The Cabin

I drove into the driveway of my parent's house. My mother must have heard the sound of my arrival because even before I was out of the car she was at the front door waiting for me. I had barely visited the old home over the past year, and it was a sorrowful letter from mother that had given rise to my present visit. As we approached each other I could see the dark stains under mother's eyes, and neglected appearance of her clothing.

The letter had arrived some three weeks before, and it contained the news that my father had left mother. I felt the anguish in almost every line of the letter and decided that I must go home, even if only for a few days.

My parent's house was a thousand kilometres from where I now lived and worked. Following my father's example, I worked for a firm of architects and had been with them for almost a year. I had not taken any leave, so I approached the senior partner and explained the situation. He was very understanding, and after rearranging some work schedules, he suggested that I should take three weeks leave.

I rang my mother and told her I was coming home to spend time with her, but she put an alternative suggestion, we should go to "The Cabin." This was a place my parents had built a few years after they were married and was situated in the hills about two hours drive from the suburb where they lived. It was in a very isolated spot, and I was not sure if it was a good idea to go there at this time, but mother was very insistent.

As we met in the driveway she clung fiercely to me for a couple of minutes, just repeating, "Oh, David. Oh David." Once released from her embrace we stowed her gear in the car and after locking the house, we left for the hills. I had made a half way stop overnight in a motel on the journey over, so I was reasonably fresh and capable of driving without falling asleep at the wheel.

As we approached the hills, I noticed that clouds were beginning to pile up on the horizon. "It'll be a wet night," I thought. About four kilometres into the hills I turned off onto a side road cutting through a forest, and after a further fifteen minutes we came to the dirt track that led to The Cabin. We bumped along this for a while, then, crossing a ford over a stream and climbing up a low hill, we arrived.

The Cabin was built as one of those "get away from it all" places. It was of generous proportions and had been built when the "open plan" space was all the rage for homes and offices. Initially it consisted of one very large room with separate combined shower room and toilet. For sewage, this was connected to a septic tank.

The open plan had not stayed like that for long. Fairly soon a screen wall with a door was put up, and this became my parent's bedroom. I assume that they wished to perform their more intimate acts unobserved. There were three other beds, each with the foot pointing to the centre of the room. These too had been slightly de-open planned, and now had mobile screens beside them to give some degree of privacy.

There was no gas or electricity, and cooking and heating was done via a wood burning stove. Lighting was achieved by the use of pump up kerosene lamps, hurricane lamps or candles. The system usually was that the pump up lamps were used until everyone was in bed, then this was turned off and the hurricane lamp lit and left to burn all night. This enabled anyone who needed to get up to move about without tripping over things.

We unloaded our gear and supplies from the car and carried them in to the cabin. I had expected mother to use the separate bedroom, but she opted for a bed in the main room. When I questioned this she said, "I couldn't sleep in there."

I lit the wood stove and mother set about preparing a meal. I made a tour of inspection seeing if any possums or other small animals had managed to get in, and carried in more wood for the stove. The place had not been used for nearly a year, and I noted that undergrowth and a few saplings had started to appear round the cabin. This is a dangerous bush fire area, and all foliage needs to be cleared away from buildings. I listed this as a job to be done while I was there.

After our meal mother and I sat, talking by the stove while soft music played on the old radio (no television). It was a strange sort of recital by my mother, in that it was so unemotional. She simply set out what she saw as the facts.

My father ran his own architectural consultancy business and employed a few people. About a year ago, he had employed a new girl to serve as receptionist. Not long after this girl started father began to ring home with "working late at the office" messages. These got increasingly frequent until the day he came home and baldly announced, "I'm leaving you, Mary. It's no use making a fuss because I'm going now and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

Mother was numb with shock, and simply stood and watched him as he packed a few things, then saying, "I'll send for the rest of my stuff," he walked out. It seems that he had found the "deep and meaningful" love of his life in the new girl, who was barely eighteen to his fifty-three.

