Gingernuts and Lavender

A short fictional story

What did love look like in a home?

How could you prove it was there?

Not romantic love, but familial love, the kind you shared with your offspring.

How could it present itself?

If you had to paint love into a picture, the way an artist adds a lone fir or cosy cabin to transform a mediocre mountain range, what would that look like?

Odd questions certainly, and until recently, questions Lisa Harris had never had to contemplate. Whatever problems she and her teenage son had faced, the presence of love in the family home had not been subject to debate or scrutiny.

It sprawled, undisturbed by the hearth like a satisfied marmalade cat, it danced in the dust that collected on ledges. It jangled from dangling keys and glinted from the gloss of windows.

There was just one problem.

Although Lisa and her son knew it was there, it was an invisible force, felt.

Today, love needed to be visible, demonstrable, describable.

It needed to be evidenced, able to be jotted down, documented.

Today, love needed to belt out its mountain song, jubilant as Julie Andrews in ‘The Sound Of Music’. There had to be no doubt whatsoever, that she was every inch a winning Maria.

Today, a stranger would be paying a visit.

One who worked with troubled families.

A ‘professional’.

‘Just a little chat’

‘All voluntary.’

He’d been keen to point out.

Lisa could have said ‘no’ if she’d wanted, she’d been assured.

‘All on your terms.’

It was true! Yes! Absolutely all on her terms!

No one was making her agree. No!

She could have refused, declined, turned the visit down.

Firmly said ‘No thank you’

She knew this because THEY had told her that.

THEM.

The people who held the power.

Unsurprisingly, Lisa had agreed.

“We just want to see if there’s anything we can offer in way of support”

The friendly sounding man on the phone had said.

Oh aye.

She knew how these things worked.

Wasn’t daft. That was how it began, wasn’t it?

She’d read the stories. Once the authorities got a foot in the door……

Like so many other things in life, these things always started out voluntary before………..

No, don’t think about it.

Just don’t think about it.

She chewed her bottom lip nervously as she fondly remembered bringing him - Coby - home from hospital as a new baby. How he’d snuggled contentedly for that first car ride back. She recalled his outfit - a needlecord sky blue snow suit with navy stars, just right for the white, wintry day. She recalled his soft splash of brown hair, perfectly shaped ears, long lashes and lush lips - puffy as two plumped pillows. His intoxicating new baby smell! The marvel of his uncreased skin. The way he’d splayed his tiny fingers like a peach starfish. How she’d gazed in awe!

There had been a photo of that day, that baby, that mother, that gaze……

It provided proof that it had indeed happened that way, that a bond between them existed.

That love existed.

Where was it now?

That photo?

Where was the photo of the doting new mother gazing at the happy baby?

On the wall?

Where?

Lisa swallowed hard as she remembered its fate. The picture, once pride of place, had long since been smashed up in an explosion of unwarranted anger.

The mirror that had once sat at the bottom of the staircase had met a similar fate.

Lisa’s reading glasses too.

So many other items in the house. Home. House. HOME!

Broken.

Irreparable.

Gone

Lisa now lived minimally. Locked things out of reach. Harm’s way. Vases, heavy objects, sharp implements……

Perhaps she appeared like a Marie Kondo devotee, but she had come to view her own home the way most would view a building site. She risk assessed. Considered potential hazards.

Perils.

Accidents waiting to happen.

Except they weren’t ‘accidents’ were they?

Or maybe they were……

What did you call them?

What should one call them?

These run-ins, outbursts, episodes, incidents, meltdowns……

What was the appropriate term when it was a teenager causing the destruction?

A kid.

A minor.

Not some grown man with a mature mind and capacity for full understanding but rather, a vulnerable adolescent - troubled and scared. A novice at life, still learning. That said, she still felt like a novice at life - or at least a novice mother. Parenthood had been the steepest learning curve she’d ever experienced. More like a hill she climbed. An unrelenting upward slope of stacked eggshells.

Lisa began to clean the house fastidiously, asking herself what she could do to best convey the loving atmosphere she was certain was there. Not just love but care, patience, empathy, effort, competence…..

How could she possibly relay all that to someone - a stranger - in one fleeting visit?

When you were selling a property, you brewed coffee and baked bread, right? Everyone knew that. The prospective buyer had to be able to envisage themselves inserted into your idyllic life….. You painted neutral colours so they could superimpose their own tastes with ease.

But this? Now? Where was her manual for this? Where was her ‘Top Tips’, the ‘Handy Hints’?

I do my best. I do. I really, truthfully do.

She wanted to yell at the bare picture hook poking out from the cracked wall.

I’m trying. God, how I’m trying……

Helen, her friend had understood. She’d been through it, subjected to the indignity of having her parenting placed under the public microscope.

“You feel like you have to become a curator of your home”

She’d once confided after they’d been round. Them. The ‘Professionals’.

Social workers, key workers, youth workers, family support workers…..any other Tom, Dick or Harriet who’d fancied a nosey.

“a curator of your own home”

How those words had chilled her bones at the time!

And now?

Now, she too was living it!

That ‘Petri dish’ feeling of being dissected, analysed. Someone’s study.

Lisa cast her mind back to long ago when she herself had been a student on placement at a Social Services Family Centre working with vulnerable children.

