Winds Across the Prairie

Iris carefully made her way up the attic steps thinking her father might like it if she read 'Camelot' to him. She hated to think of books collecting dust and turning brittle in the dark. Maybe they were already too old and frail to handle, but she had to try. They used to belong to her mother. Hopefully, they would cheer her father up. She willed herself not to look at anything else. It would only make her upset. No one seemed ready or willing to offer her more than simple answers to perplexing questions.

She imagined her mother having such a deep longing for her father and she looked at him, lying quietly with his eyes closed.

Deciding to sit with him a while longer, she picked up the book again. He showed no reaction. She had imagined, as she so often did when she thought about her mother, that it had been a gift from her father and at some time her parents sat together reading the enchanting love story. She thumbed through the pages then opened it from the back when all at once she saw some hand writing. The ink had faded with time causing her to peer at the worn scrawling. She read the words in an undertone.

'I once loved the prairie, crowned by the vast blue sky, full of fleeting clouds. In the spring it is beautiful and tender. The wildflowers whisper poetry to the wind, playing a gentle song. In the summer the warm breeze is full of secrets carried across the land in whispering echoes of those who came before me. All too quickly I learned how deceiving this place can really be. It begins in the fall, even as your heart is surging toward the vibrancy around you, and your very being is caving into the magic weaving its way through the trees. One night a cold gust of wind sweeps across the great expanse tearing the beautiful tapestry before it blows away. The wind no longer comes in soft billows. It slowly creeps in from the north. Like a serpent seeking refuge it slithers across the lonely floors. It seeps into your skin searching through your soul until it finds just the right niche where it can chant its tormenting dirge, repeating it over and over again like a baby crying in the night. It never goes away. You finally succumb to...'

Iris slammed the book shut, her mind full of dark, confusing images. She quickly opened the cover and looked hard at her mother's name. The writing was the same. So much love and yet so much hate in those few sentences. It was hard for her to grasp such misery when she herself loved the prairie, no matter what emotion it stirred in her. She gathered a shaky breath and looked back at her father. Why had she never been told about her mother's feelings? She paused to consider. It had to be because her father never knew how her mother felt. He always spoke kindly of her. Never once had he mentioned her being so sad. Her aunt probably didn't know either, since she only knew her mother for a short while. Iris held the book against her chest as she stared at the picture of her mother on the wall. Though the words saddened her, it brought the past closer making her mother seem all the more real.