Bountiful Late Harvest

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"Mama Bear, you got any of your yellow salve? My back, here, hurts like the dickens." Lou put each hand behind her and rubbed the kidney area as she came into the kitchen for morning coffee.

"You making water all right, Lou?" Mama Bear began her uninvited consultation. With Lou's affirmation of the regular workings of that bodily function, Mama Bear said, "It's all that climbing and toting you been doing. You don't recognize when you're tired out!" her grandmother chided her.

"I do, Mama. I just don't stop. Too much work to do with Alex in Nashville on Mr. Jones' business," Lou answered patiently. "Brother needed that trip," Lou added.

"Your moon times regular, girl?" Mama Bear asked. The grandmother had not taken notice of Lou's fuller cheeks and tighter clothes. After the first few years of Lou's marriage Mama Bear had let concern for great-grandchildren decrease and barely be a part of her thoughts. Lou's subtle change of appearance had not registered with Mama Bear until just then. At seventy-one, her vision was not what it had been. Dr. Stone said the cataracts were normal and short of very dangerous surgery in Nashville, there was not much to be done. Lou looked at her solemnly, "Well no. I'm overdue for this time and missed the last moon."

"Well, girl, take it easy for a few days. The way you've been working this winter on finishing that new shed, it's no wonder," Mama Bear said with her back to Lou as she took her flour from the kitchen cabinet for biscuits. She smiled at the tin front of the cabinet, her face away from Lou. Mama Bear hoped. No children in seven years had been disappointing but she'd tried to hide those feelings. Maybe she'd have a baby to fuss over in not too long a period of time.