The old lady looked into her backyard. There wasn’t much to see. She turned and looked into her house. There wasn’t anything to see there either. Finally the old lady glanced at her reflection. Nothing but wrinkles and white hair to show for her life lived in the sun.
An old man appeared at her shoulder, and his comforting touch that the old lady had known for the past fifty years embraced her frail body. “What’s on the agenda for today, darling?”
“Our daughter is coming to visit,” the old lady spoke. “How could you forget?”
“My memory isn’t what it used to be,” the old man sighed, and kissed her cheek. “I’ll head down to the airport. I want to get there early so I can see her come off the plane.” The old lady smiled and nodded, waving her husband out the door.
The old lady moved to the kitchen, taking out her cookbooks that were falling apart, and scratched baking pans that have been in the house for as long as she had.
The old cookbook fell open to her daughter’s favorite meal, hushpuppies served with shrimp. The old lady didn’t even need the cookbook anymore, but it was the pictures drawn in by tiny hands that brought the cookbook out every time. She fingered the scribbled in drawings of puppies holding up one finger over their mouths, and a smile spread across her face. Pulling open drawers and cabinets the old lady gathered the ingredients she needed. Usually the sun shone in through the window, providing natural light, but today the sun hadn’t made an appearance yet, so the old lady switched on the lights. The old lady began chopping her onion, her thin hands working with elegance. There was a scar on her right hand from when her daughter was small, and hadn’t known the dangers of running with scissors.
“Oh!” The old lady cried out as drops of blood began pooling on her cutting board. She sighed and placed the knife in the sink to be washed, and made her way up the stairs. Feeling around in the cabinet under the bathroom sink for a Band-Aid, the old lady came across something unfamiliar. Wrapping a tissue around her injured finger, the old lady lifted up an old shoebox. The old lady cast the lid aside, and she gasped and placed a hand over her mouth.
“I thought I lost these…” she whispered. The old lady sat down at the kitchen table and started sifting through the old photographs. The young faces of her, her husband, and her daughter smiled up at her from the beach in Georgia, the cabin upstate, the mountains in Denver, the cafes in Venice, the streets of Paris. She touched her daughter’s face, the one she missed so much, her smiling face something she used to see every day. It had taken some getting used to when her daughter left for college. A face she saw as often as the sun was suddenly gone. It got lonely around the house, with just the old lady and the old man occupying it, but soon that was going to change. Soon her daughter was coming home.
The sun shone through the window over the old lady’s shoulder, illuminating the picture in her hand. The picture was of her daughter in the old lady’s arms, kissing her cheek while the younger version of the old lady laughed. A car door slammed outside.
“Mom? I’m home!” The old lady set down the picture and turned to the door, where her daughter was waiting, with a huge smile on her face.
Her daughter pulled the old lady into a tight embrace.
“I’ve missed you so much, Sunny.”