A New way out

A New way out

by Rosemary Clarke

Alice looked once more at the bright shiny clean kitchen, longing now to see it once again covered with foodstuffs and thronged with people: the silence was painful.  Shaking herself she pushed to remember the sacrifice her daughter was making at the care home, staying in her own home to keep any disease from her children; the least she could do was look after the kids.
Jamie and Sarah were still asleep she'd imagine although since they had been delivered to her in their pyjamas, many tears from each of them as they were torn from their mother... their quietness now was cruel to witness.
Alice had never felt so powerless as she did now, but she must think how to be the clown, how to cheer two very hurt and unhappy children who worried daily about their mother, avidly watching each Covid19 programme and any medical website: the silence gave her food for thought..in the quiet she wondered what her mum would have done when she and her sister were children...cut out dolls were not what modern children would be interested in...then it hit her.
"Come on you two, up!  We're going to have some fun but you've got to help me first get everything together!"
They were both up and dressed already, looking at her blankly over their phones: Alice pretended bravado.
"Well come on!"
Sarah spoke first, the choke in her voice noticeable.
"Don't want to."
Alice touched the child's fragile shoulders feeling bones like a baby bird despite her ten years.
"Look, your mum wouldn't want you to be sad would she, so let's see what fun we can have eh? Then you can both tell her all about it."
"But there's no one to play with!". Said Jamie.
"Nonsense, there's me; we can have lots of fun!"
Both children looked puzzled.
"Come with me!"
In the loft, reached by pull-down ladder Alice had stored many things from her childhood and now, she felt, was the time to bring them out.
Alice opened crates and trunks filled with clothes and games and pastimes.  Jamie's face screwed up quizzically as he picked out some large rolled rectangles and circles cut from hessian sacks that had once been used for potatoes and other root vegetables.
"What's this for? How do you play this?"
"Rugs." She said proudly.
"What instead of carpet, were you that poor?"
Alice smiled.
"You hook wool into it and make rugs. Of course, you have to have two to make it thick enough to work on."
Sarah picked up a collage Alice had made at junior school.
"Can we do this?"

When their mother called that evening Jamie and Sarah excitedly babbled on about rag rugs, collages and the three of them throwing a ball to each other in the garden - Jamie could throw the farthest - away from each other.  Megan sighed happily as she gazed at them all from Sarah's mobile.
"Well, your day has been very eventful!"
"Are you okay mum?" Sarah asked.
"Fine, better now I know you're both happy and you know what, happiness is the thing that keeps the workers going; that's the best medicine you could give me."

Copyright Rosemary Clarke