters the denomination.”

  “Stop overthinking finances, dingleberry. The most broke among us can afford twenty-five cents a day. We are a blessed family. None of us are that broke.”

  “You’re right. It’s less than a hundred bucks a year, but when you consider how many of us there are, it could add up to some serious money. And I like calling it a Mom deed. We should all do our normal stuff, but when we do something really special, something that Mom would do, then we put in a coin.”

  “I think you’ve got something. Why don’t you call Dad and see what he thinks?”

  “I’m going over there for a cup of tea later. Daddy’s working on our backyard, and he wanted to show me some flowers. Did you hear that Aldo’s been sick?”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “I’m not sure. I think it’s a combination of things. He’s had diabetes for a long time. I guess things aren’t really going well. Daddy seems worried.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

  “I hope so. I’ll let you know what Daddy says about the idea. I’m sure we can get everyone to agree. Except maybe Seamus.”

  “Becoming a father is mellowing him. He might agree, if only to prove that he can do it better than the rest of us.”

  I try not to be cynical, but sometimes it just creeps out of me. “Yeah, he’ll just throw a few
rolls of coins in a jar and call it done.”

  “Probably.”

  Daddy thought it was a good idea. He didn’t have time to talk much about it. He was on his way over to Aldo’s. Turns out the doctors are saying that Aldo’s kidneys are failing, and they might have to put him on dialysis. That’s not good.

  Daddy is helping Aldo’s wife and son move some stuff around in the house to make it easier on Aldo to get around. I don’t know why I thought Aldo was single. I thought his wife had passed some time ago. I’m so used to Mom and Daddy doing everything together that whenever I see someone their age without someone by their side, I assume they don’t have anyone. I never think that about someone our age. I need to think about that.

  Teagan called a couple of hours later and said she found the perfect containers for our Mom-deed coins. She said she would decorate them, and we could hand them out next time the whole family got together. She suggested we make it a dinner at Mom and Daddy’s house on Sunday. She’s going with the assumptive close. She isn’t asking anyone if they want to do it; she is going to present it as a done deal. Very Teagan. I’ve missed that.

  I’m not sure how she is going to explain the whole thing. You don’t get a coin for a regular random act of kindness. You should always be doing those, and I think pretty much all of the O’Flynns do that without much thought. In order to put a coin in to count for a Mom deed, it has to be a special act of kindness. One my Mom would do.

  I got a bunch of work done for Adeline.

  I got several things going on the stove so I could cook some food for Teagan’s mother-in-law-to-be. I’ve really let that commitment slide lately. That’s not right at all. Especially with my beautiful kitchen.

  When I mentioned to Jessie that I was back, and he could tell his sister that the meals were on their way again, he offered to buy me a nice freezer so I could cook whenever the mood struck and not worry about where to put it. I laughed and said that would be great. The next day, a huge freezer showed up. It’s on the back porch. Fit perfectly. A couple of hours after that, a guy showed up at the door with meat. A freezer full. All wrapped for the freezer so that I didn’t even have to pull out my vacuum sealer.

  It would have been nice if Jessie had told me about it. What if I hadn’t been home when all that meat showed up? But I’m not really complaining. Having the freezer there does make everything easier, and although Teagan and Jessie have always been really good about paying me back for anything I spend on his mom, this is better. Somehow the offer of fixing food for Jessie’s mom has turned into a big deal for their family. I don’t mind. When I’m in the mood to cook, I just make a little more and freeze it.

  There was a nice note from Jessie and Teagan. It even got a little mushy. The note said how much they appreciate everything I have done for them. The butcher handed me a package. “This is for you.”

  A.J. and I would be eating two of the most beautiful steaks I’ve ever seen. Kind of wasted on me, since I’m not a foodie, but A.J. will love it. He’ll eat his rare, and I’ll commit a mortal sin and eat mine well-done.

  The thought that Suzi would be excluded had just entered my brain when the butcher handed me a second package. “This is for the young lady, should she be home.”

  It meant a lot to me that Jessie and Teagan remembered Suzi. Even more than it did that they had thought about A.J and me.

  Is that weird?

  No.

  It means they really know me, and they know what is important to me.

  I decided I’d go traditional and have steak and baked potatoes with all the trimmings for dinner. I was getting hungry just thinking about it.

  The thought of baked potatoes brought back memories from when we were little. My mom would fix baked potatoes, and my father would come around the table and squish everybody’s open. My mom would split the potato with her favorite paring knife, and then my dad would follow behind with a pinch and a pull, and the potato would be perfect. A little bit smashed, which made it perfect for the addition of butter. When you just cut the potato, the butter doesn’t get in there right. Daddy’s fingers must have been unhappy after squishing most of a dozen potatoes, but he never complained, and it is a huge memory for me.