She remembered the horrors and sadnesses she’d witnessed there.

• The 4 year old who had never before

  seen a mirror. How sinister to see him studying his own reflection with such bewilderment.

• The 3 year old with heroin addict parents who’d lived next door to the centre. Rather than walk him round, someone had thrown him over the fence each morning to ‘save time’.

• The 2 year old so filthy, the staff had ‘accidentally’ thrown paint on so they’d had ‘an excuse’ to bathe him. “Otherwise we’re not allowed to”

• Anita - the only one whose name she still remembered, an 18 month old in sweaty pigtails who arrived every day without fail in a bulging dirty nappy. Waddling, frantically trying to keep pace with her bolshy teenage mum and their intimidating pit bull.

“We always try and have a cuppa with em when we do a home visit”

One of the staff had said to her all those years ago.

“Puts everyone at ease, builds trust. Oh! I’ve been to some skanky houses in me time…..proper dirty houses! Some of the cups I’ve drank from! Honestly! But I do it so they come to trust me.”

Oh bloody hell, yes…..they’d want a hot drink too, wouldn’t they?

Lisa suddenly thought.

Tea? Coffee? Yes, she had those in! A selection of herbal tea too.

Sugar - tick!

Milk- tick!

Only cow’s milk though. Whole milk (she hated the term ‘full fat’). Would whole milk be okay? Well, she couldn’t be expected to cater for every possible fad and dietary intolerance, could she?

Lisa spied a packet of Gingernuts at the back of the cupboard. Ginger was a funny thing though, wasn’t it? Not everyone’s bag. Why hadn’t she got Rich Tea? Digestives? Something plain that no-one had an aversion to. Plain. Yes, plain. No….no…….second thoughts, Chocolate Hobnobs…..they were crowd pleasers, weren’t they?…….Hm……But did they try too hard?

Tough.

She had Gingernuts and Gingernuts would have to bloody well do.

Her child’s situation wasn’t the same as one of those kids, anyway was it?

She wasn’t one of those parents. She wasn’t. It wasn’t the same at all!

“I can smell them on you”

Her mother had said once as she’d got into the car after a stint working there.

“Those kids. It’s like……sour”

Lisa’s mind wandered back to cleanliness and what she knew of the related psychology. If a house looked too messy, a person would be perceived as struggling, not holding it together, wouldn’t they? Too clean and they’d be deemed to be overcompensating, trying too hard. The strong odours of bleach and Dettol would give off OCD vibes. Serial killers over cleaned, didn’t they? At least the ones on the Netflix documentaries she’d watched.

Damn - what was the ‘right’ level of ‘clean’?

She remembered her attempts at homemade cleaning solutions. White vinegar infused with aromatic herbs and essential oils. Lavender, lime, rosemary, bay……

Clean……yes, but in a gentle way……aromatic, relaxing…..

Homely?

Loving homely?

Yes! Find the bottle! Get the homemade herbal cleaning products out!

Desperately, she fumbled under the sink. There it was, thank goodness! White vinegar and herbs. Yes! There it was - what she hoped would casually encapsulate the scent of ‘loving home’.

Lisa tried manically to unscrew the lid from the bottle but found it to be stuck, jammed on. That was the problem with homemade - sometimes you forgot which lid went with which bottle. Maybe that’s what had happened.

The herbs taunted her from within the glass as she tried to access a few drops of the precious liquid. The bay leaf and rosemary flipped and flopped about, somersaulting playfully. Why wouldn’t the bottle open? Why? WHY? Were her hands too greasy? Clammy? Was her grip too weak? Was she starting with some sort of early onset arthritis?

Come on, open, open!

She ran the stubborn bottle neck under a tap, took a tea towel to it but still it refused to budge. Her hands trembled as she glared at the contents, envying the peace of what she saw in there. The longboat of bay leaf now lazing like a care-free hammock, the rosemary drifting serenely like a straying shelf of seaweed. A tiny, fragranced world captured in a self contained bubble, oblivious to her own frothing chaos that surrounded it.

At that moment, the glass bottle plummeted from her quivering grasp, quickly colliding with the shock of the cold slate floor.

Amidst the shards of broken glass, Lisa was suddenly hit by an intense blast of lavender and rosemary whooshing up her nostrils.

Lavender, lavender…..calming, soothing……

Breathe, breathe, breathe……

Slow down! You’ve still got plenty of time!

Yes…..breathe, BREATHE!

CALMING.

FUCKING.

LAVENDER.

She surveyed the glass mess that twinkled in the sunlight like a mocking crystal palace, becoming aware of the pinging, vibrating urgency inside her back pocket.

Shakily, Lisa removed the phone and checked the message on the screen.

The visit, it transpired, had now been rescheduled.

PS: Hope you enjoyed reading this. You can find more of my stories on my homepage under ‘story’.

I appreciate all of you here, new or long-timers - reading and engaging with my mixed bag of writing 😂😉 I’m grateful for your comments, shares and any coffees you buy me. You can upgrade to paid if you want but I’m totally upfront that you won’t get anything extra. It has to be a ‘warm glow’ thing, that you just appreciate and want to financially support my humble little offering. Much love x