DAY 45: What We Share

Marilyn was sleeping through her sponge bath.  She always found it soothing when her daughter Grace, or any of Grace's children, assumed nursing duties for the day.  Marilyn did not yet feel comfortable with the home nurses - different and unpredictable faces in the same uniform.  But at least she was home.  And when family was there, it was perfection.

Loni, meanwhile, was freaking out.  She measured the seconds between each snore, assuring herself that grandma had not died on her watch.  She even held her grandma's head beside her ear, as if it were a conch shell holding the ocean's roar.  

And it was while her grandmother's face was in her hands that Loni saw her mother's brow.  Loni moved the cheekflesh around, studying that face; she saw her mom in ten years, and maybe her sister in 40.  She flattened some wrinkles, and saw one corner of her grandmother's face at 20 years old, a glimpse of the woman she was.  Beneath the face that had made a pretty convincing Mrs Claus last Christmas, Loni saw the cigarette girl that charmed a soldier's heart, and the lady that would have marched with her last year in Augusta.  

Her grandmother was still sleeping.


inspired by Discover Magazine article, " 'Genetic Adam' Lived Much Earlier than Previously Thought"