  Funny what stays with you.

  I gave myself my first coin this afternoon. I’m actually kind of excited about it. I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or just sad.

  When I was actually earning my coin, I was totally eloquent. I have no idea where the words came from. The right words probably came straight from my mother. She was really good in situations like this.

  I was sitting in a fast-food place. There was a girl. She must have been about ten. She asked the woman with her — I assume she was her mother — if she could have ice cream. Her mother said no. She explained they were both on a diet. Her tone was more fitting a devastating event in life than excitement or enthusiasm. She grumbled about how they were both going to lose weight. Sounded more like they were both going in for a major amputation.

  The little girl got very upset. She said with complete sincerity that she was ugly anyway, everybody said so, so why did it matter if she was fat?

  At first, I was in shock.

  What does it take to make a little girl that negative about herself in only ten years? Maybe fewer. You would think it would take decades of negativity before that would happen.

  The woman with her — I refuse to think of her as a mother even if she gave birth to her — had a terrible response. Instead of assuring the little girl that she was fabulous, she told her, “We aren’t trying to lose weight to be pretty. We are trying to get healthy. It doesn’t matter if you’re ugly.” While I understand what the woman was trying to do, why on earth didn’t she tell this little girl something more positive?

  I took a deep breath.

  The little girl made eye contact with me.

  Had she not, I would have kept my mouth shut. But since she did, I smiled at her and said hi.

  I started up a conversation with her adult and soon was talking to the little girl. I was a lot more eloquent in the moment, but basically I asked the girl if she’d taken any horticulture classes. She looked at me, very confused. I told her I didn’t know a lot about plants, but there was one thing my mother had explained to me when I was a little girl.

  The only difference between a weed and a flower was that somewhere along the line, someone decided the flower was more to their liking.

  I explained how some weeds are beautiful.

  Some flowers are ugly.

  Some weeds smell lovely.

  Some flowers stink to the high heavens.

  I told her that people are the same. They come in all different colors and shapes, and some smell great, and some stink to the high heavens.

  I gave her the same look Teagan used to give me when she walked past the bathroom after Rory had been in there a while. The little girl laughed.

  I said only she could decide if she was a flower or if she was a weed.

  I explained there were a million different ways to decide. Based on choices. Based on helpfulness. Based on beliefs. Based on just about every part of everything in her world. When you came right down to it, what a flower or weed looks like isn’t nearly as important as how much it is valued, and it is valued for more than its looks. Think herbs. Think natural healing.

  We got into a discussion about how people are valued for lots of reasons. Some people think it is all about appearance, but if she went home and looked on the computer, she’d see a different story. If she looked for the most important people in the world, people that helped other people, people that cured sickness, people that took care of babies, people that were kind and created beautiful art, and all that kind of stuff, they were rarely people who worried about what they looked like. They worried about what they did.

  I have no way of knowing if what we talked about will stick. She might have understood, she might not have, but she took my phone number and promised if she needed to talk t
o somebody, she’d give me a call. Her adult and I seemed to have this little understanding going on. I hope they call me.

  I was in such a good mood when I got home. Teagan called and asked if she could come over. We live just far enough apart that she calls before she drops by.

  I can’t swear to it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if A.J. and Jessie planned it that way.

  It would have been Jessie’s idea, but I’ll bet A.J. would go along with it.

  Teagan came over to tell me the latest about Honey. You would think if you were a partner in a business, and if you only had one partner, and if that partner had a crazy wife named Honey, you would talk to the partner about her. But Teagan prefers to come to my house and whine for about an hour, get a full helping and a half of chocolate, and then move on.

  I’m beginning to think we have a bit of a problem with this passive-aggressive stuff that runs through our family, but I’m not sure enough to actually tell Teagan. Instead, I complain and give her enough chocolate to give her a big butt one of these days. Is that passive-aggressive?

  I told Teagan to just come around the back. Daddy told me he wants me to water the area he’s going to plant. He said he added some stuff to the dirt, things like rice hulls. That particular area doesn’t drain well, which is really unusual in Florida, and with the rain we get here, if your soil doesn’t drain well, you’re gonna wash the seeds and plants right out to the gutter.

  In my defense, I just want to say, when Teagan came around the back of the house, I didn’t hear her call out to me.

  I also want to say when we bought the house, there were some tools and stuff left behind by the old owners.

  One of the things left behind was a really old, brass garden-hose attachment that’s like a rain shower thing, but it’s a rain shower any Floridian would be proud of. A real soaking shower.

  It’s not my fault that Teagan scared me and I turned and the hose attachment lived up to its reputation.