Photo by Denise Hunter
————
Can you add more?
Originally posted January 5, 2009 with a few additions for good measure.
Wish I was sleeping.
I should be doing critiques. Mind won’t focus, but when I try to sleep it likes to skitter about like the loose coffee beans that took off when the canister fell out of the pantry and the lid came off. (I am still finding coffee beans in the oddest places.)
I have enjoyed April’s blogging endeavor. It is the one thing that I got right.
In the doghouse, but at least he’s getting to sleep!
photo by constantin jurcut
I intend to take a brief break, but I am scheduling popular posts from a previous blog and I want to get started back up on Monday of next week. Or Tuesday. We shall see.
It helps so much to have a theme to work with like the A to Z challenge, even though I never got around to signing up and never used the hashtag. It still gave me a goal and a reason to set aside time most days to get something posted.
Any ideas? Does anyone know of any challenges for the month of May or do you have prompts/themes that worked for you? Please commment. I would love to hear about them soon and give the ideas time to start cooking.
Thanks to all those who started following my blog in the recent days. I appreciate it!
Photo by ali seifert
Mike watched his setter out of the corner of his eye while he ordered two hot dogs from the vendor. One with sauerkraut, onions and mustard and the other plain. He silently wished Cinnamon would stick his head back inside the vehicle, be a little less visible. He imagined explaining to his boss why his dog had to accompany him on today’s delivery run. Maybe he would understand.
Probably he wouldn’t.
It was so hot. Mike wiped his forehead with his sleeve before reaching out to drop the cash into the vendor’s hand in exchange for the hot dogs. If he were a dog, he’d have as much as he could fit outside the window, too. He caught the canine’s eye as he made his way to the van. Thankfully all the setter did was get to his feet and wag his tail. Mike could see the plume swaying in the shadows inside the van. Cinnamon wasn’t one to bark much.
“Scoot over, Mutt and let me in.” Cinnamon scrambled over to the passenger seat and faced the front as though he were ready to be moving.
“Lunch first,” Mike said in response. “Here you go, Boy.” He pulled the hot dogs out of the sack and put them up on the dash, tore the bag open and spread it like a placemat on the seat between them, and then unwrapped the plain hot dog and placed it before Cinammon. The dog looked at him with huge dark eyes begging for permission, and Mike couldn’t help but smile.
“Go for it!” he said, and the dog did just that. In the back of his mind, Mike wondered if he should have gotten Cinnamon two. Then he wondered how he’d get him water. Later. He’d think about that later. Along with all those other things he couldn’t think about just now.
After folding the paper down around his own lunch, Mike started the van and eased away from the curb. He heard the wet flap of the dog licking his chops and glanced down at the paper bag, which was being thoroughly sniffed for a stray morsel. “We’re almost through, Buddy. Then we’ll figure out what we’re going to do next.”
Then Mike started thinking about her, and found himself caught in that whirlpool that dragged his mind down a deep and bottomless hole every time. How could she be like this? How could a person change so utterly, so completely? And so fast. Almost overnight it seemed.
They had been married for five years. No, they weren’t the match-made-in-heaven couple that seemed to fill the movie screens. They had married too quickly and had put a lot of work into adjusting to one another over those first couple years. Still, they had built a life together. Mutual respect had been cultivated, as well as tolerance for each other’s quirks. They had their weekly pizza night and full-blown date evenings a couple times a month. Mike recalled long conversations they’d had over Saturday breakfast, often arguing good-naturedly over the op-ed column, and long easy walks through the park with Cinnamon in tow. He had been honestly happy. And thought she had been as well.
Now she wanted out. Not only that, she wanted to take everything with her. Even the dog.
Mike reached out and buried his fingers in the dog’s coat just below his collar and rubbed. Cinammon turned his big, grateful eyes on him for a moment, and then went back to watching the world go by out the passenger side window. Why on earth was she so adamant about the dog? It wasn’t like they had kids who would miss him. It wasn’t like she was the one who got up in the mornings and walked him. Lately she hadn’t even been taking him to the park in the evenings either. She had been working round the clock, only now Mike couldn’t help but wonder exactly what it was that she had been working at during those long hours.