By the time mother had finished telling the story it was time for bed. The threatened rain had arrived, together with strong gusts of wind that shook the cabin, flinging rain like pebbles against the windows. I banked up the fire with wood for the night, lit the hurricane lamp and hung it from a hook suspended from the ceiling, and extinguished the pump lamp. In the dim light mother and I went to what I suppose might be called "our booths."

The room was warm from the heat of the stove, so I did not veer from my practice of sleeping naked. I assumed without particularly thinking about it, that mother did the same, as I knew it was her habit to sleep nude as well.

I did not sleep immediately, but lay there listening to the rain beating on the roof and trying to batter its way in through the windows and the wind soughing through the treetops in the nearby forest. My thoughts went to mother and the curiously unemotional way she related the story of my father's departure. Knowing her devotion to him, and seeing the strained look on her face suggested that she had not told the full story.

I heard mother moving restlessly on the other side of the screen and a vision of her lying there, naked and restless, entered my thoughts. "He must have been mad to leave a woman like her. Loving, devoted, she had always been there to support him, and to fulfil his needs. He must be going through a late mid-life crisis to clear off with a girl almost young enough to be his grand daughter."

Mother was ten years younger than father. "He must like them young," I thought facetiously. I began to consider mother's looks. Oddly, this was not as easy as it sounds. I loved her with that love a son can have for his mother that has nothing to do with her looks. As a child I used to say to her, "You're beautiful, mummy," but the beauty I saw in her was her caring, her loving, and not simply face and figure.

I tried to focus my thoughts on her physical appearance. I had always rejoiced in the way she carried herself – so slim, straight and tall, not like some of my friends mothers, many of whom were fat or scraggily thin, walking with ponderous step or back bowed, slouching along. I was always proud to be seen with her when she occasionally met me after school, or on other occasions when we were out together.

Her hair is ash blonde and cut to shoulder length. Her eyes a fathomless dark brown that always gave me the feeling she was thinking thoughts beyond my reach. Her nose has a little bump in it about halfway down, and her mouth was wide with fairly full lips.

One of her features I had never actually seen properly were her breasts. I had some idea about them because she always wore a two piece swimming costume when swimming They were large without being obscenely big, and the thing that struck me about them was what seemed to be their unusual firmness. Often she would wear a dress or shirt with no support for her breasts underneath, and you could see that they needed no support. She put on bras, as she said, "When I'm being respectable."

Slender without being thin, she was supported on long legs with finely defined thigh and calf muscles. I thought again, "My fool of a father left all that when scores of men would have prized her." I later learned that a week after my father departed and the word got around, her next door neighbour called and informed her that they could have "a meaningful relationship." Mother sent him scurrying back to his wife and three children.

In the midst of thinking about mother and the situation, I drifted off to sleep. I awoke some time in the night. As I came to, I tried to focus on what might have awakened me. Perhaps an extra blast from the storm still raging outside? Some falling limb in the forest? Then as my eyes focused, I saw in the dim light of the hurricane lamp, mother standing by the window staring out into the blackness and storm. She was very still, and rather than invade her reverie, I remained silent. She stood for what seemed to be a long time and I lay watching her profile in the faint light.

Eventually she moved to sit on the couch still looking out at the night, then she made her first audible sound. It was a gasping shuddering intake of breath that foreshadowed the sobs that followed. I knew the moment had come for me to intervene. This was the pent up emotion she had blocked off as she told me earlier of father's leaving.

I crossed to her and sat beside her putting my arm round her. She leaned into me putting her head on my chest and gave full vent to her grief. Between heart breaking sobs she cried out, "Oh David, David, David." My love and compassion for her brought me to tears, and I wept with her. I made no effort to stop her weeping, I let her cry herself out as I held her and stroked her face. Her anguish rivaled the storm beating against the cabin outside as she beat a hand against my chest and cried out in her tear-wracked misery. Finally, and still clinging to me and between the gasping aftermath of her emotional outpourings, she began to speak. As I had thought, she had not told me the full story. Now it began to come out in broken words, interrupted by residual sobs. "He said he had never loved me," she choked out. "He only married me because I was pregnant. Oh God, David, all the years, all the love, all the love I gave, all the fidelity, oh God, David, David, I want to die. He's taken my life away…what did I do? Tell me…what did I do not to have his love? Why couldn't he love me?" Her eyes went to their old bedroom; "We used to…to…" she looked back quickly to stare blindly out of the window again.

