The sun just rising, Father got out of bed to tend to his garden. The slight noise of his feet touching the carpet awoke Mother, who opened one eye just halfway to see her husband wide awake much too early for the third time this week. She knew that something irked him, and while she wished she could say anything to ease his distress, she also knew that no words could ease his pain, for it was of the heart. Mother shut her one eye and drifted back to her dreams.

***

It was still quite early, and Father hoped he hadn’t woken Mother. Although she went to bed far earlier than him, he knew that she had slipped out of the room in the dead of night. She’d had her head buried in the catalogues all week, furiously making lists of items that seemed quite random to him. Nonetheless, he’d let her continue to make them, for it was the only time of the day when she would sit at peace.

A fly whizzed past as Father shut the front door to what he called his “townhouse.” He wondered how flies could still be buzzing after he sprayed insecticide in the garden, then remembering that the neighbors had just put their blasted compost to use. “God knows what they put in there,” he muttered under his breath, knowing that while no one else was awake this early, he couldn’t take the risk of upsetting his neighbors. They’d lived next door peacefully for over 40 years.

Putting the thought of neighbors to rest, Father got back to his plants. They needed water twice a day and his special concoction—never to be revealed to anyone—thrice a day. He’d tended to them throughout the seasons, watching the addition of each leaf and flower that eventually fell to sprout fruits and vegetables. Father did not look forward to seeing them change. He wished he could slow their growth, and with that thought, Daughter walked out the front door.

Daughter’s eyes felt heavy, and with their door facing the east, the sun shone right into her honey-brown eyes. She noticed Father gardening again. It was normal for him to be ensnared by the tomato plants and hidden from view by the rose bushes, but this early streak of his was beginning to seem unusual. Then again, Daughter could not blame Father for something she’d been doing as well.

In recent nights, Daughter could not seem to close her eyes. Nothing helped, not even the melatonin supplements kept in the second drawer of her nightstand. She’d spent the early hours between midnight and dawn writing a story in her blue journal. It was given to her by Mother, who used her own to make lists of all kinds, now writing down all possible things that Daughter may need at college. She thought to dwindle down Mother’s list by purchasing a blanket. The North was far colder than where they lived.

Daughter would be going off tomorrow. She thought about the distance, and she thought about the snow. The snow. Perhaps there would be snow in the setting of her story. Maybe that would fix the problem, or not. The story had to be just right. “Bye.” A walk to the store would help to clear her head, and maybe she could write again.

Father looked up to see Daughter leaving. She walked too quickly for him to say goodbye. He looked at his plants, hoping that they wouldn’t grow up too quickly.

***

Mother got out of bed and put on her slippers. She felt a light breeze coming from under the window and thought about the many times she’d asked Father to prop a blanket against the wall. It seemed that if something had to get done, she had to do it herself.

Mother bent down to grab an old blanket from under the bed and felt her hip lock in place. It was happening far too often in the last few months. Placing the blanket along the edge of the windowsill, Mother slowly straightened her spine and walked to the kitchen for a cup of herbal tea. The man drinking the tea in her television set had said it would fix all sorts of body ache, but Mother knew he was lying to her. They always lied to her.

Mother placed a tea bag in her cup and poured hot water from the kettle. While waiting for her tea bag to steep, she checked on the lasagna in the oven. It was Daughter’s favorite, and Mother wanted her last dinner to be special. She turned back, plucked the tea bag from the cup, and tossed it into the small white bin beside the sink. It was the perfect time to catalogue.

Mother grabbed the new stack of catalogues from the dining table and her blue journal from the shelf. She had given a similar journal to Daughter but never saw her use it. Mother scrolled past the lists of snacks, dorm supplies, and stationery to a new page. Daughter would need sweaters for the cold weather. Sweaters, she marked at the top of her page.

There were three catalogues of sweaters, making it enough to list until dinner. Five minutes in, Mother glanced up at the picture on the wall. A tear fell into the catalogue. She was her only daughter. A second tear fell into the catalogue. She would be the first to go to college. With a teary smile, Mother went back to her list, something that Daughter could keep long after she left home.

***

Daughter stood in front of the store’s automatic doors and noted that they used to take less time to open. Walking through the aisles, she remembered all the times Father had brought her to buy her favorite bar of Cadbury dark chocolate.

Daughter dawdled until she finally reached the blanket table, which was covered with fall colors: reds, yellows, oranges, and faint browns. Right above the table was a sign with the date: August 25^th. Daughter could not believe that she would be leaving the next day. She wondered how she would live on her own, and then wondered if perhaps the story could take place in fall, with colorful leaves instead of snow. The fall colors would bring the story alive.

Daughter’s story thoughts were interrupted by the quarreling of two people beside her. “There’s only one red blanket left,” screamed the one wearing a red hat, red scarf, and red sweater. The other, wearing all orange, tugged at the red blanket.

Daughter glared at them. “It seemed to her such nonsense—inventing differences, when people, heaven knows, were different enough without that” (Woolf 12). These petty fights were common in her neighborhood. Daughter knew that things wouldn’t be like this in the North. College would mean starting anew. Daughter picked up a bright yellow blanket. Fall seemed like the best idea for her story. She held the blanket against her chest. Fall just made sense.

***

It had been hours. Mother sat at her designated spot, satisfied with the table, which was set with a lasagna dish, salad bowl, plates, and silver cutlery. She had changed her clothes from a satin pajama set—given to her by Daughter for her 60^th—to the dress she had worn for Daughter’s graduation. Mother assumed that Daughter did not want to make this dinner into an emotion fest, but she could feel her eyes well up with tears at the thought of her only child heading off to college. She reached for her blue journal and catalogue, categorizing coats and calming her nerves before dinner.

Father walked in, hearing Mother muttering while frantically writing in that journal of hers. He had plucked fresh cucumbers for the salad and decided not to change for dinner. The soil around the knees of his blue jeans would show Daughter that this dinner was not the last, for she could always come home. He sat opposite from Mother, cutting the cucumbers and wishing she hadn’t worn something so fancy.

Daughter, still in her room, put on the sky-blue sweater Father had given her for Christmas and the pearl earrings passed down to her by Mother. She figured it was the least she could do and walked into the dining room with a smile across her face.

Daughter’s smile quickly faded when she saw Mother cataloguing and Father playing with the salad, still in his gardening clothes. There it was. “Robbed of color, she saw things truly. The room (she looked round it) was very shabby. There was no beauty anywhere […] Nothing seemed to have merged. They all sat separate. And the whole of the effort of merging and flowing and creating rested on her” (Woolf 86).

She wasn’t sure how things would last once she left, and at the moment wholly wished she was writing in her room. It might have been Daughter’s last dinner, but it didn’t seem like anyone cared but her. She sat down, with her parents feeling further than ever. Daughter wondered if perhaps fall would’ve been wrong for the story after all.

Mother put away her catalogue, feeling satisfied with how the night started. After all, Daughter did like nonchalance. “That’s a beautiful sweater,” she said. “Where did you get it?”

“I got it for her,” said Father, still playing with the salad. He was having trouble looking up at his family. Daughter, surprised that he had even remembered, gave a hesitant nod. One would think the conversation would flow from there, but they only spoke of the weather and the changing seasons. Dinner was like this every day. Daughter wasn’t sure why she thought it would be any different tonight.

Mother cut the lasagna into hearty slices, hoping that Daughter had noticed the five layers of pasta sheets, cheese, ground chicken, and sauce. It was exactly the way she liked it. Daughter, trying not to think about seasons, hadn’t bothered to count the layers. She could feel time passing faster than she’d like, with the number of words exchanged decreasing with each second.

“You know,” Daughter said under her breath, realizing she would have to speak louder. “You know,” she said again, this time louder. Mother and Father set their forks down and looked up.

“I really don’t understand. I’m trying to. I really am, I promise, but I don’t get it. Have all of you forgotten? Or—or do you not care? Is that it? Do you…do you really not care? I can’t believe I—”

Father interrupted with a smack on the table. Mother and Daughter both shifted their attention to him. “His eyes, glazed with emotion, defiant with tragic intensity, met theirs for a second, and trembled on the verge of recognition; but then, raising his hand, half-way to his face as if to avert, to brush off, in an agony of peevish shame, their normal gaze, as if he begged them to withhold for a moment what he knew to be inevitable.” Pushing his chair back, Father got up and walked straight toward his room. “He turned abruptly, slammed his private door on them” (Woolf 29).

