Season to Heal

Home at last

Lucy's Dad had a heart attack. It was in August while she had been away. It was mild but Lucy was still stunned. Her Dad had always been healthy as a horse for as long as she knew this. She was not angry or surprised that her family had kept it from her since it would have simply resulted in her worrying and to make it worse, she would not have been able to do anything about it. And they knew that. And understood. So they did not tell her until she returned to them. Lucy could only feel grateful. 

Her sister may be pregnant. She apparently was always eating pickles, an almost sure sign of pregnancy. Lucy could only pray that was not the case. Not that she would treat the baby with anything other than love, but she knew her sister. She accepted no kind of responsibility. She would not wash a cup in the sink and never own up to her mistakes, even if you saw her do it with your own eyes. How the hell was she going to raise a baby? Then it hit Lucy. It would be the same people who have cleaned up after her, her entire life. The four people she was currently living in the house with. The thought was so vile it made Lucy's stomach churn. 

If she wanted to get married, have a baby and move out to start her own family, that would be amazing and Lucy would do everything she could to help. She knew that the rest of her family members felt the same. But Lucy's sister had no house built. Had no plans to rent an apartment. The guy who she claims she is going to marry has nothing to his name. So where did they expect to live? You guessed it. On that same floor that she had all to herself. That had a bathroom and a bedroom. And for food? Their own personal restaurant on the floor below them where her mother would be the head chef. Then scrunt to pick up the scraps from her. 

Lucy's Dad was losing hope in the farm. When they walked up there a few days after Lucy had returned, she was astonished. The farm looked like it was hanging on by a thread. There was mud everywhere. The few buildings looked like they were falling apart. The one worker that her Dad had hired and did not want to work on the days he was supposed to, kept tying the giant bull in the more delicate trees or among the crops. Her Dad looked tired and just...frustrated. And he voiced those things to her while they were alone. He was losing hope, Lucy realized. He had even told her Mom that they would just have to forget about maintaining the farm because it's just falling apart. She had never seen her Dad discouraged before.

Her Mom wanted someone to do her eyebrows for her. Her sister flat out refused and her brother was scared he would mess them up. Her Mom needed her glasses to see the eyebrows but could not see them with the border of the glasses obscuring them from her view. She mentioned it almost every time they were on a call with Lucy and she just sounded so forlorn. It made Lucy feel sad that she could not be home to do that simple thing for her Mom. 

Her brother was being overworked and putting on weight that her Mom no doubted never let him forget. The week after she got home, she told her parents her stomach was giving problems (due to her period) and they said that her brother would stay home with her. It was when they sat in the kitchen that he began talking to her. He told her about constantly being on the move, having to be ready to answer someone's beck and call. Not being able to fully immerse himself in his work (as he was working on his Master's degree now and developing a game all on his own). Her Mom would start to poke his belly at random times, making it all the more obvious that she was watching him.

She knew it all too well. When she weighed a lot more before she left home, her Mom would always comment on her weight. It was not outright "Lucy! You're so fat!" but it was more subtle, almost passive aggressive comments that broke her self esteem: "Oh this should fit you nicely when you lose some weight", "You'll have to come and walk with us to lose that bit of excess fat". It was not that her words hurt. It was the constant reminder that she had to lose the fat. That she was fat. So she understood what her brother was saying perfectly. She understood how sad it made him feel to know that no matter how hard he worked, since he did not have the energy or time to work on himself, he was unable to lose the weight. And was constantly reminded about it. Her Mom had even told him that he should get up before the sun comes up...but Lucy found that grossly unfair since his energy is so completely drained at the end of the day. 

And yet he tries. 

And does not complain to them. She was happy she could give him that safe space for him to be able to talk to her. Express his frustrations. Lucy saw it with her own eyes and felt the truth of his words in her bones. 

That must have been why that message in her dream was so clear, a few weeks before she came home: "Luce, pray for your family". 

The two men in her family seemed to be the ones who were suffering the most while she was gone. Things had to change. 

She started with her Dad. "I need to just scrap this farm business because it is just infuriating!" he had said this to her that same day. It was hard to hear that coming from him. So her Mom told him to give her an estimate for the amount of money that he would need. So, when they sat in her Dad's office, he handed her a pen and yellow pad and they began planning estimated costs, the resources needed, the time frame it would take to build and reconstruct. She had been so shocked to see the farm in such a state. Yes, the chicken operation was still running, but the little storage house was falling apart, there was mud everywhere and it was just gloomy to walk through and see so much hard work waste away.  When they were done, she could see a faint flicker of hope in her Dad's eyes again. It would have to do for now. 

It had touched her to know that while she was away, he told them that while they were concerned about him, "Don't worry, my support is coming back." Lucy had never known that her Dad appreciated her support so much. 

Then her Mom. She took all of about two minutes to trim her Mom's eyebrows and paint her toenails. Her Mom had liked them very much. Then her brother. She started splitting his workload with her and they did as much as they could in teams. There were things that Lucy simply could not do on her own and her brother did those. But she split everything else. 

Slowly but surely, their household was coming together again.