1: The Moving Picture

Rosie didn't want to sit any longer. The plane was stuffy and cold. Dinner was gross. Mom always liked airline food. Especially the small packets of butter and the dinner roll.

Rosie already finished her book and watched two movies. She opened the small window and uncomfortably bright sunlit infiltrated Rosie's row. She squinted and peered out. Still just clouds.

"How much longer now, Grandmother?" Rosie asked for the third time. Grandmother was sleeping with a mask wrap around her head. Or pretending to sleep, Rosie thought dryly. Rosie closed the window.

Rosie had flown across the Atlantic twice before, but she forgotten how long and boring air travel was. At least this would be the last time. There was no reason for her to go back to Vancouver Island, Mom was dead and Dad was somewhere on the mainland. Maybe she'd go back when she grew up. Maybe she would get her and Mom's house back. The house on Moss Street. With the white siding and red roof. Last year she and Mom painted a mural on the kitchen wall behind the table. Rosie painted huge flowers, copying her favourite ones from the garden. Sunflowers, hydrangeas, and day lilies. Mom painted curious creatures hiding behind the giant flowers. They had spindly legs and large floppy bat ears.

"What are those things?" Rosie asked, looking critically at the batty, grey creature peeking from behind the pink peony.

"They are Elves," Mom said, "they are very good at hiding, as you can see."

"They're creepy," Rosie protested, "you should paint butterflies instead, they are prettier."

"Yes, but Elves make better friends," Mom replied, finishing the yellow sock she had painted on the Elf's left foot, "if you can find one, of course." Rosie rolled her eyes, Mom always talked about make believe like it was real. Once after a few glasses of wine, she told Rosie that Dragon blood was a great oven cleaner. Rosie was getting too old for that, she was nearly ten after all.

Rosie bitterly thought that the new homeowners probably painted over the mural.

"Grandmother," Rosie said, aware she was being annoying but suddenly needing to know, "what did you do with Mom's plants?" Mom had a large pantry in the basement of the Moss Street House, filled with shelves from top to bottom. Every shelf was stocked with glass jars. Every glass jar was filled with a specimen of various flowers and fungi that Mom had collected from around the Island. Rosie loved the Botany Collection. She had helped stock it and labeled every specimen with its Latin name.

Grandmother took her mask off, conceding that she would get no sleep with the nervous ten year old beside her.

"We donated them to the Department of Biology at the university. It was an impressive collection, according to the Dean." Grandmother told Rosie.

Her heart dropped a little, Rosie wanted to bring the Botany Collection to England.

Grandmother noticed Rosie's disappointment and added, "Grandfather is setting up a new pantry in the basement for you to fill up."

Rosie didn't know what to say, so she slammed her headphones on, her eyes filling up unexpectedly with stinging tears. She was already so far from the Island, from the Moss Street House and the beaches and the woods. For her last birthday, Mom prepared a picnic lunch and they walked through the woods to a secluded beach. The forest were always the best during her March birthday. The ground had erupted in wildflowers and the trees were higher than she could see and thicker across than she was tall. Thick, green moss covered every inch of every tree. Rosie carefully clipped a small piece of moss from a tree and placed it in her plastic lunchbox. She would inspect it and identify it later at home.

"Rosie," Mom broke the silence of their hike, "come look at these flowers!" Rosie hurried over to the small cluster of white flowers. Mom was taking pictures with her clunky old film camera. Once, when Rosie was little and her parents were still married, Dad bought Mom a digital camera, explaining how efficient it was to store photos digitally rather than developing everything. Mom, as usual, stubbornly refused, stating that her film camera took perfectly lovely pictures. She framed her favourites and hung them all over the house. Nearly every wall was filled with photographs of plants and portraits of Rosie.

Rosie observed the flowers as Mom had taught her. The flowers grew from the stem of the plant. They were white with a yellow gland. Rosie smelled them. Vanilla.

"I think it's an orchid." Rosie guessed.

"Well done Rosie," Mom praised, "they are called Snow Orchids," she said and frowning slightly added, "there are hardly any of them left in the world."

Rosie sat down on the ground, carefully avoiding any flowers. She pulled the Flora Reference Guide of Western Canada out of her backpack and looked it up in the index.

"It needs really old forests to live in," Rosie reported to her mother.

"Indeed," Mom said, "and those are also endangered."

"Are we going to take a specimen for the Botany Collection?"

"Not this time Rosie girl," Mom replied, standing up and holding out her hand for Rosie to take.

They walked towards the beach to eat sandwiches and birthday cake. Rosie looked back and noticed there were many more flowers than she previously thought. The area behind them was teeming with the delicate white flowers, shimmering in the bright afternoon sun.

Rosie woke up confused, unable to register where she was for a few moments. Mops the Bloodhound gave her hand a few slobbery licks, 'oh right', Rosie remembered, 'she was in England.' Rosie flopped over to give him a pet behind his ears. Yawning largely, Rosie watched a Robin eating on the bird feeder outside her window.

"Rosie, darling, breakfast is nearly ready." Grandmother poked her head into the room, "why don't you come down and take a shower. I've put some clothes in the bathroom for you."

Rosie agreed and pulled herself out of bed. She was too tired last night to notice, but she realized that she was in her mother's old room. She and Mom had visited last summer. They hung a sheet over the bed to make a fort and Mom told Rosie stories of her childhood. Like the time Mom tried to climb down the tree outside the window and instead broke her ankle. Or how she hid snacks from her parents in the slanted ceiling, behind a print of Van Gogh's Sunflowers.

"Grandmother and Grandfather were dentists, you know." Mom told her, "Sugar was absolutely forbidden, but my school friends always gave me sweets at Christmas. My friend hid his treasures under a loose floorboard, which I thought was brilliant, so I found my own secret spot."

