Finding My Mother’s Magic

Cups of tea blew steam into the air and Aunty Flo scratched her chin. She looked at Mum across the kitchen table. Mum sat with her elbows resting on the table and her hands covering her nose and mouth. Because she didn’t sit like that very often, I remember it more than shivering in the dark and cold when we started to walk home.
Mum was usually too busy around the farm for any sitting down at all, let alone resting in what I think of now as her had-enough pose. I caught her at it other times when she didn’t know anyone was watching. She’d sit there for a few minutes, moving her hands up and down her nose and sighing into her fingers. But that night was the first time I’d seen her doing it with anyone else around.
I scuffed my shoes on the dirt floor and looked at them both. Mum didn’t seem to notice that the rain was getting heavier. She didn’t call my brothers in from the porch. She’d said they could play out there, just for a few minutes, if they put their…