I watch my mother as she flits about the kitchen, measuring this and chopping that, her cornflower blue dress becoming a sail in the frenzy. The kitchen is where she always seems to be in her element; where normally she’s a bundle of anxiety, tightly wound and trapped under the overwhelming presence that is her life, she’s now a free-flowing and frankly… fun person to be around - though I’d never say it to her face.

          That poor face. Weathered and bruised by day after day of a hard life, wherein each day is a Herculean effort simply to get out of bed and the only thing to look forward to are exceedingly worse conditions. I’ve seen old photos of my mother, seen how beautiful she once was, before everything. Before my father. Before my “stepdad”. Before me.

          I don’t make her life any easier. I don’t think I make it any harder, but I might be wrong. She tells me I’m wrong a lot. She tells me that I’m “going down the wrong path” or “hanging out with the wrong people” – no doubt reminiscent of her own youth, when she herself lived under the oppressive thumb of her zealot parents and wasn’t allowed to so much as look at another man unless his name was in the good book and his picture was etched into fragments of colored glass. I sometimes picture her life back then and I try to picture how she could have ever worn her beautiful smile with confidence, when the only pleasure she could obtain in her everyday life was that of empty promises. Live a life of suffering – replete with torment at the hands of your loved ones, day in, day out – simply for the chance to be eternally rewarded when you die.

          That blue sail of hers flaps before me, and my attention is brought back to the real world. She’s not even looking at me, caught in her own little world of stirring and mixing. I look around the kitchen, taking in the decor I’ve seen all too much and acting as though it were an oddity to observe. I look at the multiple ceramic cacti littering the room, each a different shade of green. There must be at least a hundred just scattered throughout the house, allegedly placed with care by my mother but more likely just stuck where they could fit. The kitchen is their point of convergence, with only the most special cacti roosting there. The ceramic needles are cloying - choking me, blinding me, piercing my skin and drawing blood. I shudder and turn away. My head swivels, eventually landing on a large, ornate silver cross, hung on the wall with care. It sits directly above the head seat of the dinner table, where my father once sat, where my stepdad now sits every evening, and where my mother sits to cry - when the seat isn’t occupied, of course.

          I stare at the cross. More accurately, I stare at the miniature Jesus nailed to the front. I narrow my eyes, focusing, searching in the tiny silver face for a hint of recognition - but His eyes are closed. Perhaps for the best. I wonder how much use that cross gets now, how often my own mother has sat at the head of the table and looked up, begging for a guiding light or a gift of salvation. I wonder how often that mini-Jesus has gone unspoken, leaving my mother to her own devices.

          The thought angers me.

          I stand abruptly and rip the cross from the wall. The mini-crown of thorns punctures my hand and blood begins to fall. The mini-Jesus moves His head, avoiding the torrent in one final act of divine indifference. I throw the cross to the floor and stomp on it, over and over, until that tiny little Jesus is nothing more than dust. This is payback, I say to myself. This is for all the times you’ve let my mother down, all the times you’ve left an empty promise exactly how you found it, all the times you’ve turned a deaf ear and blind eye to my mother’s prayers. This is for her. This is for my mother. This is for everything and everyone.

          “Thom, go wash up for dinner. There’s about 10 minutes left and Michael should be home any minute.” Once again, my mother has brought me back down to earth. I look back at the mini-Jesus resting comfortably on that big silver cross, and for a fleeting second, our eyes meet.