Mom's small bedroom was in the top corner of the old cottage. The roof was slanted over the bed. A window was on the far end of the room and the flat wall had bookshelves along the entire length. The walls were made from whitewashed boards and a thick braided rug was on the floor. Someone, presumably Grandfather, had put some flowers on the dresser. Also on the dresser were pictures of Mom from her school days, wearing a school uniform, smiling with her friends. Rosie could almost imagine her mother sitting beside her on the bed.

She went downstairs into the bathroom at the back. She came in for breakfast dressed in a stripped tank top and cargo pants with her wavy brown hair wet around her shoulders.

"Good morning," Grandmother said from the oak table in the front room. She poured Rosie a large glass of orange juice and placed two hard boiled eggs and some fruit on her plate. "How do you like your room?" She asked, "we have another room if you would rather not sleep in your mom's old one."

"No!" Rosie quickly said, "I like Mom's room."

"Splendid!" Grandfather interjected cheerfully. "Why don't you go unpack your things and then we can walk to the park if you'd like."

"When your Mom was a little girl, we used to fly kites in this park every weekend." Grandfather said, as they laid on the grass with the kite flapping above them. "One summer we handmade a kite. Your mom cut out clouds, she insisted they were cumulous, to decorate it.

"Do you still have it?" Rosie asked, turning onto her side to face Grandfather, spotting a bit of wetness in the corner of his eye.

"No," said Grandfather sadly, "me and Grandmother moved to Australia when your mother was in her last year of school, and it was lost there."

Rosie didn't know they had lived in Australia. Mom never told her that.

"But Mom lived in the house when she was little, didn't she? Why didn't you sell the house?"

"Yes, we did move" Grandfather said, "but, we never sold the house. And good thing too! We have so many wonderful memories of your mother in that house, and now we get to live there with you."

Rosie gave a wavering smile. She didn't know much about Australia other than all the snakes and spiders. When Rosie was seven, Mom took her to the Vancouver Zoo and they spent a lot of time in the snake house.

Mom said, "my school friend once told me a story about a boy who could talk to snakes. He told a big Boa Constrictor to chase a bully at the zoo.

Rosie giggled, then asked seriously, "What would a snake talk about?"

Mom laughed, "according to the story, the Boa Constrictor was off to Brazil to find his family. But otherwise I imagine snakes talk about tasty mice and warm rocks."

"What do you think dogs would say if they could talk?" Rosie asked, things of her Grandparents' dog Mops.

"They would probably just talk about how much they love you and how many bones they have hidden," Mom said. "If I could talk to any animal it would be an owl," she added after a pause.

"Why? Owls aren't friendly at all." Rosie knew that owls ate house cats and had big, vicious talons.

"Well, everyone knows how wise owls are, maybe they could give you some good advice." Mom said contemplatively. Rosie's memory of her mother that day at the zoo was fresh in her mind, even three years later. She was wearing a red dress with thin straps and white sneakers. Her long brown hair tumbled in wild curls down her back. Her eyes were always on Rosie, golden coloured and serious.

When they went home after the zoo, Dad didn't live in the Moss Street House any more.

Rosie sniffed back her sadness. Thinking too much about Mom made her stomach feel bad. Grandfather stood up, brought in the kites and took Rosie's hand in his.

After a mostly silent lunch, Rosie went in her new room. She sullenly sat on her bed and looked at the garden through her window. Grandmother brought some photo albums to look through, 'if she felt up to it.' Lying on her stomach on the pink woollen blanket, Rosie flipped through the pictures. Her mom as a little girl, with a dirty face, sly smile and wild hair. Mom with the same two boys from the dresser pictures, wrapped up in stripped scarves laughing together, looking like she didn't have any worries at all. Mom dressed up in front of Christmas tree. Mom with her old cat, snuggled up together with a book. Mom between Grandfather and Grandmother at her graduation. Mom and Dad's wedding, her parents staring at each other with an look of adoration Rosie couldn't remember ever seeing. A picture of Mom holding a baby, Rosie probably, smiling so serenely. Rosie shut the album suddenly, unable to look for a second longer.

She angrily pushed the book off the bed, letting it fall on the floor. Hoping for a good distraction, she looked towards her mother's books and spotted a battered fat one with a ribbon. It looked like it might be full of fairy tales. She stretched over to grab it. Only the tips of her fingers could reach the book. Her finger hooked onto the edge and the book flipped off the shelf, onto the floor and landed open on its spine. Tucked into the pages of the book was another picture. Rosie picked it up and flipped it over. The picture was of Mom standing by a lake, with books in her arms and a smile on her lips. Then, Mom moved.

Rosie jumped and dropped the picture. Pictures don't move. Unless it was some sort of computer. Rosie picked it up again to inspect it better. Rosie could find nothing unusual, just paper and ink. Her mother was smiling and waving, a breeze blowing her curly hair into her face. Rosie was transfixed. Then somebody else was there. A tall boy with red hair and freckles jumped into the frame. He squeezed Mom, one arm wrapped around her waist, and leaned down to kiss her cheek, causing Mom to drop all her books and scowl at the boy. He grinned widely, and bent over to pick them up. Rosie watched the short scene replay over and over. Her mother was so alive, so young. She wore the same school uniform Rosie had seen in so many other pictures, with a red and gold lion stitched on the breast. Rosie turned the picture over. Scrawled in Mom's precise handwriting May 1998.

Rosie tucked the picture back inside the book of fairy tales. However mysterious The Moving Picture was, Rosie wasn't overly concerned about it. It was Mom's secret, after all, and she was happy to keep it safe.