The house was negotiable. As was the car, the furniture, the wedding pictures. He was ready to give her whatever she wanted as long as he wasn’t left destitute.
Without Cinnamon, he was destitute.
At the moment the company of the animal meant more than money or things. There was one living, breathing being on the earth that hadn’t turned on him, that gave him unconditional support and companionship, and of all the things she wanted, this was the one he would not even discuss.
When he saw her this morning, ready to back out of the drive with the animal in her shiny BMW, and Mike had nearly gone berserk. Probably stitched up every thread needed in a case for divorce due to insanity. He stood directly in her path as she began to back down the driveway, and she stopped with just inches between him and her rear bumper. After which he pounded forcefully on her trunk and saw her lower the window.
She was just taking him for a walk, she screamed. They had to get used to sharing these things, she said. But nothing could stop him from yanking the passenger door open, calmly calling the dog out and then putting him in the Wentworth’s Uniforms van at the curb, which was sorely in need of a wash he had noted in that odd way that had overtaken him. Details that meant nothing caught his attention like bait.
“The dog is not going to be shared,” he said, sharply and clearly when she paused at the end of the drive to say something else. “Non-negotiable.”
“We’ll see about that!” she yelled in return. She sped away. He climbed into the van and put it in reverse, trembling in relief.
Mike wondered now what, if anything, she had been up to. Honestly she’d have no reason to kidnap the dog. He wasn’t registered, trained or worth any money, which seemed to be her sole interest these days.
But the sight of her with Cinnamon raised all the jealousy that would have surfaced had she had her lover in the seat beside her. Maybe that’s what he’d seen. Or had been afraid of–that his dog’s affections could be swayed away from him. That he could be utterly and completely alone.
And so here they were, side by side, Mike and Cinnamon, delivering uniforms across Cleveland, both of them wondering exactly what came next. Cinnamon just seemed a bit more eager to know than Mike was at present.
———————————
Today’s prompt: (March 25, 2004) A cinnamon-colored Irish setter stares out the driver’s side window of a dirty white cargo van. Who owns him?
Posted in Writing
Tagged family, fiction, irish setter, old blog, prompt, prompt work
I didn’t get to watch much of the news yesterday. Slept through the 7:00 hour and was well into conquering the day when I later overheard a group of news anchors on TV talking about the latest school shooting and the fear that we are becoming too accustomed to stories of this nature, only with more casualties and therefore more media attention. Consequently, these “small” incidents pass almost unnoticed.
So when I was browsing through my old blog for today’s trek into the past, I was struck by this little piece from almost 10 years ago (December 21, 2003).
I get the paper on the weekends but I confess, I don’t read much that’s in it. I scan the headlines and the front page to see what’s inside. Then I skim the first section to see if anything catches my eye. I work my way through the pains, problems and situations plaguing people, countries and the globe, and then I dive into the editorials, where my head will spin with replies to just about every letter. It’s good practice in organizing thoughts, even writing letters that I never seem to get sent in. Then it’s on to the funnies, toss the sports section to the guys and the classifieds to my eldest who is looking for work, and I’m finished.
The trouble with this approach, I have learned, is that I’m not seeing real people behind the headlines.
For example, here’s a little blip on the front page of the paper that I didn’t even bother investigating:
STATE:
Robberies Linked
LATEST NEWS: FBI officials think the man who robbed a northwest Oklahoma City bank Monday also struck Thursday.
BACKGROUND: There have been 50 metro area bank robberies this year, compared with 15 last year.
WHAT’S NEXT: A reward is offered. Page 6A
Long before you get to robbery #49, you just kinda tune out.
Until you go to a Bible study group and learn that the teller who was held up was one of your friends.
Then you start to really think about it.
