The Prodigal's Mother

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The Prodigal’s Mother

She heard him before she saw him—the gate complaining on its hinge, the old sound of return. The servants ran. The father ran. But she stayed where she was, hands wet with flour, the dough cooling under her palms.

He stood in the yard thinner than memory, a man-shaped apology. Dirt clung to him as if it had chosen him. When he lifted his eyes, he looked first for his father, then—hesitating—for her.

The father embraced him with the clumsy relief of a man who had rehearsed grief too long. “My son,” he said, as if saying it might stitch the years together. Orders flew. A calf lowed. Sandals were fetched. A ring found its way onto a finger that had known other weights.

Only then did she step forward.

She did not touch him.

“So,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron, “you’ve remembered the road.”

He opened his mouth, closed it. The speech he had practiced collapsed like a tent in wind. “Mother—”

“You left hungry mouths here,” she said evenly. “You left fields untended by the hands that knew them. You left a brother who learned to shoulder what you shrugged off.”

The father frowned, but she continued, eyes steady as frost. “You wanted freedom. You took it. You spent it. Now you want home.”

“I want mercy,” he said, small.

She nodded once. “Mercy is being fed,” she said, gesturing toward the house where bread rose and meat roasted. “Mercy is being clothed. Mercy is a roof that does not ask where you’ve slept.”

She turned then, calling to a servant to set another place at the table. Over her shoulder she added, “Joy is something else.”

That night the lamps burned late. Music spilled into the dark. The elder brother stood outside, jaw set, counting the years like coins never spent. She stood beside him, not angry, not soft—simply true.

“He was dead,” the father said, pleading.

“And now he is alive,” she answered. “Let him learn how to live here.”

When the prodigal finally crossed the threshold, fed and clean, he looked for her again. She met his gaze at last and, after a moment, inclined her head—not a welcome, not a refusal.

It was the beginning of the work.