The Crash

06/19/10



It's Saturday Centus day again!  Our Prompt:  

It was Fathers Day, 1984, when I heard that voice in the hallway... You will find it in italics in this little story I wrote around it.




We didn’t know our daddy.  He died in 1955 when I was six, and Mama never forgave him, wouldn’t even grieve.  I never heard her utter the word “dead” in the same sentence with his name.                  

It was Fathers Day, 1984, when I heard that voice in the hallway... It was my baby brother, my favorite, John, now a father himself.   Then came the crash.

I scurried to the hall to find Mama, on her knees, arms wrapped round herself, rocking and weeping, surrounded by a pool of red stones.

“What happened?”

“She finally let it go, and her heart crashed onto the floor and broke into a million pieces.”



This post is linked to Saturday Centus. Button on the left!

Appetite

Friday June 18

The heat has taken mine away,
only water melon appeals to me.
At the store there are some
but they don’t look ripe enough.
So I speed to the farmer’s market
and pick out one of theirs,
race home to refrigerate this treasure
and count the hours until it
is cool and I can cut
into its lusciousness and eat.
Cool and juicy, it drips down
my arms and off my elbows
as I stand over the sink
slurping and sucking like a pig.


This post is linked to Six Word Fridays (http://www.makingthingsup.com/category/six-words/)

Meet Me on Monday

Here's more fun stuff! I'm participating in Meet me on Monday, a way for bloggers to get to know each other better. Each week, we get 5 questions to post, and here are the ones for this week:
Questions:

1. What kind of computer do you blog on?
A MacBook, white with a pink cover. I do pink everything because I support the Avon Foundation's Breast Cancer Crusade by either walking or crewing in one of their walks each year.
2. Do you wear perfume? If so, what kind?
I used to use Anais-Anais, and I don't know why I stopped. I think I should go out and buy some since I am reading NIN. I have occasionally used Wings by Georgio.
3. What do you do for a living?
I am a registered nurse looking for work in a Hospice facility. I thought I had recession-proof skills, but it is proving harder than I imagined to get back to work after the death of my husband, Clint, last year.
4. Do you have any pets? If so, what are they?
I have two wonderful dogs. Honey is a Lhasa Apso, and Belle is a Boxer.
5. Are you going anywhere for Summer vacation? If so, where?
Pinching pennies this year. Have a free place to go on Sea Island but no definite dates.




This post is linked to Meet Me on Monday. Button on the left!

V is for Vivaciousness

This is my first post for Alphabe-Thursdays, and today's letter is V. Read on to see what I did with it.



V is for the vivaciousness in our lives, for the people who bubble over with energy and spark and give us permission to unabashedly push our laugh buttons. These are the people who bounce back and take us with them.
Our vivacious pets, their paws morphing into springs, sparkle with animation and love when we return, whether we have been at work all day or on a 15 minute errand or a week's vacation. They are always smiling and available.
Vivacious food, primarily chocolate mousse for me, not only feeds our bellies, but also our souls. Think French fries and red Jello and pimiento cheese and bright green grapes. Imagine the smell and taste of freshly made (by you) marinara sauce, poured over angel hair pasta and dusted with freshly grated Parmesan. A deep red Chianti gleams in your favorite crystal glass.
Flowers in bloom feed our need for vivaciousness. Think yellow daisies, red roses, purple violets and orange marigolds. I dare you to look at a blooming cherry tree and not smile! Grab a bunch of sunflowers at the market and put them on your table in a bright container. Vivacious!

Red shoes are vivacious and sexy and satisfying to wear. Red lipstick oozes vivaciousness, as does a red dress. Rubies, sparkling in a necklace send out vivacious laser beams to meet our eyes.
Alphabe-Thursdays bring out or vivaciousness and sends us off in all directions.






This post is linked to Alphabe-Thursdays. Button on the left!

Daddy

I'm back to Saturday Centus after missing last week due to brain drain. It's a great creative exercise, so please click on the link below to join the fun.

This week's prompt is in italics.




It’s true, the smell of freshly mowed grass can stay with you for years, for decades, settle into your core. When I was little, my daddy cut the grass with a hand-push mower, the clippings flying up behind the primative machine, leaving a bordered trail where the grass had been.

These days I need only to look at my daddy’s picture - even the one in his Navy uniform - to be overcome with the perfume of freshly cut grass.

And when I am out walking or riding in my car and smell grass being cut, I see my daddy’s face.


This story if linked to Saturday Centus. Button on the left!

Daddy, Nancy Drew and Me © Claudia Schlottman

w and Me © Claudia Schlottman



I am participating in Saturday Centus for the third time. It's a great meme that you can access with the icon below. This week's prompt is:

“May I help you, miss? You look puzzled.”

“Mmmm… thank you, I’m just looking for my father. We came in together a moment ago, but he seems to have wandered off.”


Here is what I did with it.

It’s 1959. I’m eleven, and Daddy and I are at the book store. No brothers, just me. Sitting on the floor facing volumes of Nancy Drew, I lose time paging through The Secrets of the Old Clock. I look up. Where is Daddy? He will find me soon.

Today I haunt the fiction section for NIN and Proust. I look up. Where is Nancy Drew? Where is Daddy?

“May I help you, miss? You look puzzled.”

“Mmmm… thank you, I’m just looking for my father. We came in together a moment ago, but he seems to have wandered off.”

I pay, wait, books in hand.

"Oh, Daddy, there you are!”

He hugs me tight and we go for ice cream, just like always.............though he has been dead since 1955.


This story if linked to Saturday Centus. Link on the left!

Ole Muddy - My Saturday Centus for this week

Ole Muddy - My Saturday Centus for this week


I stuff my clothes and toiletries into my fake LV duffle. Then I walk into the bathroom and face myself in the mirror.

“You stupid mule,” I say to myself. “You’re donkey of a person. Now it’s all gone, all those hard earned dollars down the drain in a casino in Vicksburg.”

I walked in here with my dignity intact and enough money to have a little fun. Now, I’m outta here - and broke.

I check out, throw my bag into the back seat of my T-Bird and I look back over my shoulder, squinting into the late afternoon sun, gawking with stunned alarm at the broad rolling muddy waters of the Mississippi, flipping it the finger and driving east, hoping the casino will flood.



This story if linked to Saturday Centus. LInk on the left!!