"David," she choked, "For me you have always been the fruit of our love. It wasn't ugly, David, I promise you. I loved him and wanted him, I gave myself to him and it was exquisite. He was the first man ever and he was so gentle, he did everything he could not to hurt me when he broke through. Why didn't he love me, David? Can't you tell me? Can't someone tell me? Why? When I knew I was pregnant, even though I was only eighteen, I was happy. I didn't even ask him to marry me; it was he who insisted. Why didn't he love me, David? I gave him a beautiful child and all the time I thought, 'This child is beautiful because of the beauty of our love.' And he never loved me. Oh dear God, he never loved me. He's broken my heart."

She clung to me now crying quietly. I had let her cry and talk to a stop. Then, for the first time I spoke. I understood the uselessness of false words of comfort, but I spoke the truth, as I believed it to be. "He loved you mother, and perhaps he is now going to find out how much he loved you and what he has thrown away." I then said words that rose up out of the depths of my childhood past. Back in those happy times, I would say to mother, "Mummy, when I grow up, I'll marry you and never leave you." Perhaps they are words that are said by many sons to their mothers in the days of childhood. Now the words came out as, "I won't leave you mother."

I hardly knew why I had said them. Compassion for this broken woman? Or more powerfully, profound love for my mother? I rose and found a towel and brought it to mother. I helped to clear the tears from her saturated face, neck and shoulders. The tears had also run down over her breasts, and looking at them, I became aware of her nakedness – and mine. We had been so caught up in the great storm of naked emotion; our physical nudity had counted for nothing.

I handed mother the towel so that she could continue to wipe herself. When she finished she dropped the towel to the floor, and leaned into me once more. Having now become conscious of our nudity and the vulnerability that this gives rise to, I also became aware of her breasts pressing against me. I tried to ignore this, but for all my effort, my penis began to stiffen. It is extremely difficult when you are with a naked, attractive woman, with her warm flesh pressing against you, to not get aroused, even if that woman is your mother.

Mother lay quietly in my arms for some minutes, staring into space and wrapped in some inner world of thought. After a while she stirred and began, "David, could you…? Would it be…possible? I mean could you bring yourself to…? I won't ever ask you again, I promise. But just this once… just tonight, my love…" She stopped speaking, unable to say what she wanted to say. I saw the soft sad look in her eyes and this nearly reduced me to tears again.

For a few moments nothing further was said or done, then suddenly she moved to rest her head against the arm of the couch, and drew one leg up onto the seat. In the dim light, I could see her vagina. Her hands reached down to part the outer lips and reveal the inner petals and whispered. "Just for tonight, my darling, console me. Please."

I moved over on top of her, placed the head of my penis against her sex organ, and entered the warm, sweet world of her womanhood.

There was nothing wild or mad about our sexual communion. I stayed with mother for as long as I could hold back my orgasm. We spoke words of love and endearment. At times I didn't move in her at all, but simply lay quietly in her, while I stroked her face and kissed her lips, my hand gently squeezing her breasts and nipples.

Mother sighed and said over and over, "Lovely, David, lovely my darling." Once more, the thought flashed through my brain, "And my father walked out on all this?"

I am not sure if mother had an orgasm. After about half an hour of this sweet and tender lovemaking, I could hold out no longer. As I ejaculated into her I heard mother whisper, "Oh, my love, my darling, I love you so much." Was that for me, or my father?

We did not share a bed that night, but went back to our own rather narrow single beds. In the morning, I was woken by the sound of mother singing. I found I was relaxed and at peace, which was surprising given the emotional storms of the night. The storm outside had passed and the sun shone through the trees and I heard the forest birds singing. It was strange, I seemed to see and hear things as if for the first time.

