Lemonark

A Quiet Life

     My mother is a quiet woman who keeps to herself, and that's something I like about her. She tries to give me the nicest things she can, though our home isn't as pretty as I would like it to be. When I tell my mother that our living conditions are too bland and we lack class, she tells me that I'm just being ungrateful.

     My father is under the strict supervision of my mother, and it is as if she is monitoring his mind and thoughts. My father was left a brewery to run by his own papa. Mother will not let me talk to my father, which I do find to be absurd. Since she is strictly monitoring him, we do not talk much. Well, that's not completely true, he told me things about his past which I will never forget. There was a conversation we had, which I will never let go of. My mother and I have a strong bond that I am thankful for, but she gets very upset with me very easily. Something I find irritable about her is how she wants me to be the most formal I can be because if it were up to me, this wouldn't be how I would talk!

     She doesn't speak much in the town either. When we go to the local market, she doesn't talk to everyone and just focuses on one thing. She also always covers her head with a shawl and doesn't let me speak. When I ask why that is, she tells me it's because she doesn't like when people look at her.

     I feel that she is trying to imply she is too pretty because she is. My mother's beauty is unmatchable. To describe her, she is a tall woman who holds a very slim figure. Her hair is up to the length of her elbows, and it is gray. Many people think it is strange that her hair is gray because she isn't that old. My mother would hate it if I said how old she was, so I won't. Her eyes- oh, they're the most beautiful eyes you would ever see in your lifetime. They were a colour which I do not know the name of, but it was a colour that you wouldn't see very commonly. The closest colour I could get to them would be green, but not just any green. My mother didn't look like she carried much spirit in her, but she looked like she'd seen a thousand years pass. It was a look of youth but also dreariness at the same moment, and it was something that would always draw the human eye. She was... so-

     "Parisa! Come down, your father is home!" My mother is calling me, I'm sorry to have to pause this.

     My father was dark, always had a tired look on his face, but his posture made up for it. He always seemed to stand the straightest he could. His eyes reminded me of an owl, they were big, round. It was like they'd follow you everywhere you went. The house isn't pretty, but it's big. It's big because my father works moderately. We might live in a bland style, but it's because my mother won't accept anything else. The house is located in a neighbourhood full of other big and rich families, but they like to show off their possessions more.

     Most of the people here are always hosting one thing or another, and while my father goes, my mother tends to stay home with me. When I asked to go to one with my father, he told me to never ask again or he would give me a good smack. I don't know what I said that offended him, but now I don't ask him for many things. He was always very reluctant and even to my mother, he would yell. She doesn't tolerate it when he does and will put up a good brawl. My mother has this sort of spell over him in which he cannot fully talk. Whenever they finish fighting, William always weakens and cannot speak for almost days on end. My mother will taunt him for it.

     I ask how she lived at my age, she told me her parents were both dead by then, and she was left an orphan. She said there was some money to her father's name that she got, but when she met my father they combined whatever fortunes they had for themselves.

    The only time my father and I connected was when he told me about his parents. All of my grandparents are dead, because my father's mother died during childbirth, and his father always seemed to resent him for it. I don't know who did it, but one day my father came home early to announce that his father had been stricken by a blade. We don't know who did it, but I had only met the old man once before. I was 3, I suppose, so that was... 15 years ago!