Happy Mother's Day

It's Mother's Day.

KT comes into town. There's a garage sale down the road from my house. We park before the rambling chainlink fence, the yard of dirt packed with sun-bleached stuff.

Tables of broken, outdated strips of plastic and rusty metal fill our vision. KT finds several oxidized wind chimes, tangled together, and a roll of never used garden bed matting.

She goes to pay. An old man in a lawn chair takes her money but tells her she can't leave until she watches a magic trick. He holds out a set of cards. She takes a card. He fails to guess her card. Again, and again, and again.

It isn't his day, but he let us leave, even though we aren't very impressed with his magic trick. KT still gets her chimes and garden supplies.

We go to a thrift store. I find some glass things. I don't know what their original purpose was, but I realize I can use them for vases for little flowers. I've discovered I can grow little flowers in the the desert. Now I can display the little flowers.

I take them to the register. The woman behind the desk looks at us. The light is dim, and her pupils are huge. She wishes us happy Mother's Day.

"But for me," she breathes, looking at the air above our heads. "I don't have a human mother. The Earth is my mother... My mother..."

Then she fails to operate the cash register. We wait. She tells us something about the desert sand. She tries to use the register again. She mumbles that the air is real. She looks at us and doesn't see us. We realize we don't have enough LSD to keep up with her.

I pay three dollars for my glass things. I think I get a deal, but I'm not sure. I put flowers in them now. The Earth actually is their mother.