She felt the shifts every time.
“Do the job I set out to do,” Mira repeated it out loud, clutching for help.
Driving home in the misty rain, Mira sang along to Airplanes as it played on the radio.
Mira’s gut clenched tighter and tighter in a ball of strain the closer she got to home.
Fear is a trickster; she makes you believe you can hold her down in the same way you command your actions and words.
But the feelings are still there. And if you don’t confront fear face to face she’ll come at you in other ways.
There’s always a debt accumulated and fear collects payment with interest.
As Mira pulled into the carport, accruing more suppressed emotions for fear to later hold her with at ransom, she put her game face on.
Mira kicked at the front door with her foot, arms ladened almost above her head with groceries.
“Stop kicking the door dipshit! Dad’s trying to sleep,” Lai screeched like a cat in a scrap as she sent the door crashing open.
“Just take some things then,” Mira huffed, pushing through the door.
Grabbing two avocados off the top of Mira’s carefully balanced food mountain, Lai rolled her eyes in such exaggerated pain that Mira snickered.
“Mummmmmm! Mira’s teasing me again!” Lai continued her yowl as she stomped through the house.
Mira seesawed her way through the living room, trying to keep everything in her arms. Dad’s voice came rasping from the sofa in the corner “Hey darlin’.”
Mira instantly dropped everything in a rolling food cascade and leapt over to him.
She kissed his forehead. It was warm, too warm, but it was warm. Mira imprinted the memory forever.
“Hey Dad, guess what I’m making for dinner? Nachos and bean dip, and guacamole - the secret family recipe!” Mira’s eyes sparkled brightly.
She never wavered, not even a slight break in her tone. She couldn’t, because she wouldn’t have Dad see her as any less than a sure beacon of strength. She was his soldier, tireless in the fight. It was her promise and Mira was a promise keeper!
“Oh Mira!” Mum burst into the living room, picking up runaway avocados and bean tins. Mira dashed over and bent down to help. Mum wasn’t supposed to be putting pressure on her knees.
“Now be nice to Lai,” Mum whispered in staccato hits.
“I’ll pick up the groceries Ma,” Mira protested, but Mum wasn’t finished.
“She’s only 13, you’re 24. I expect you to set a good example.”
“Ma, I’ve got the groceries!” Mira started snatching thing out of her hands.
But Mum snatched them back, “I don’t think your father’s up to eating too much tonight. He’s had a bad day darling…” The worry lines that dug deep between Mum’s brows broke Mira’s heart. She desperately wanted to rub them gently away but they’d never be gone, ever again.
So Mira gave what she could - enduring happy strength.
“We haven’t had nachos for dinner in years. Remember when me and Lai would sit on the bench in our nighties on a Saturday night and stuff our faces? I’d eat all the guacamole and Lai refused to eat any of it, except the plain chips.”
Mira kept it up flawlessly, the bright strong warrior act.
“I remember,” and Mum threw her arms around Mira.
“Thank you darling. I couldn’t get through this without you.” Mira could feel Mum’s fragile frame tremor, she’d lost so much weight.
“Stronger together eh Ma?” Mira said with just the right amount of dismissive grit to yank Mum out of the spiralling whirlpool of devastation that hovered ever-near and hungry these days.
With sincere gusto Mira dove into cooking dinner. She made the hero dish just like Dad always did; 3 avocados, mayonnaise, salt, pepper, grated cheese, and incy-wincy pieces of chopped pickled onions. It was surely the most faux pas guacamole but it was their’s and Mira loved it.
Mira had it all set out on the bench; the nachos, bean dip, sour cream and of course the guacamole.
“Dinner’s ready!” She hollered out.
Lai jumped on the food straight out of nowhere.
“Just wait pig,” Mira hissed on Lai’s selectively deaf ears as she went searching for Mum and Dad. They were huddled to one side of the couch together, holding hands. It stabbed Mira right through the heart.
But she called cheerily, and probably a little too loudly, “Dinner’s ready!”
“Thanks honey, but I think I’ll go to bed after my cuppa,” Dad smiled at her. Everything in him radiated the fight back at her. The fight to smile from his cracked lips, all the way up to his eyes that bulged too far out of his sunken face. He was defiant, even in the face of death, and by God she wasn’t going to let him down. Mira would show him how strong she was, show him his legacy in her. She wouldn’t let him break, or any of them. Even if she only had bare threads of the universe, she’d stitch a mother fucking parachute for them all.
“Your father’s had a bad day honey,” and Mum hummed a few times to herself, like she did every time she was tense; which was all the time lately.
“Ok, no worries,” bright as a button, with fuck you cancer steel in her eyes, Mira bounced over and gave her parents each a savoured kiss on the cheek. Little, everyday things were all of a sudden the very big things.
Strolling back into the kitchen, Mira surveyed the demolition sight that was once her Mexican dinner fiesta.
Lai jumped off the counter, phone in hand, and didn’t even look up to say thanks as she typed furiously down the hall.
Mira sighed. She’d wanted so desperately to recreate something special, a moment they’d never have again. She’d just wanted to sit in it one more time.
Instead she sat in her work clothes, itching at her skirt, pecking at leftovers.
Eventually, with a food coma promising to set in, Mira stretched and slid off the kitchen bench. She dragged her feet through the motions of cleaning up the kitchen, yawned deeply, and pulled herself off to bed.
Morning was always deceitful. It was in the morning that Dad got up by himself and gave her a kiss. It was in the morning he smiled, even though the movement looked like it could crack his fragile face to smithereens. It was in the morning she saw a little twinkle in his eyes and she pulled him to the Earth with hope, keeping him close for another day.
Not at night though.
Dad was an unfathomable force of strength. Everyone thinks that about their dad, but this man really had it - a fight that surged and stuck its finger up at surrender.
When
