Page 56 - WTP Vol. XI #5

Hooked (continued from preceding page)
would catch a fish hook in the cheek.) In the fall, she
would start law school.
“Too late” wasn’t in my mother’s vocabulary.
As I inhaled this artifact, zooming in on every word, scanning every letter, feeling her through her handwriting, I was the same age she was then. Just shy of 49.
I sat stunned. Head resting in my hand. Eyes wide. Biting my lower lip to be sure I wasn’t dreaming. It was a postcard from the other side. Its message pounding in my ears, pulsing through my veins.
"Some 131 miles and 24 hours later, I was sitting
by Peter’s hospice bedside in his home in the Philadelphia suburbs, holding his hand. Curved around the foot of his hospital bed, surrounding him in 49 years of love and friend- ship were John (the storied caster and Pete’s younger brother), Chris (also fishing, but not casting), Paul and Mike.
Too late? she asked with a tone of disbelief.
In three days, Peter would die at the age of 49. Too late? he asked with dismay.
With tears and words spilling out of me, I closed one story about being too late and began another one about being right on time.
Goodman is an attorney returning to writing creatively after 25
years of writing legally. Her personal essays have been published
in Hevria.com, The Ocotillo Review, Grace & Gravity, and From Whispers to Roars; and her fiction, by Two Sisters Writing & Publish- ing. With her flock in college, she is weaving an empty nest perched between her two favorite branches, Washington, DC and the New Jersey shore.
49
Arpeggio
acrylic, sumi ink
and collage on paper
56 x 74 in
By Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann