Eruption

erupt
Originally uploaded by kaitlynwhat.

When it first erupted she hadn't been born, she was swimming around in her mommy's stomach. The top blew off and ash rained down. For years she had seen little jars with white pieces of paper taped to them that read: Mt. St. Helens Ash, May 1980. And she would see the mountain in the distant when they took long car rides, large and majestic with its top cut off.

"What happened?" She asked her mommy.

"The mountain blew it's top off and that ash covered everything."

"Like when it snows."

"Yeah, like when it snows."

"Was school closed?"

"Yeah."

"You didn't have to go to school."

"I wasn't in school. I was pregnant with you."

Then when she was older, a teenager, she saw a picture of her mom, skinny and youthful, posing on a mountain wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt and holding her long pigtails out from her head.

"Where is this?"

"Mt. St. Helens, before it erupted."

"How old were you?"

"I don't know...seventeen. Your dad and I hiked it."

"You look so young."

"Yeah, well, things change."

Then it erupted again. She was older than her mom had been when she had climbed to the top of it. The news program interrupted her soap opera and showed smoke plumes billowing from the top. She ran to her window to look for the falling ashes, but there weren't any. She called her mom.

"Mt. St. Helens errupted again." She told her.

"It did? I don't see anything outside."

"Yeah, me neither. Where is the ash covering everything?"

"Well, things are never as spectacular as you want them to be, or expect them to be," her mom told her.

"No, they usually aren't," she said and hung up.