You Can’t Claim The Prize If You Didn’t Finish The Race
A Story about Life Choices, Actions, and Decisions.
Nineteen-year-old Marcus Miller was raised by a single mother, who was very strict and overprotective. He couldn’t wait to finish high school and start college. His mother was always on him so he chooses an out-of-state college so she wouldn’t be able to control his life. He was so excited when he got the scholarship for St. Hilda’s College of Art, Science, and Technology. Which was his dream college. He was surprised when his Mom congratulated him without asking why he chose a college so far from home.
Unaware that his mother needed the break too. Raising her son alone for nineteen years, Maxine Young made sure he was responsible, independent, and self-reliant. He was good, she thought eyeing him, thinking, how much he looked like Mark, his father. He had his father’s good looks, personality, style, he even talks and walks like him. Letting him go to college so far away, was freedom for Maxine. She knew she raised him well. Now she could live the life she wants to live.
She drove seven hours with him, to make sure he got there safe. He registered, then was taken to his dorm room, which he shared with two freshmen. He was shown his bed, chest of drawers, and closet. She helps him unpack, then they went to lunch. She gave him her mother to son talk that she has been giving him since he was six years old, and she had to leave him alone at home because she couldn’t afford a babysitter.
He got used to being home alone and never complained. Thanks to his good nature, smartness, and obedience, she was able to get a college degree, and a good-paying job so that she could give him everything that he needed.
Kissing him good-bye and giving him a ‘thank-you-for-being-a -good-son’ card with a bank card, she said, “I know I have made you feel like you were living in prison sometimes. I just wanted to protect you from the world and his wife.” Smiling, she nods, “Today, I realize that I can’t. You have always made me proud, don’t stop,” she said as a single tear slid down.
Hugging her, he said, “And I have learned a lot Mom, about life and living, thanks to you. You were always a good Mom, mom, I will do my best and call you every day.”
Wiping away her tear with the back of her hand, she eases away from him, then walked away in tears, and a heavy heart.
One week later, her doorbell rang. Grabbing her cellphone, she checked her doorbell-cam. The phone slipped from her grasp and everything around her started to spin as she was thrown back twenty years. She shook off the pain, picked up her phone, and answered the door saying, “Hi Mark, how did you find me?”
“Hi Max,” he said reaching out to hug her. She quickly stepped to the side, giving him a look that said, ‘Don’t touch me.’
“Come in,” she said walking away.
He follows her glancing around her immaculate living room, decorated with fine antique furniture.
“Nice,” he said sitting on the leather sectional sofa, his hands covering his face. Silence steal in as Maxine waited for him to speak.
He got up, paced her living room for a while, then said, “I dropped my daughter off at St. Hilda’s last week. She met a young man in her Computer Science class that looked exactly like me. She said he talks, walks, and likes a lot of stuff I like. She teased me that he could be my son that I didn’t know about. She sent me his picture,” he said taking his phone out, searching for a picture, looking at it, smiling. He continues, “I did my research and it led me here. I am sorry I didn’t believe you. I am sorry I walked away from my only son. Janice said you were sleeping with Andrew and when you said you were pregnant, she convinced me that I wasn’t the father,” he confesses.
“And you married her one week later. Is she the mother of your daughter?” Maxine inquires.
“Yes,” he answered. “But we have been separated for a while now. I am sorry I wasn’t there for our son. Is it too late?”
Maxine prayed, dreamed, wished he would come back. For nineteen years she held on, hoping, praying, begging God to send him her way. Everywhere she went she would look for him. And now, he was offering himself to her.
Smiling, she said, “When you walked out on me six weeks pregnant with your first child, you locked the door on your side. On my side, it remained open for nineteen years. I closed it one week ago.”
He sighed heavily and said, “I am sorry.”
“I am not. I raise a smart, intelligent, responsible, strong, and independent young man, who won a full four-year scholarship to one of the best universities in the country. My son will get the life I didn’t. Thank you for walking out on us,” she said, heading to the door opening it signaling him.
“Our son,” he reminds her, getting up.
“No Mark,” she said. “You can’t claim the prize if you didn’t finish the race. We both entered it, but I finished it. The prize is mine and I have no intention of sharing it!” She slammed her door shut as he walked out.
Life is a race, all of us enter it, not all of us finished.
Thank you for reading this piece. I hope you enjoyed it. Please enjoy more from other writers on this platform.
https://mediumauthor.com/@thisisanneliselords
https://mediumauthor.com/podcast
medium.com/illumination/interview-with-annelise-lords-421238e49b9f
