The Love of a Mother

The Love of a Mother
by Gale Peterson (iguanamountain)
Flash

Goldilocks barks incessantly, the shrill sound grating against his suffering need for calm—peaceful silence of wilderness mountain pines mourned in the city’s aggressive presence beyond cinnamon tinted glass.

“Goldilocks! Shut up! You hear me? Hey! Stop it!”

Paws scrambling on the polished tile she bounces beside him on the couch joyful to have achieved the essential attention. Seconds later, important, dire concerns send her, Cocker golden ears flying, to resume her frantic concern about the critical buzzing sound in the kitchen that does not belong in her world.

Realizing the frantic tones of alarm, he follows “Goldilocks, what the hell are you so excited about? Calm down!”

Angry buzzing at the far end of the marble top counter set off a frenzy of high-pitched dog talk and hysterical yelps.

“Oh shit, I forgot about this.” The bowl of porridge with the stretched plastic cover that his mother left last week, or was that before Labor Day? She knows I won’t eat her damn porridge. This fly or wasp, whatever—must have been desperate!

Tinted glass window slides easily with one hand. A larger opening and the noisy intruder staggers out once again to join the diesel-scented air carrying the pungent tang of slightly spoiled porridge. Sirens in the distance merge with a disturbed auto alarm crying from the street below. Closing the cinnamon glass diminishes but never ends the eternal tumult.

Insistent paws dance on his leg, a new target for her energy; the bowl balanced in his hand. “You want this crap?”

Goldilocks wiggles in anticipation seeing the bowl descend to the floor, the insect violated plastic removed.

“You’re crazy.”

Nose to porridge, slurping, with tail stub wagging, Goldilocks enthusiastically devours Mother’s porridge.

He sighs. “Better than barking, but still, you’re a gluttonous pig. And now you're going to smell like maggots!”

For a few minutes his depression is forgotten, the flow of his existence changes ever so slightly by a wasp, an alert, loving dog, and if examined closely, the love of a mother.