#4

You can't see them.

I shouldn't be seeing them.

I always loved my outdoorsy kid with the wild imagination. For as long as I can remember she had been seeing another world in our backyard. Every time her father would get ready to mow the lawn she insisted on running outside first yelling, "He's getting ready to mow! He's getting ready to mow!", as if she were warning the village.

Today she scraped her knee while she was playing outside and while I was out tending to her, she was telling me all about her fantasy friends. "Oh, mommy I really wish you could see them too". "That would be wonderful, honey but -", I answered absentmindedly and got distracted as the sun suddenly got brighter for a moment. I looked up trying to judge if the day were going to get any hotter, but nothing seemed to have changed. I looked back at my daughter, who seemed to have even forgotten she had fallen and told her to go play I'd call her in for lunch soon.

As I was getting up I saw them. Moving at he base of the tree we had been sitting next to were these creatures. I sat back down and stared. What could they be, were they dangerous? They weren't animals, they had tools and clothes, and definitely some magic. How is he moving that huge eggplant? Hey, that's from my garden! I thought I had a rabbit problem. Julie did say the fairies liked them. Oh-no! These can't be the fairies she had been talking about all these years. Fairies are beautiful diaphanous creatures, these are not beautiful. They might be cute in they way that small things are cute, but these are homely, earthy creatures. They don't even have wings. They look like they probably live underground.

"Mommy!" Julie's voice calls to me but I can't look away from what I am watching. Her hand is on my shoulder, "can you really see them now mommy?" "See what honey?", I answer vaguely although I know what she is referring to. She turns her head and says something to herself. When she looks back at me she gives me a big hug and runs back to play again.

I don't know if I am losing my mind or if my daughter has just given me some magical gift so I can see into her world. But I know I am sitting right here until something makes sense.

#3

Facebook.
She had found him on Facebook, or rather he had found her. Now here she was sitting in a coffee shop pretending to do a crossword puzzle for the past 20 minutes, waiting.

Why had she even gotten onto Facebook anyway? "Come on mom, it'll be fun", her son had said, "we can be friends". Oh, she had given him such a look, but then he flashed that smile and she became his "friend". She was surprised at how many "friends" her son had, and even more surprised at how many of them were friends with their parents. One of her son's friends contacted her after she had been online and asked her for the recipe for those "lemon cookie things" that he had at her house once, he had never forgotten them. She didn't remember the boy or the cookies and there was a good chance they had probably come out of a box, but it was sweet anyway. Eventually, she knew more about what her son was up to than when he had been living at home and she had her own slew of friends. It seemed like everyone was on Facebook.

"I can't believe you are on Facebook. I have thought about you so many times and wondered what happened to you." came the message with the Friend Request. Thank goodness no one was there to see her grinning like a schoolgirl with a crush at the computer screen. He had thought about her, he had found her, she pressed accept without thinking. Was the world so much easier now. She started to write to tell him, but his e-mail arrived first asking her to meet him at Cafe Amelie tomorrow for lunch. She focused back on the entrance and the street around it. She knew she would recognize him, even if he never looked her way. She could remember how he walked, the way he moved, but of course she would be sure if she saw him smile. She had seen that smile every day for the past 20 years. Well almost every day, up until her son moved on to campus last year.

There he was walking into the Cafe.

Quickly she got up and began to walk across the street. Finally after all this time she could tell him about how that summer, that vacation, that one night had changed everything. He could tell her why her dad couldn't find him when he looked, why his family had never come back to the lake. It was OK, she hadn't been alone, her family had had taken care of them both, but she always felt bad that he didn't know about their son. She walked up to the entrance of the cafe and could see him seated. She only saw his profile, but his face gave her all the answers she needed. He had always known.