This guy waited in a lengthy line on Thursday, which means he might have very well cased out which teller he would approach. My friend would seem an easy target. She’s my height or perhaps just a little shorter, and on some of the windy days we’ve had lately you might be tempted to hold on to her for fear she’d blow away. There she is–at the window, doing her job, being warm and friendly as I know her to be even on a bad day, and inch by inch he’s patiently moving toward her. Then instead of getting a greeting in return, she watches him pull something from a leather bag, and put it on the counter in front of her. Checks? Rolls of coins? No. She finds herself chest-to-barrel with a semi-automatic pistol.
I can’t say I would not have fainted. I can’t say at all what I would have done, but I know my heart would have dropped to my feet, at the very least. Now, instead of checking to see if she has the proper ID or the endorsements she needs for the transaction she expected, she’s struck by the idea that the bank is very full, and if she does something stupid, a lot of people could get hurt, not to mention how close the barrel of the pistol is to her heart. She can’t get to help without raising suspicion and so she does as she’s been trained–do what you feel safe doing. The money and the pistol go back into the bag.
And then he walks out.
What is left behind?
My friend is okay. And she’ll be more okay as the days go by, because she has a sure hope and a firm faith, and knows that this kind of thing happens in the world we live in. But how does she look down a long line of customers and not wonder just who may be in that line?
But what about the other 49? What if those tellers didn’t have the support system to see them through? The experience could be haunting every second that passed since it happened.
And how do I read the next newstory without wondering how long the woman in this bit of news, desperately afraid, tearfully pleaded for her life before her estranged husband shot her, and where was her daughter hiding through all of it and how can that little girl ever have a normal life? Or is the woman with Hepititis C, thanks to a careless health “professional” re-using needles, past tears now, and just resigned to the illness? Or does she cry into her pillow every night, wondering how much longer she has to hold her grandbaby and watch him grow?
I know that in a few days, I too will be fine. I need to be, because delving into every newspaper article on an emotional level is crazy–much too draining. But, I do hope I can remember to be compassionate. When I meet the next person at a door who wants to snap at me, I want the presence of mind to consider that maybe she’s spent the night tossing and turning, thinking about “what if it were me or mine?” Or maybe it was her or hers, and that’s all the more reason for me to be kind and offer a word of comfort.
As I mentioned recently, this is one of the reasons I write. History–my history, Chistina’s history–unrecorded gets forgotten. While the bad memories are rightfully erased by the joyous occasions in life, like better jobs and beautiful babies, the lessons that troublesome times can teach remain important.
It’s nice to be reminded of what’s important.
Photo by kslyesmith
Photo by Klaus Post
Monday
I decided I wanted to learn to fly when I turned 45 and found out my vision wasn’t what it used to be. I was afraid it would my eyes would get too bad to be accepted for flying lessons.
Photo by azdrijan memedov
And my instructor? Oooh, la, la. I’m already flying. It’s no wonder they make Mason wear that sapphire blue polo shirt. Their female students can’t stand the thought of quitting, I’m sure. Even the middle-aged, over-the-hill ones. Whether they’re really capable of flying or not.
I discovered today that I’m young inside still. Perhaps I can learn to enjoy my own company again.
Wednesday
Julian flew to Vancouver today for a business meeting and I wanted to say, “Won’t it be nice when I can fly you where you need to go?” But I didn’t. I wonder if I will ever fly him anywhere again.
The gardenias that arrived at the shop today were the most heavenly things I’ve smelled since new-baby-after-bath. One customer wanted boutonnieres and corsages made of them for a 50th wedding anniversary party. The scent made me drunk, I swear it did.
Photo by Roger Kirby
Photo by Marcos Silva
Allie went with me to class. Mason didn’t mind her sitting in. Of course not. She’s trim, svelte, with thick long hair that curls to the envy of every woman I know.
Today I held my hand up for every answer.
Sunday
A hospital in Vancouver called at four in the morning to say that Julian had a massive heart attack. The kids are all flying up with me.
Odd how this worked out. So glad I don’t have to fly myself up there. I’m coming Julian. On a wing and a prayer, I am coming. And I’m sorry for all those mean thoughts I had.
