The Broom

The sound that awakened Lily-Ann that Saturday morning was that of the broom scratching the wooden floor. Rhythmic and continuous. One, two, three…,and silence. A one, two, three, four and silence. Silence. Silence? Thanks… And the sleep of Saturday morning gently grabbing her again by the hair, and drowning her - like a Neptune rapturing a nymph for brief instants - into the splashing around foam of the blue warm sea of unresolved dreams and warm sheets…

Broom. Once again…One, two and three, and four…and five… And then the rhythm increased. New broom, she thought. Only a new broom sounds that playful in her first day of work. Lily- Ann felt comfortably lazy, and cheered up for the broom…

´Mom…´

The primal word in her charming, spoiled glottal fry southern key, flew away. A voice between pensive, and mother-wit kin tuned, answered:

´Heyy…look at you, party cat...! Hungover?´

Lily-Ann smiled at her mother standing at the threshold with her eyes still puffed up for the sleep.

´Yeeeah…a little bit. Come on over here, Mom. Grrrls wrestling...! ´

The mother leisurely leaves the broom who - like a slender model with its clean new aura posing at the door frame - contemplates the scene.

The mother approaches the bed, her face rosy for the sweeping and the warm air of the premature spring in March, and the daughter, acting out the Neptune of her light sleep, grabs her by the wrists, and drags her into the sea of wrinkled blankets and springy pillows. The girls - mother and daughter - fight in a friendly battle of tickling and squeezing, nuanced with sparks of a so grave seriousness and Spartan commitment to winning, that the broom for an instant gets worried…

But for the girls, it´s only a Saturday ritual for getting uplifted. The broom cools down, and feels ready for something more. She seems to take a coquettish look at her mousy blonde stuck up new bristles, and hums the song new brooms use to sing when left alone at home:

“Sweep, sweep, sweep away the gloom, To the boogie rhythm of the new broom….”

´Breakfast?´ - the mother offers, surrendering gallantly to give way to the daughter´s not usual great mood lately, since her father passed away overseas. ´Yes Mom, ´ says Lyly Anne, and the mother leaves the room.

´Breakfast, here we go…, ´ says out loud the girl waking up and stepping out like a ballerina avidly to the shy, blushed broom, while her mother makes crockery noises the kitchen.

´Let´s go for a raid to the witches’ kitchen, Broomtail Horse, ´ Lily-Ann says, while getting on the enthusiastic new member of the family. And then, they take off.