Kitchen Gossip

They sat across from each other at the old wooden table, sipping coffee. Warmth and crackles pressed in from the nearby hearth as the fire munched away at slightly sappy logs. The big thick windows were fogged over, but beyond them the world was a white blanket anyway.

"Do you think she realizes it?" One of the ladies mused to the other. Her brown hair was pinned up perfectly around a heart shaped face with a bent nose and wide set green eyes. She wore an emerald cloak today with cream pants and an accent of pearls at her neck.

The other women was dressed in cobalt blue and though youthful, her chestnut hair was streaked with gray. She wore a simple sweater and simple pants. Her hair was plated tightly around her her in a crown adorned with a small blue hat. Her eyes were brown and warm, her nose straight and freckled.

"Realizes what?" she asked. Tentatively she blew on the steam rising from her drink.

"That she's become just like mother- just like the things she hated when we were kids," the emerald lady explained.

"How so Anitta?" the other pressed, taken aback. She took a hesitant sip of her coffee and made a face. The emerald lady, Anitta, sighed heavily, as if it was a burden to have to outlay such things.

"Sure," she allowed. "She is not reliant on a working man for income, but her life is exactly the same sparing that exception."

Anitta's companion stared back at her, a bleak expression pulling her brows up in question.

"I think it's the life she wants to live Nitta," she soothed. She soaked in the rising steam from the coffee and closed her eyes. Anitta fidgeted and looked out the window. With a soft bang, she slammed her hands on the rough wood.

"It doesn't bother you Jill?" she asked. Jill's eyes opened again and she took a few sips before responding.

"I am not sure I think she's like mother. Mother never worked or even had a career outside of birthing and raising children. Even so, why would it bother me if she was?" She spoke slowly, thrumming her finger against her cup as she did.

"But, she has three kids and plans a forth. And, each man she has had them with has been no better than father, perhaps worse in some regards. She owns a farm; if you can call it that. She has hordes of animals that just have more animals."

Jill frowned deeply into her cup and looked out the window.

"What's wrong with those things?" she asked Anitta. Seeming encouraged, Anitta continued onward with more energy in her quiet tones.

"Her life is children and animals and caring for those things as crappy men tear her down. She vacations nowhere save the houses of other family members. She sees nothing more than the same country roads we knew as kids. Her life is her kids and her property. No adventures. No outside cultures. No traveling. No living."

"Come now Nitta," Jill scolded. "Kids are their own adventure."

Anitta fetched her a skeptical look and motioned across the table.

"Then where are ours?" she rebuttled. Jill shrugged and continued to stare at the fogged glass. Both knew there was nothing interesting outside in the bleak white.

"We just wanted something different," Jill murmured.

"We didn't want to be like mother," Anitta corrected.

"She's happy," Jill replied. "And I don't know that much else matters."

Anitta snorted over her cup and took a warm sip. She cleared her throat before protesting again.

"Happiness can be found almost anywhere, in any condition if you find the right person. Plenty else should matter, and the things she said mattered long ago are not what she has time for."

"Can we really be held accountable to what younger versions of us wanted for our future?" Jill asked, tisking low in her throat and making a face. "How much have those wants changed as adults?"

With great flare, Anitta rolled her eyes and placed her hands on either side of her coffee. Her well polished nails dug into the wood grain of the table.

"Did you and I not answer those calls?" she challenged. Her brows wrinkled heavily with contempt. "Did we not explore those desires enough to know which we truly wanted, and which we have grown away from? Surely having a child thrust upon you offers no option other than to do what it takes to raise that child.

"Unless of course, you happen to have enough money for it to not matter. But, that certainly isn't the case for Rose. She was never allowed to be her own person." Her heated tone cooled at her conclusion and she pulled her hands back into her lap.

The fire simmered low. Anitta rose from the table to feed more wood into it. Anitta resettled at the table as the fire bit into the fresh wood with eager pops. Neither sister spoke to each other for a while, soaking in the silence and staring out the fogged glass. Finally Jill punctured the silence with soft whispers.

"What is the point of discussing this?"

"I feel frustrated. Much as I love mother, we all dispised the life she choice, Rose most of all. She was mother's biggest critic." Anitta drank the last swallows of coffee and set about refilling the cup from the pot. She added more than a dash of cream from the small pitcher and mixed in two sugar cubes. The fresh cup filled the air with fragrance.

"We were all hurtful children once," Jill soothed. "Rose knows that now."

Anitta shook her head and leaned over her fresh cup. Her features softened as she inhaled the sweet promise of warmth and comfort.

"I suppose I am angry," she confessed. Jill merely raised her brows in response, so Anitta continued. "We promised to do all of these things, together, and where is Rose? She is never here and never able to be."

Jill diverted her gaze back to the window and the blank world outside. Fresh snow was drifting down in fluffy white plumes.

"I know, it's certainly hard. But, we aren't responsible for how she lives or if she traveled the only road she was ever shown instead of trampling through weeds to forge a new path." Jill fixed her eyes with Anitta's. The fire issue a loud snap behind her and sparks danced against the stone floor. "If she's happy, that is enough for me. We have no right to judge what could have been."

"I suppose we are all pulled one way or another on our journey," Anitta agreed. "And I suppose some of us are destined to be our parents. Rose is indeed happy."

The familiar comfort of their weekly visits returned as the morning pressed on around the pair. Their arms and legs settled into the well worn grooves of the chair and talk changed to that of more trivial things. There were only two chairs at the table nestled in the warm cabin, and perhaps there would never be three. Outside the window, the world continued to change under the guidance of the weather, just as those inside surely would as well.