Schrödinger’s Butterflies by Laura Boatner
My eyes used to roll like dung beetles as soon as my mother started talking. Different story, different day. Of course, this poor attitude of mine peaked when I hit prepubescence. Her memories were randomly looped into some kind of crazy-eight ball configuration, and you’d never know which one she’d shake up from day to day.
Some days it was about how I got my hand stuck in a vending machine when the gum-ball wouldn’t drop, and how we had to call the fire department to set me free. Another day she’d giggle about how I refused to smile in my kindergarten picture. It wasn’t a stick-straight frown, but one where the corners of my mouth curved like parentheses in search of my chin. On and on it went…the blueberries up my nose, the Easy Bake Oven catastrophe of 1979, and the year I reenacted the Rockettes’ holiday special by wearing Christmas stockings for boots and doing high kicks. At 56, I still hang one of those stockings every Christmas, even though the angel is missing an eye and the halo is lower down now, looking more like a hula hoop.
To my mother’s credit, she never seemed to tire of my obnoxious attitude. Either that, or she just didn’t notice. Her friends lovingly referred to it as her having the gift of gab.
In retrospect, as much as my mother’s recaps used to annoy me, they’re now locked inside her mind like a safe without a key, and in that containment I hope that butterflies might still flutter. In my recurrent dreams, I poke and prod the door of that unforgiving steel, furiously prying it by using keys out of her old pearl purse…the one with the broken zipper and row of missing beads. I hammer it, throw it, curse it, just to hear her stories one more time. That would prove that the butterflies, like Schrödinger’s cat, are still alive and know who I am.
On this evening, I kiss her cheek and leave the residential craft room that’s strewn with blue bingo chips and jumbo 5-piece jigsaw puzzles, escaping through the glass doors that are now imprisoning her. It’s pouring and I’m drenched. Ankle-deep puddles are everywhere. I feel so numb that I don’t bother to pull the umbrella from my satchel, or to even run for cover. I raise my wet head as I sit in my car crying. The early evening clouds finally lift a tiny bit and begin to spit out sprinkles. I can feel my childhood being washed away, and tonight’s sunset couldn’t possibly look more dull.
Laura Boatner is a registered nurse by day and a writer by night. Publications include Brilliant Flash Fiction, New Verse News, Soul Forte, Garden Party, and second-place contest-winner in Open Kimono Publishing Anthology. She resides in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and two rescue pups, Birdie and Pepper.
Photo by storegraphic via Vecteezy.com
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Oh Laura,
I am in awe of your talent. It never ceases to amaze me.
Love, Debi