Mother, not knowing what to do, looked up at the picture of Daughter. She reached for a catalogue, her third tear of the day falling in its folds. Mother dove back into her world of lists.

Daughter felt both guilt and disappointment. She briefly glanced up to see a tear on her mother’s cheek. When she looked back down at her plate, she saw the lasagna and decided to count the layers. There were five, exactly five. It had become cold, but Daughter continued to eat. She took a second slice and then a third, partly because it was her favorite but mostly to stop the tears streaming down Mother’s face. It was a meal, a homecooked meal.

***

Everyone had gone to sleep, but Daughter remained at the table. She had told Mother not to worry for she would tidy up before bed. Daughter got up, facing the picture of herself on the wall. She piled the dishes and walked to the kitchen, noticing the marks on the sink from where she’d drawn with Sharpie at just five years old. Scrubbing the lasagna dish, she told herself it made sense; it made sense to leave.

Daughter put the dishes away and wiped her hands on the towel hanging over the sink. She wished for a final glance of the dining room. “It had become, she knew, giving one last look at it over her shoulder, already the past” (Woolf 114).

***

It was the middle of December, and snow covered the ground beneath Daughter’s sneakers as she struggled to pull her suitcases to the front door. She thought about the story that hadn’t been touched since she left home. Perhaps there might be snow in the setting, snow to match home and the North.

Daughter had decided to surprise Mother and Father by arriving just a few days early. As she waited at the top of the steps, she noticed that the garden was gone. “Already a change,” she said to herself, remembering the small greenhouse her dad had set up for years.

Ringing the doorbell, Daughter hoped things had changed since she left home. She could hear the sound of footsteps accompanied by heavy breathing traveling closer to the door. Daughter knew it was Father. The effects of bronchitis he contracted over three years ago had done a number on his health. She wondered if that was why he had taken down the outdoor garden this year.

The door opening, Father embraced Daughter. It had been over three months, and he knew that it was the longest they’d been apart since his last business trip fifteen years ago. Daughter was startled by Father’s sudden burst of affection but returned his embrace, finally feeling like his little girl.

Father grabbed one of Daughter’s suitcases while she carried the other. They walked through the lobby, which was converted into an indoor garden. Daughter saw a small container of Father’s special concoction next to the tomato plant. She was glad to see that Father had been keeping up with the garden after all. By the looks of it, he was turning the house into a forest.

Once they took off their shoes and entered the living room, Daughter could smell the candle she had sent Mother in the mail. It was the perfect balance of jasmine and honeysuckle, the two flowers Father had planted for them every year before they’d gone out of stock at the local shop. They added a renewed sense of home.

Daughter walked around, waiting for Mother to come out of her room. She half-expected Mother to be nose-deep in her catalogues but was pleasantly surprised to see the catalogues and blue journal on the shelf with a thin layer of dust covering them. No one had seemed to touch them for months.

Moments later, Mother entered the dining room, standing next to Father, who had moved the suitcases to Daughter’s old room. Daughter stood still for a moment, admiring just how close her parents were now, thinking that her leaving home might have done some good after all. They were both wearing their finest clothes, a clear change from the last time they’d had dinner.

Without saying a word, they all rushed to the table; everyone was quite hungry. There was lasagna accompanied by salad, but also homemade sushi, pizza, dumplings, and something called biryani. Daughter looked puzzled, and before she could say anything, Mother announced that she’d been trying new dishes. “I thought you might want a few more homemade dishes this weekend,” she said.

“They look wonderful,” Daughter replied. The family sat there, eating and talking. Father and Mother pushed the thoughts of cataloguing and gardening to the back of their minds, instead asking Daughter all sorts of questions about college life. Winter may have been nearing, but they could all feel a warmth that the house had lacked for years. It was a good dinner.

***

The weekend had come to an end, and it was time for Daughter to get back to school. She put on her hat and scarf, wrapping herself with the yellow blanket she had bought months ago. It reminded her of the freedom she’d felt in the store while keeping her attached to home.

Mother and Father stood by the door. They asked Daughter when she’d be back. The tears shed months ago were replaced by smiles and hugs. As Daughter left to catch her train, she felt hope in the air and snow on the ground, deciding that snow might be right for her story after all.

Including quotes from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf