Ghosts To Battle

She had just convinced the kids that they really did need to go bed. She waited until she was sure they were asleep then she grabbed the old hoodie that had been her only constant companion throughout all the chaos. She slipped quietly out the door onto the old porch and sat down on the steps for awhile, just listening and waiting to be sure they stayed asleep before she wandered off. It was early fall so she hadn't bothered with shoes. She felt every stone and every dip in the ground as she walked down the path she had worn across the yard over the past few years. She'd left her phone in the house but there was plenty of light from the full moon and even if there wasn't she knew where she was going. It was the same place she'd gone every night for three years. Some nights she stayed all night and others only for a few minutes but she had made her way out to that old grove of apple trees every single night. She found her way quickly to the one out of place pear tree that she had planted a lifetime ago and laid down in her spot below it.

She had grown up on this farm and couldn't wait to get away from it. It was a great place to spend a childhood but as she had gotten older she couldn't help but feel like there was so much more out there for her to see. The orchard was her responsibility as a teenager and one summer, out of pure disdain for the every day routine of it all she had planted that lone pear tree on a whim in her favorite spot and just hoped that by the time anybody noticed it would be too big to justify cutting down. Her plan worked and even though they weren't happy with her the family let it stay in hopes that it would make her stay. Their plan didn't work and she left the first chance she got to see what else was out there for her. That plan didn't work either, and now that she was the only one of the family left she was back on the farm and had brought with her the only things she had gained from that big world out there-her kids.

Tonight was no different than any of the last three years. She laid back under the tree and stared up at nothing, just letting her mind wander after the long day. Some nights it was just the basics running through her mind, everything that had to be done and paid. But other nights, nights like this one, it was the big things that she just couldn't shake. All the disasters of the past, all the ghosts that walked with her and wouldn't leave her alone. Here, she could just let them swirl in her head after making it through another day of pushing them down. She thought of everything that had led her to back to this place, somewhere she never planned to return. She remember the first husband, the one that she had the kids with. She remembered how he went off to war and even though he came home, it was like he didn't and most days if she was being honest she wished he hadn't. No matter how hard she tried, any good times they had were so far buried below the trauma that she couldn't remember them. It was easier that way. Easier to hate him for what he'd become than to mourn the man he was. It was far easier to hate him for the cold bitter woman that she had become just to survive the last phase of that marriage. She remembered the second husband, the one she still had in theory. That one was harder. The good times were still on the surface and crept in with the smallest invitation. A song. A smell. She still got to talk to him everyday, but all those calls were made collect and recorded by the prison. The bad memories with him, when things got really bad and he was high far more than he was sober, those were the ones she fought hardest to keep at bay. He was finally back to himself, but locked away where it couldn't do anybody any good. She thought about the kids sleeping in the house. They didn't deserve any of this and to their credit they were such little troopers through it. They hadn't seen their real dad in years, and the man they considered their dad was sitting in prison, where none of them could see him during this never ending pandemic. They deserved to be happy and that's why she had finally given up the life in the city that she loved so much and brought them back here so they could at least grow up somewhere so inherently peaceful. It was always the kids. It always came back to them and she wouldn't have it any other way.

When she came back to this place, now and over years past, this spot was where she had always come to be with her ghosts. During the darkest times, she was convinced that someday this was where she would go to die. Like an old cat, she'd just slip away quietly to her favorite place alone and somebody would find her there eventually. Some nights she prayed for that to be the night that came true. Other nights she prayed to stay on this side of the cold dirt as long possible. Some nights she laid there and the ghosts stayed quiet and she could just be content with how far she had come and everything she had accomplished. But the nights like these were so much harder and it felt more like she came to do battle, with the memories, the ghosts, and herself.

But like every other night, this one also came to an end. Not with her dying quietly under the tree she had planted a lifetime ago out of defiance, but with her standing up, brushing off the same dirt that had always been there and making her way back to the house. She slipped back through door and made sure the kids were still asleep. She left the old hoodie on the back of the chair where it had lived for so long and took herself to bed, ready to fight the tasks and bills the next day would bring and ready do battle with the ghosts that would come the next night. They always came. She just kept winning the battles.