The Love of a Mother

It was a grey, cloudy and somehow vivid day in the city of Nanaimo. The traffic was jamming, people were running along the busy shopping streets with a smile on their faces that was caused by consumption. Yes, it was the city in which buses were sometimes late, and the boredom and stress that caused Jorg to play with his short brown beard was definetely the symptom of his waiting. The bus route he took was a not a very crowded or even popular one, so he made himself comfortable next to a huge window in order to observe the outside world from within the wheeled faunus he had seated himself. The bus suddenly stopped, and he was shook off his daydream and saw that there was a teenager at the bustop waiting for the same, just as he did a few minutes ago. A tall young man, with headphones, wearing a T-shirt that was too large for his thin body; the Nanaimo Tower imprinted on its front and back. The Nanaimo Tower was different to Jorg than it was to other people, it was a part of him.
The excitement he had for several months finally came to an end. He made it! Nanaimo looked so beautifully huge and wonderfully different from the air, he had never imagined it to be so fascinating. All the magazine articles and the tourist guide books he had read about it could not give the slightest flair of this city. And imagining to live here for the next 4 years and to study at the University of Nanaimo made him nearly faint. He had made it! It was 4pm and he waited outside the international arrivals terminal, he could have waited for several days just observing the people flocking here from all over the world, but his homestay-mom, with whom he had made that appointment to pick her up at the airport could have arrived any moment. Waiting was fun for the first time in his life. “Excuse me are you Jorg?” said the woman who was coming towards him, “yes, and you are Shawn, right?” Indeed she was Shawn, it was definetely a big mistake not to exchange pictures and letters before arrival, he felt embarrased to get into the car of a woman he had met only 30 seconds ago. But it was business, she would rent him a room and give him breakfast and dinner as a student and he would pay her for it, the meeting of cultures in a home environment as the university’s international student’s council promised was merely euphemism added to that renting business to him. She was in her mid thirties and she was a nice woman. She was energetic, definetely not exhausted, and he felt that within she was very excited in having a new house mate,too. The road home was decorated by family talk, airport stories and the miserable American traffic.
Jorg was given the roof, which had a bed, a cupboard and a desk. It was beautiful even better than he had expected. The house was beautiful and still not paid off as he learned at the dinner table. He had liked her open ways, the confession that she needed financial support to bring her two children and herself through and at the same time pay off the house, made her seem more natural and honest to him. She was a good woman, surprisingly she had married twice and eventually divorced twice and now mothered her 14 and 6 year old sons a few hundred meters away from her own mom’s house. Yes, she was okey, and she was 35, 15 years older than himself, but at least as vivid as himself as well as dreamy as himself, as he realized through her tone and her speech. Jorg liked her. During the dinner neighbours came by to see the newcomer of the house, a huge interest to the foreigner filled the house, people came to the door and asked “Did he come?... Is he here?... Can we see him?” and last but not least her mother came, and somehow she was astonished and mesmerized by the newcomer. Talk would not have ended, had Jorg not been so tired.
Jorg woke up very early, highly motivated the day and with it a new life began. He went downstairs and saw Tyler, playing vidoegames, asked for his mother, received a shoprt reply “she’s out at work.” That meant that he had to find his own way to the university. He was waiting at the nearest busstop, fetched the university bus and soon saw a wonderful campus, with huge green loans and students rushing from building to building. This was the place where he wanted to be.
At home he had now observed the characters of his housemates. Tyler and Dylan did not have a warm brother relationship, part of the reason was probably that their father’s were different. Tyler lived in his own mental and physical universe, his room, whereas Dylan was the little happy smurf who needed affection from every person whom he confronted. It was easy to win a child’s heart by playing soccer with him in the backyard, and Dylan loved running after the ball, asmuch as Jorg did. His mother saw this wonderful scene and to no surprise she got so affected by it that Jorg becamse a real member of the household and deserved a better degree of respect within.
A few times a week the mother had her escapes into the garage after the kids went to bed. Jorg wondered what she was doing there at that hour of time. He did not hesitate to ask her, she asked him if he could keep a secret, why couldn’t he? A tiny little box on the uppershelf in the garage was the secret, not the box itself as it seemed, but the thing within. She smoked marijuana, and there were three joints in the box ready to be consumed by her. Jorg was surprised, he could not understand and did want to believe in it. She lighted it, and the purple haze and the dry smell of it filled the garage promptly. Jorg asked her if she had been doing this for a long time, she laughed and answered “since I was a teenager,” but next week she would quit. The integrated newcomer asked if she would get high, she laughed again and replied no, she meant that there was little weed in it, and due to the fact that she had been doing this for a long time, the intoxicating effects would not be hard on her, but merely lead to some relaxation after a hard days work as a nurse and as a single carring mother. The newcomer was integrated now, they had a secret, that nobody else knew of her. They were close buddies now.
