You Reap What You Sow - MWBB - Winner!

The piece I wrote for this weeks Mid-Week Blues-Buster was difficult to write for many reasons and I wasn't confident it would work at all, so I was surprised and humbled to find that it won!

The prompt was a song:

  “Further Up the Road” by Bobby “Blue” Bland Memorial Edition

 

 

You reap what you sow.

I looked out the window at the courtyard below, but there wasn’t much to see. I missed city life. I hated being here.

I hated not being able to breathe either, although the tubes up my nose were no longer uncomfortable, but the worst thing was the loneliness.

No one came to see me, you see, no one visited me; I hated it. I’ve got three children, but no one would know. None of them come. I’ve done so much for them too, but they can’t be bothered.

Things were hard, they have to understand that. It wasn’t easy for me either. It wasn’t my fault that their dad had gone off with someone else, or that their stepfather had been violent. And no one had cared about me, had they? All my own mother cared about was the house. I can still hear her saying ‘but you’re leaving such a lovely house’. And my brother? Still visiting their father and his new wife I hear.

I did my best; they went to private schools and had a good education. Yes, later there were a couple of state schools, but that couldn’t be helped, there hadn’t been any money after the divorce. But I always checked the school statistics first, before enrolling them. Other children had done alright.

It wasn’t my fault we had to keep moving. I was just trying to provide a home, find a good father figure for them, and some kind of stability. Yes okay, Randolf hadn’t been that stable. I know moving round Leicester trying to find him hadn’t been easy. And I know putting the youngest in cabs late at night might not have been a good idea, but what else could I do? I needed to know where he was and whether he was having it off with that Lucy woman. And I’d been right too.

Yes, the end of that relationship had been messy. It’d been tough leaving the youngest to live alone in that hotel for a couple of months, but it wasn’t like I’d had a choice, it was close to her school. I was in a bedsit myself!

You see, I never really wanted to be a mother; I wanted to be a friend. But they weren’t really interested in that. They didn’t want to listen to me and hear about my life. They were too caught up in themselves.

It could have been worse; I could have left them, or put them in a home, but they didn’t want to hear that. And I didn’t, I kept them with me. It wasn’t always easy either. Trying to convince Hugo to let the youngest live with us; he hadn’t wanted it, but the boarding school was too expensive. And yes, I had lied and told them both she’d been expelled, but it had worked. And from what I read in those diaries I’d found in her bedroom, she should’ve been anyway. She didn’t like hearing that mind. She’d always been difficult, the most ungrateful of the three. And in the end it had been too much for Hugo. She ruined that relationship.

But I don’t understand it; I really thought I’d be looked after by now. Although men can be so pathetic, can’t they? So weak. I mean look at my own son. Can’t even be bothered to pop by; I’m not that far away. And he should too; I’m his mother; it’s what a child does for their mother. It’s probably her though, his wife, she’s never liked me, and he doesn’t like saying no to her.

The youngest is overseas, so I suppose it’s too far for her. And the eldest, well her husband’s awful, isn’t he? Never wants her to go anywhere, or have anything to do with anyone.

                                                                              

But I really thought my friends from the Church would come. I mean, I’ve done so much for them. I ran everything for them; the Church shop, the fete, the admin. They were helpless when I arrived; I had to take it all on. It was exhausting too, part of the reason I ended up in here.

But no one appreciates anything I do for them.