Writing Exercise #1

A foolish peacefulness filled our house that day.  My mother brought life to the kitchen, dousing my childhood in the nostalgic perfumes of cinnamon, vanilla, and cake flour.  Seventies music blared from the radio and we sang along when familiar words echoed from the speakers.  Spilled powdered sugar dusted our linoleum floor like the kind of candy snow children dream about when sugarplums and Santa Claus are wrapped up in shiny paper under a pine tree.

            “You’re getting very good at that,” my mother said, watching me crimp the crust of my pie.  I smiled, folding the excess dough around the tip of my finger and spinning the pan in a counter-clockwise circle, creating scallops not quite as uniform as my mother’s.

            She had her arm halfway in the mouth of the oven, placing our pies on the racks to bake when I heard a loud thud like someone had just kicked our front door.

            “What was that?”

            We walked out to our front porch and saw a white van across the road in the church’s gravel parking lot.

            “Someone probably hit another deer,” my mother said and sighed, taking a few steps forward to get a closer look. 

            I watched her head tilt with the curve of a question mark and suddenly her eyes widened.  Without a word, she ran, seeing the pile of metal scraps mangled beneath the nose of the van.  As always, I followed my mother’s actions, hurrying across the grass without knowing what I was running to.
           A man in a motorcycle jacket was sprawled out atop the gravel.  He wasn’t wearing a helmet.