Fields Of Barley...Vol. 9

Fields of Barley, Vol. 9

(If you want to read this from the beginning, click the Stories, Short & Otherwise Link above)

Mark looked at Anna-Lisa and said, “My decision? I didn’t decide to move here. It would have been the last place I would have chosen. I didn’t make that decision.”

Anna-Lisa’s face soothed Mark’s soured disposition. Her eyes told him all was well. “Mark, even at such a young age, you made choices. Even though you did not wish to be here, you chose to stay. If you had called your mother and asked to come home during those first few days, she would have allowed your return. That is something you probably didn’t know. You did not make that call and so you stayed for the next ten years. Your life would be completely different with a single phone call.”

Mark knew this was correct, though he had fought such feelings ever since the move to Idaho. He had used the relocation as an excuse for many years. Whenever something—anything--bad happened, it was because his parents abandoned him. Whenever a bully picked on him in school, it was because he was not born into a farming family, and whenever a girl turned him down for a date, it was because he didn’t fit in. Even though he never voiced his opinion to anyone, he always knew he was different; he was strange—a freak. But how could he have called his parents those many years before? He had to do what they asked, didn’t he?. They were having such a tough time and he could not ask to come home. He had to do his part to help.

“You know I had to stay with my aunt and uncle,” Mark said more to himself than to Anna-Lisa. “I had to stay. I mean, my mother asked me to.” His mom…it was only a moment ago Mark wished not to see his mother because she would ask him to paint her garage. She had been such a pain in the neck lately. If only he could see her again, see her and give her a hug reserved only for a mother by a son. What he wouldn’t give for a chance to show the love he had for the woman that gave him life, who brought him into the world and, now in retrospect, Mark saw how almost all her actions were not for herself, but for her family.

Anna-Lisa once again knew the thoughts of her companion’s heart, her smile telling him as much. “Mark, your decision to stay while your parents went through this trying time showed great courage. You may not know it, but you grew beyond your years that day. It helped make you the man you’ve become in so many ways, ways you have an eternity to explore.”

To be continued...

NaNoWriMo Tracker: 841 words written yesterday, 12350 words total