Ice Cream Soda Anyone? It’s a 6.

“Hey, Mama, what was all the fuss at Frankie’s Fountain Shop today?”

I grew up in a quaint northern Vermont town in a grey house with white shutters and a huge oak tree in the back yard, went to college in South Carolina, got married, had 4 kids, got divorced, and now found myself back in Vermont in the family home helping my 90 year old mother in the day to day.

“Was walking back from the market, cut through the park – I could see people lined up inside the shop clear ‘cross Town Square, even Mrs. Browning was there, Mama.”

There was something different about Mama today – she was sitting in the cherry wood rocker by the bay window, cup of Earl Grey on the side table; admiring the flowers in her garden through quiet eyes, she was staring at something much farther away than the backyard garden and I almost didn’t hear her… “no one believes she’s dead as no one ever believed she could die; there wasn’t a soul in town ever lay claim to knowing her exact age, you know.”

“Who Mama, who are you talkin’ about?”

As if betraying a confidence, tension rising in her voice, “The fuss they’re making over at the Fountain Shop, it’s about her, it’s about Miss Lily, she died last night…you know, she had grey hair when I was a little girl, there wasn’t anyone who lived here didn’t know who she was and whenever anyone asked at parties to tell  her secret, Miss Lily would always say, “the secret is in the mirror“.