Tonight I saw a kid, well not a kid anymore, an adult, at least by legal definition (I know because he successfully bought cigarettes) but in my memory he is a kid. His name was Mitchell and his was in the checkout line at the Speedway gas station near my home, his mother waiting in the surprisingly nice looking SUV outside. She looked far more ragged than I had remembered, though in truth, it had probably been a decade or more since I had seen her, or her children.
Mitchell had a brother, his name was Josh and he was not in the Speedway, but I assume with relative certainty that he is still alive, though I have no actual proof. Mitchell was 6 or 7 years old when I met him and his younger brother in a cul-de-sac of houses not far from where I lived. I was a bit older, but not awkwardly so, and I became friends with the two boys and to some extent, even their mother. I suppose she saw me as a good influence and rightly so. She (the mother) who I can't rightly remember the name of, was always a bit short-tempered, but overall seemed to mean well and tried her best to be a single mother raising two rowdy young boys.
As I got older, I saw less and less of Mitchell and Josh, adolescent and teen life tends to take precedent over kids the age of your little brother, especially when you often times can't escape him, the last thing you want is two more. I still would see their mother from time to time in the grocery store or around town and for the most part she was pleasant toward me and always exchanged the seemingly social routine of expressing how I should come see the boys and how they are growing up so fast. I suppose in my youth I did not realize it at the time, but looking back, even then, she appeared as if she was weighted down and ragged.
I saw her (the mother) tonight, waiting in the SUV and I saw Mitchell, standing in line to buy cigarettes, and chew. I think maybe the cigarettes were for his mother and the chew for him, seeing as he took a moment, while in line, to open the nearby door and spit some of the tobacco laced saliva from his mouth. Neither of them recognized me, I doubt am anything more than a vague memory to Mitchell and his mother may have remembered had I approached her, but she was in the SUV and she looked so ragged.
She was in the driver's seat, so I assumed she drove them to the Speedway and though I do not know for sure, I would not be surprised if Mitchell was without a license for one reason or another. He looked nothing like the happy kid I remembered, he simply looked like a punk, a punk who hated that he still lived with his mother, yet also depended on her in an oddly parasitic way. He looked ill-tempered and lacking self-respect but worst of all, he too looked ragged.
As they left the parking lot, in the surprisingly nice SUV, most likely heading back to the same cul-de-sac and home I had met them in so many years ago, I looked at the face of the mother. All the time I had known her, she had been a single mother, trying to raise two boys on her own, doing her best even though she was short-tempered. She had loved her children, Mitchell and Josh and I am certain she still does, but the look on her face as she pulled away. Her tired, ragged face. The face of a woman that had tried her very best, but somewhere along the line simply gave up and could do it no longer. She loved her boys, though I am sure through the years they had caused her a great deal of stress, she loved them. In her face, masked behind years of grinning and baring, I saw a hint of loathing.
Loathing. . .
I don't think I will ever forget that face.
. . .Damn
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