Regular

Her day started like any other, a belly full of regular oatmeal fought off the cool late autumn fog and she was on time to catch the less crowded 6.30 am train into the city; she couldn’t be stopped.

This particular Sydney Monday had been pinching at her for two unyielding weeks.  Like a rush to reach a novel’s climax, her body yearned for the conclusiveness this day had promised.  Plagued with an erratic sense of nervousness from a young age, the day’s churn and whirl of her oat-heavied insides was at least, if nothing else, familiar.

            Working for the same law firm for ten years, Josie rarely allowed herself to dream of being made senior partner.  Preferring instead to take pride in her own diligence, she believed that her dedication would one day be noticed, and rewarded.  She was the first to arrive at the office, the last to leave.  She had swallowed her own maternal yearnings for five years, cancelled holidays with her husband, and pretended not to notice or care about her dwindling group of friends and their irregular invitations to weekly wine and cheese affairs.  She measured success and self-worth in cases won and legal fees secured – for someone else’s firm.  This complacency was jolted two weeks prior when she accidentally learnt that Maynard & Wills were considering her as partner.  The very thought she had meticulously buried now consumed her.

            Josie’s mother use to frown.  Root-like furrows deepened as she watched her small daughter transfixed by the organisation of ordinary objects laid out in front of her.  For all Pam’s puzzling, she could not recognise one part of this being which was surely ‘hers’.

            Josie’s limbs tangled about her; her cheeks were sweetly flared with sun. Ringlets of red showed determination in growing her an unruly halo, frequently hiding green-blue pools of innocence.  Pam knew every inch of her daughter’s pale skin; had lovingly bathed, soothed, clothed and routinely measured it for six years.  Yet despite her attendance and searching, she could not recognise anything that mirrored her own supple olive skin.  Pam knew that Josie was ‘hers’ in the scientific sense (she was after all a tiresome being to carry and birth after nine long months), but a mother-daughter intimacy would evade them for years to come.  This choking fact would creep up and catch in Josie’s adult throat like barbed cotton.

            Pam was miles away from Josie on this particular morning, but if she could see her daughter striding through the park she would note that she appeared taller; upright with confidence and conviction.  Pam couldn’t hear, but Josie was repeating a mantra she had recently read in one of her accumulated self-help books: ‘I am wonderful.  I am me.  I will succeed’.

            The station platform reeked of the usual morning sombre, a sea of business black quickly engulfing her. Trenching herself in generic black like the uniform of fellow commuters, Josie revealed in the anonymity big city life allowed her.  Today was different in hope and feeling, and Josie wore a brooch she usually saved for special occasions - obligatory work charity balls and the like. Though it clashed with her current fit of natural curly red hair, Josie treasured the bright pink rose brooch gifted to her as a girl by her grandmother, her father’s mother.

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