Mother, observing I was awake, came over to the bed and smiled down at me. "Come on lazy. Breakfast. Get out of bed, we've got a lot to do today." She had on one of those shirts she wore with no bra. I could see those lovely nipples thrusting proudly against the cloth, and there flooded back to me the memory of mother and I locked together, loving each other.

I got out of bed and rather tentatively approached the table for breakfast. I was not sure what might result from our night's activities. Mother, who had gone over to the sink to get something, turned, and I got my first good look at her from a perpendicular position. I was confused. "My God," I thought, "she's radiant. Where has the woman gone who sobbed so pitifully in my arms last night?"

Mother looked at me, smiling. "Come on, we're going out today." I didn't ask where because I was too overcome by mother's appearance. "She's relaxed and beautiful, she has the look of a woman…" I knew that look. It was the morning after a night of love look. Perhaps you know that look? It is the look of a woman, who has loved and knows she is loved, a woman who has given her body and knows that her gift has been received with tenderness and passion.

Yet our sexual coming together had been so quiet, so gentle, and to give rise to this…? I could not pursue the thought.

I finished breakfast and showered. Mother informed me that our "going out" really meant we were going for a walk through the woods. We went out into the sunshine and started down one of the trails she and I had walked many times before in the past. She took my hand and held on to it as we walked.

Out in the clean rain washed air the rest of the world seemed a million miles away. I felt I could walk forever in the company of this lovely woman whom I had difficulty identifying as my mother. If I had dreamed of a woman I would want to be with like this, she was exactly the one, the dream woman - except, she was reality.

After a couple hours wandering along through the drying forest, we came to a halt. Mother stood, leaning against a tree and I was enchanted by her loveliness set against one of nature's fairest offerings. I leaned towards her, kissing her on her lips, my hand reaching to touch her breast.

No sooner had I touched her than I pulled back. Last night she had said, "Just this once." We had not made a single mention of what had happened between us and now I was overstepping the bounds. I had been allowed just once to enter the depths of her female mystery. I, a mere man and her son, had been given that inestimable privilege. What had occurred gave me no right to invade – even violate the wonder that is mother and woman.

"Sorry mother," I said. She was smiling such a tender, loving smile. It was as if all the beauty of the word was caught up in that smile. "No darling," she said very gently, "I said I would not approach you again, I did not say you must not approach me." She slipped out of her panties and undid the front of my trousers and raised her skirt. I entered her as she stood against the tree. In the midst of nature, I was penetrating the source of my being.

That night, and every other night thereafter, we used the double bed. The ghosts had been laid for her by the new focus, not simply of her love – I had always had that – but by the new dimension that love had entered.

We talked and talked, striving to find and reveal the truth. The truth about the feelings we had long had for each other and had hidden, not only from each other, but also from ourselves. I believe this is true for many mothers and their sons, but it is a thought, a desire, that is pushed down into the sub-conscious, there to be held prisoner, unless some traumatic event, such as my father's departure, frees it from its chains.

Our loving was the most wonderful I had ever experienced, and as the time for us to leave the cabin drew near, I knew I must fight to hold on to this love and the sexual fulfillment it gave. I loved mother and was now so obsessed with her; I could hardly leave her alone.

Everything about her enchanted me, her lovely breasts. The faint smell of roses that came from her sweet body. The taste of her female fluids as I licked and sucked her clitoris. Her tongue running over my penis. Above all, and unlike the first time we came together, the power of her vaginal muscles to pull me into her, grasping me, and drawing out my sperm to flood her.

I had always loved mother, now I was "in love" with her. I knew she felt the same towards me. Indeed, we never seemed to tire of pouring out our love to each other. But the time was approaching when we had to decide what to do after we left the cabin. However I felt about mother I had to return to my work. I was in the very early stages of developing my career, and to mar it now might prove ruinous. The only other viable alternative was for mother to come and live with me.