Karmic Splash

They were in the car, driving to the shoe store. It was fall in Missouri but extremely fall this day. It was one of those days when you knew the Autumnal Goddess and the Winter God were fighting for control. Rain had set in hours before in a long sweeping line from the Canadian border travelling well south of their Kansas City area home. North of them, the precipitation fell as ice. It wouldn’t be much longer at all before they were chipping and scraping ice from their own cars. Perhaps needing to let the cars warm for 20 minutes or more before ½ inch thick ice could be broken apart and scraped from the cars. Half inch thick ice was bad, but it had been worse. The younger of the two women didn’t drive if it was worse than that though. The older one’s rule of thumb wasn’t the thickness of the ice, but the number of neighbors whose cars had slid into the creek before she started out. More than two in the creek and she was sure not to travel. One or two and she used other factors to help her determine if risking her life was worth the paycheck or whatever she needed to go out for.

The two women were mother and daughter, though most people did not assume that when they saw them together in a store. More often strangers thought they were a lesbian couple, and that the older one liked ‘em young. The two laughed about that when they bothered still to talk about it. It had been a topic of conversation the first couple of times it had happened, out of surprise more than anything else. The woman was more than twenty-four years older than this daughter, and this one was not the oldest of the woman’s children. The mother didn’t fault strangers for picking up on the fact that the two loved each other unquestionably. She was bothered however when waitresses or sales people treated them rudely out of homophobic prejudice. Utterly ridiculous, in her mind, to fault someone for loving another in this world, regardless of sexual orientation. Too many people hated. Love was something to be honored and cultivated, not shunned, ridiculed and punished.

Rhetta gave her daughter a wicked glance. “Do you want to drive?”

“No!” Willow laughed. “You haven’t been in my car since you taught me to drive the manual transmission.”

Rhetta glanced at her daughter with a smirk on her face. “Yes I have. I drove it once. I moved it so I could get my car out of the driveway, and I left food in there for you.” Rhetta smiled bigger, knowing Willow was going to come back with something. Willow was almost twenty, and still nervous about teasing her mother. Still afraid she would step over a line and get into trouble.

“But you haven’t been in my car with me driving and you in the passenger seat since you taught me to drive it.” Willow laughed, knowing she was right, and knowing the reason why.

Rhetta sighed the deep rumbly sigh of one who has at least a partly Irish heritage. “Yes, well, we all know I have control issues Willow. I am not even going to pretend I don’t. And if you are driving I am not in control.” Rhetta glanced at Willow and laughed.

Willow laughed too. “Oooh, I think it is a lot more than a little control issue Mother.”

“Yes. I don’t like your driving.” The two laughed again. Rhetta took off after the light turned green. The water Willow had been trying to drink slopped onto her hoodie.

“Damn. I hate karma.” Willow complained. “Tease your Mom, and what happens?”

“Karmic Splash!” Rhetta said. And they both laughed again.