Monday
Julian, how dare you skip out! I don’t want to fly this life solo! Not yet. But I’m going to have to learn. I have this 24/7 class….
Tuesday
I didn’t know what I was doing at flight school today. I don’t even know how I arrived. Mason, easy on the eyes as ever, was acting young and stupid. I wanted to throw a book at him and tell him to grow up. I think I need a more experienced teacher.
Allie sent me to work after I broke down on the first phone call I had to make at home. She’s taking care of things while I play with baby’s breath and pretending it’s Julian’s.
Wednesday
Photo by cristi sava
The funeral is tomorrow. He’d planned it all out. I didn’t even know. I wondered if he’d planned mine as well. It pays to have a flight plan I guess, because I’m useless. My chest muscles are tight and rigid, making it hard for my heart to beat or my lungs to breathe. They do it anyway.
I didn’t go anywhere today.
Of course, flight lessons are cancelled for me tomorrow. I will never fly Julian anywhere. Ever. I will never fly.
Grounded is safe.
Thursday
Thoroughly grounded. In every way. Funny, it does not feel safe.
Friday
“So what are you going to do now, Miriam?” What kind of stupid question is that? Am I supposed to know the answer?
Saturday
Allie took me to lessons. Someone told Mason what happened. His eyes had that poor-you look that I see everywhere else. I didn’t want to see it here, but I supposed it is inevitable.
We flew today. I didn’t know we were going to, having missed the last class.
Awesome.
Sunday
I couldn’t sleep. I was so afraid the phone would ring and it would be something wrong with one of the kids this time. I even knew it was a stupid fear, but there was nothing I could do.
Photo by ksvignette
So I took a blanket outside and spread it on the grass. Flat on my back I began counting clouds, since they hid the stars. There was a sweet heavy scent on the warm air. I couldn’t tell if the gardenias, baby’s breath and roses were real or imaginary. I drifted off wondering what it would be like to fly in a night sky. No more scary than this life, I’m sure.
Monday
The flower shop is dead today and all I could find to do was study for a class I’m not sure I can continue. Flight logs. How important they are past, present and future, and not only for the pilot that keeps it. Others learn from it as well. So they say.
Tuesday
Mason is a competent pilot. His actions and his thoughts are precise and directed.
I helped my boss with a centerpiece for a banquet table today. It was amazing to watch the jumble of stems become something coordinated and beautiful.
There is hope. I just have to continue what I’m doing. Can I let what I’m doing decide where I’m going?
Wednesday
Photo by margesil
The air at work was full of roses today. Yellow and white ones that looked like suns and clouds. Under their magic I found myself moving through my day and thinking about tomorrow. Mason in blue, can you still teach me to fly?
Allie called. She hung up sounding less concerned than when she started the conversation.
Thursday
My flight plan. For now.
This day: Live it fully
This week: Plant a tree in remembrance
This month: Log as many flight hours as I can
The map:
Appreciate how Mason’s eyes match his shirt
Buy a Japanese maple, even though Julian always thought them impractical because the root system would ruin the septic lines. I’ll put a small one in a large planter.
Buy a large planter.
Know that Julian would love the end result because he loved me.
Keep a meticulous flight log.
Be grounded.
Grow wings.
Learn to fly.
This time I am indeed on my own.
Friday
When Roger called today I told him about my plans. He wondered how much it would cost. His father lives on….
Answers are coming to me. I am living. Moving forward, continuing on. It’s what I’ve always done.
Saturday
James called right before I left for lessons. He wondered if it was a safe for me to be doing now. I told him I didn’t know.
Photo by Rob Bach
Soaring is…indescribable. Take-off was smooth. Can’t believe I’m in the air this soon.
I don’t think I can give this up. I don’t think I should. After the time and money I’ve invested, Julian would flip out. Wouldn’t you Julian? Then there’s Mr. Blue-Eyes. And my daughter who thinks it’s wise to continue. Then there’s the simple act of flying. And keeping a log.