So close, that at home, in the car, and while shopping they did talk about everything, family secrets, personal secrets, love, sex, marriage, divorce. It was interesting for Jorg to have a mature female perspective of all the themes one had to experience on one’s own to understand them. Her perspective’s were as interesting as the new environment was, she definetely used to be a hippie, she accepted the hippie identity to some certain extent, but she was not the radical one who marched against Vietnam and other political ill doings as her contemporaries did. Soon she began to ask questions on his native country, and he had great pleasure in explaining her the similarities, differences and the mentality of his country. She loved listening to it all, it was all new fertile ground for her, and very mystical to a woman who had not even once left her native county in 35 years. She listened with great care and big eyes to what Jorg had to tell about his home, at the dinner table now and than even the kids asked about his country. Jorg liked the attention, enjoyed being the adventurer among these infinitely settled humans, who deep within seemed to want to break off from their native surroundings and experience the world.
Shawn began to behave strangely, she began treating Jorg like a child, sometimes even ironed his shirts without even having being asked for it, and what was even stranger she began to do some decent cooking and asked for Jorg’s favorite meals. He was now a permanent real member of this small single mother family, he liked it, he belonged to it, he really felt at home. Jorg thought of Shawn as a beautiful woman, but she started to make-up herself extensively, and even went to the beauty-salon to have her eyebrows plugged at least once a week. She was getting more beautiful from day to day, obviously she had gained confidence in herself due to the friendship and advice Jorg gave her. Actually, Jorg respected her, she did a good job, financed her family, did everything that was possible for her kids- a woman like her needed a few pushes to forget about the two bad marriages and the violent experiences she had in them, she deserved a good life with a man who appreciated and understood her soul.
She started smashing the dishes in the sink, and cried like Jorg had never seen a person crying that way before, her green eyes had gone red then. She had gone mad, and she constantly said “I hate myself....I am so...sorry.” But Jorg had a terrified look on his face and all he said was
“Be quiet you’ll wake up the kids, it’s very late Shawn!”
“I don’t fucking care....please don’t hate me...I am so sorry!”
“No Shawn... I am sorry, I’ll fix it. I promise. But you should have kept it for yourself.”
“I know...I just thought...I only thought...that you might...you and I...”
“Shawn, but I can not lie to myself...I don’t love you! No, what you did was wrong.”
“But you shouldn’t have been so harsh on me...you really broke my heart Jorg.”
“I wanted to keep it short...I understood that you were going for it the whole night...”
“I couldn’t wait any longer...it grew inside of me Jorg...I’m sorry but I love you!”
“I love you too...but not in that sense...please do forgive me.”
“Do you really think I am disgusting because I fell in love with you?”
“I don’t know...I really don’t know”
This was too much to take for Jorg, they both drank, and the wine running through her heart had made her brave, brave enough to confess her love to him. Was it wrong to fall in love?
Jorg woke up at 11 am. Stood up in his bed. The stillness proved that he was alone in the house, no video game sounds, no running water, no dishes clicking, no steps. Only silence. A large piece of paper lay on the kitchen table, signed by Shawn.
“I am sorry, please stay. But leave if you wish! Won’t be home until 7pm. Shawn.”
Greg, Shawn’s neighbor saw Jorg with his suitcases in front of the house. He asked him where he was going to. Jorg was leaving because he had caused too much trouble, his friend would come and pick him up with his car in an hour or so. Greg offered him a ride and Jorg accepted. Telly had been informed by phone, and was waiting at home. He was more waiting for the story than he was waiting for Jorg. They talked, about everything, ate something and went to bed. Jorg put on his headphones and listened to a local fm radio station and thought.
The bus had finally arrived. Jorg got off as the only passenger of a bus-route that was not very busy and popular in Nanaimo and started walking. It had been 15 years since he last saw Shawn that evening. But could Shawn’s neighbor have been right? But a thing like that could not come out of the nowhere? Without even having left the county once in her life, did she really die in a traffic accident? The cemetary would seal his doubt. It was to huge to pass by each tombstone, and he found the cemetary manager. Fredricks Shawn, Fredricks Shawn, Fredricks Shawn- there was no Fredricks Shawn. Neither in this cemetary, nor in his life. Only in his past. He stroke and played with his beard.