A Boy, a Beanstalk, a Mother’s Perspective
It’s not that he were a bad boy, my Jack. Just a little lazy, just as all boys can be, and girls too if you allow it. How was I to know he’d even be too idle to walk the path to market and spend a short morning selling a cow? That he’d take a bag o’ beans from a stranger beggar man rather than bother with another step or two and a shady spot in the village to wait for good honest money. Coin to buy flour for good honest bread, I’d bake myself, and add a sprinkle of the sustenance of motherhood in?
I was angry, yes. What mother wouldn’t have been? I mean, it were a simple task, and so important as the hunger clawed at our bellies and the bare cupboards hard-angled empty? But beans can be grown at least, although it might take a little time, and so I threw ’em on the land, and he looked at my angry faces and hot tears, and heard my screaming voice of desperation, and he shrugged. Not a smart boy, or even that kind, but then, I love him still — he is my son whatever crime committed … but to steal? To bite the hand that fed him, that offered him protection? A woman, not his mother, giving kindness? And to kill? Be judge and jury and the means of execution?
Oh and that bloody goose is rampageous rowdy — just murderous ravening savage! You can’t even eat those golden eggs. Ay but it’ll be Christmas soon enough.
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