Sunday
I believe my vision is improving.
for a bit of fiction from about 5 1/2 years ago. I apologize for the lack of posts lately. Life is being…well…life….
I hope you will enjoy this while I’m still figuring out what’s going on with Moira at the beach.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
This is from The Write Brain Workbook: 366 Exercises to Liberate Your Writing by Bonnie Neubauer, for the 17th day of the year:
Write a man’s first name
Another man’s first name
An age
Name a body of water
A last name
A setting
Use these six items like blocks and build a story. Start with: The last time I . . .
——————————
This is my post:
A man’s first name: Hudson
Another man’s first name: Porter
An age: 92
A body of water: Yost Lake
A last name: Reed
A setting: Railroad tracks
“The last time I will do this…” Hudson mumbled it under his breath, hearing it so that he would not forget. He needed to be fully aware of this last time. With so many other far more important things he’d missed the finale: the last time he picked up his son and held him in his arms; the last time he’d made love to Mabel; the last time he plunged a hoe into a garden of his own. This one he wasn’t going to forsake, as though there would be a million more to follow it.
Yost Lake was nothing like it had been. It had been a lake to him back then; now it looked more like a pond. He was fairly certain he was standing about where the tank and pump used to be that moved the water from the lake into the steam engine paused and puffing at the water’s edge like a tired runner, on its way across the prairie to more civilized parts. Now it was all civilized, criss crossed with wires and poles, scattered with rooftops. Back then there was nothing but the call of birds, maybe the slap of a beaver’s tail, the snort of his horse.
Photo: Stefan Wagner
He turned around and looked over the lake toward the bridge on the county road. Off to the left the slap on the water was the flailing arms of children splashing one another as they plunged into the water. A screen door slammed on the building not far from the water’s edge. He could smell pepperoni. Probably cost an arm and a leg for a plain cheese pizza these days.
That was enough of a pause. Hudson dug into the pocket of his pants in search of the penny, nickle, dime and quarter he’d put in there. He pulled out a dollar–the new presidential one–and decided it would be appropriate to include that in his little fiftieth-childhood scheme. The gravel slipped under his feet as he scrambled up the embankment, so he slowed a bit. If Porter Reed saw him go down that would be the end of this little escapade. “Escape” was a better description.
Photo by Zan Tirrigin
Hudson found the rest of the coins and lined them up on the rail of the track, remembering how all those years ago his mother had warned him, sternly, this was illegal. He could see the wisps of her hair sticking to the sweat on her forehead, right above all those little furrows that crossed it with her worry. She honestly believed a police officer somewhere somehow would put her in prison because her son destroyed U.S. currency. Just like his children were sure they would latch him to the bed if he dared leave the nursing home under his own steam to do what he wanted to do. Ludicrous. People were so enslaved to rules and laws and regulations. All the fun was pressed out of life.
He stood straight to view his handiwork. The sunlight caught a bump or two from the money and shimmied across to meet the greater glare of the steel rails. Now to wait for the 3:00. The sun felt like it wouldn’t be long before it arrived. The heat pressed in on him without mercy but Hudson refused to look at his watch. Instead he imagined thick dark mulberries dangling from the trees overhanging the bridge, and lazy large-mouth bass sidling between the wet wood the held the pavilion out over the water. A slip of a boy walked backwards on a waterwheel that churned through the water, while the children on the stairs lifting up to it shouted for him to throw himself into the water below; they wanted a turn.
Photo by Ken Kiser
Over all the ruckus, Hudson believed it was his well-tuned, 92-year-old ear that caught the whistle first. After all, the wind was blowing from the west, and the train was coming in from there as well. He was king of the mountain right on the tracks, while the rest of them were in the hole formed by the lake. Soon though, they had all heard it, because the sounds started to diminish. Hudson scurried down from the tracks to the water’s edge, probably a little later than Porter would have liked, and stood lakeside as the line of energy and steel moved ever closer.
