Baggage

I have dived headlong into the deep of this year, complete with finishing something I started, getting outside, my Annual reflective walk, and writing.....

Here is a snippet of a prompt I tried from '642 Things to Write About'

A woman is struggling to get a large package into the trunk of her car.  Her son doesn't get out of the car to help her.

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The wind shimmied down her neck, finding its way beneath her scarf and starched collar.  The time allotted for pick-ups at the airport never takes into account oversized luggage stubbornly resisting a compact car's trunk.  Sharon wrestled and wedged the plaid behemoth filled with more than she needed into the back of the car.

Bending to try a different angle, she could see his head outlined against the front windshield.  She would know those earlobes and that curl at the back of his hair in a crowd a hundred yards away.  Her son.

Unmoving, and unmoved by her plight to cram the suitcase into his car.  This theme, replayed over and over - a son, unnoticing of a mother's humanness and failings for the resentment harbored and built up by him.  A scene played out in thousands of tangled webs.

She would be with him for two weeks, through the holidays, occupying his spare room and likely his predictable routine.  His schedule.  The "crazy busy" life where he resides with his new wife, three children and stepson.  She would have to find the minor accompaniment to his orchestrated chaos.  One that did not interfere or offend.

Horns pealed in chorus behind her, and still he sat, growing impatient but unaffected by her problem.  She jerked the suitcase free from its ill-fitted slot and dragged the albatross to the backseat passenger door.  Flinging the door wide, she swung the baggage into the floorboard behind her seat.  Unforgiveness hung heavy in the envelope of the car.  She settled into the front seat, and her place, as they moved forward, into the gray dark Seattle sky.