Suddenly it was there, clacking and buckling in that familiar rhythm, without the hiss of steam, huge and monsterous, but so familiar. The swimmers behind him counted the cars in unison. It was a long train, and he wondered how far he would have to walk to retrieve his treasure.
Finally the train passed. The children went back to their summer amusements. Hudson caught a glance of Porter before he turned to go back up the embankment, probably because Porter was waving at him to come back. If they didn’t hurry, someone might discover that his roommate’s son had been kind enough to bring him here. Hudson didn’t want that to happen, but he hadn’t come this far, nor climbed this high, to go back without his prize.
The coins were where he’d left them, but wide and misshapen, just like he’d remembered. He tossed them in his palm a few times. They caught no light now, harbored no shadow because they were too flat. He folded his fingers over them and started back along the bank to where Porter had parked the car. Hudson would show him the coins and then Porter Reed might also understand how precious a day in the sun could be when one’s days had all but roared past in all their rhythm and energy and had left behind a flat, misshapen image of what life used to be.
Posted in Uncategorized, Writing
Tagged fiction, Hudson, old blog, Porter Reed, practice, prompt work, write, Yost Lake
I spent a lovely Saturday afternoon and evening with two of my favorite people on the planet: my sisters.
That was then…
I cannot count the hours we have spent talking and laughing and sharing life experiences: scary, fulfilling, precious and heartwarming. On rare ocassions we disagree, (rare now that we’re adults; my mom can tell you it happened more frequently when we were kids!) but we always work our way back to what is most important. I cannot be thankful enough to have them in my life.
Then, too…
I can recall the most unusual experience I have had with them. Here is the story as recorded on June 5, 2009 on my old blog:
A Truth-Is-Stranger-Than-Fiction Thing….
I have to write this down because I’m still not sure I believe it happened.
Last night dh and I had tickets to see Bryan Adams in concert. (Just Adams, his guitar, his harmonica and the piano + player. It’s awesome, if you like a laid-back concert. If you’re a Bryan Adams fan, don’t miss it!)
We are making our way over a few pair of knees to find our seats and I hear a very familiar–or should I say familial–voice, and turned around to discover that we were sitting right behind my two sisters. Not two rows behind and several chairs over, but a row back and off by one chair: we were in 109 and 110 and they were in 110 and 111 in the row in front of us.
Mind you, my sisters live 80+ miles away from me, neither of the pairs of us knew the other had tickets, let alone what seats were assigned to those tickets, and there are 1400 seats in the Rose State Performing Arts Theatre–
My dh thought it was a set-up and that we planned it all along. It took some serious convincing to get him to believe otherwise, and I certainly understand that!
If I wrote something like that into a story, I know a red pen somewhere would tell me not to use such unlikely coincidences. But you know–they DO happen!
Then, but closer to now (10/24/2009). My baby brother is allowed to slip in every now and then. 🙂
Posted in Personal, Uncategorized
Tagged Bryan Adams, coincidence, concert, family, nostalgia, old blog, siblings, sisters
Now I find I can call it an octothorpe.
When might I want to call it an octothorpe? Maybe when it’s a footnote symbol–neither a number sign or a pound sign. Or perhaps a very precise character would use the word. Or one who wants to impress someone with his vocabulary, because there was nothing else impressive about him/her. A less precise person might call it a tic-tac-toe grid imitating the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
I love knowing the names of things–the words that draw vivid pictures in the mind of a reader. I’m currently reading Escape Into the Open: The Art of Writing True by Elizabeth Berg. I think the thing that impresses me the most about her as a writer is that she captures a snapshot in words. Those words are crisp, exact, and the picture they draw is clear and recognizable. But it’s the details that make me say–yes! I can see that.
Don’t know that octothorpe would do that. Well, it will now. It would have drawn a blank before today. But after today…..perhaps a few more will know what I’m talking about. 🙂 Aren’t words wonderful?
Posted in Uncategorized, Writing
Tagged AWAD prompt, number sign, octothorpe, old blog, pound sign, prompt work, Way-back Wednesday
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