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Posted in Fiction

#AtoZChallenge – Beloved

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Before she was tutored and tested. When she was a baby and hardly more, she was beloved by the two familie on the hill. There were two other families that were also hers. A big extended family that sprouted from her roots on the farm in the country. Then the family in the north, her Daddy’s family, who spoke with a strange accent but who enveloped her in their love during the few times she saw them.

When she was only four years old, they visited the family in the north. A reunion her Daddy said. Not just her grandfather and aunts and uncles but great aunts and uncles and cousins. They sat in rocking chairs around the fireplace in the cabin by the lake and told stories of Sweden, the Old Country. She rocked on her grandfather’s lap and felt his big belly laughs. It was the first of only three times she saw him in her life but she was beloved by him and by all of them.

The women cooked on an old wood stove. Everyone ate, drank, fell asleep, and got up the next day and did it all again. They couldn’t get enough of each other. There was so much love in that cabin. She never felt that kind of love again.

At four years old, it was the last time she ever saw them all together, but she remembered it all her life.

#theme: descriptive adjectives

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Posted in Fiction

#AtoZChallenge – Accelerated

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As a small girl, she was the apple of their eye. The two families made sure she was accelerated in everything, except sports. Back then, girls didn’t do that. She was moved up in music, in reading, in math. To many levels ahead of her grade level. She was tutored and tested at home. The families were filled with teachers. It worked. Until her Daddy left.

#theme: Descriptive Adjectives

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Posted in Fiction

Dark #writephoto

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The stress that permeated his family was unbearable. There were no jobs. No way to make a living. He was thinking of leaving the small town in the Appalachian Mountains to find work elsewhere. He would try to come home on the weekends. So many in generations before him had done the same. Others had moved their families to cities, to other towns, where they could find work. Their families weren’t usually happy. The people of Appalachia were clannish. They loved their mountain life existence, their extended families, their neighbors. They didn’t want to go to a strange place. He was thinking of going it alone, sending money home, coming home when he could.

He walked before dawn at the foot of the mountains. Thinking. Pondering. It was so beautiful here. The sun was about to rise and he stopped to watch. He had seen this sunrise many times and each time it was more beautiful as it rose over the mountains. No wonder the family didn’t want to leave. People from the outside didn’t understand. They thought them lazy. That they were people who wanted to be on the government dole. That wasn’t it at all. Their culture was different from that on the outside. They knew they wouldn’t fit in out there. Their families and their lifestyle was important to them.

The coal mining jobs had gone away due to the movement toward clean energy. Farming had gone away because tobacco was no longer a cash crop and the corn and other crops had been usurped by the big corporate farms. Because they were geographically isolated, industry did not want to locate there. What were they supposed to do? Abandon the life that they had known for generations?

He had been a specialized machinist in the mines. He could get a job on the outside and had even interviewed with other companies. As the sun rose over the mountains, he knew he had to leave to support his family. He had to send his children to college. There was no place for his wife to work and both their parents depended on him. As the sun rose higher in the sky, he made his decision and started walking home to tell his family. He would not lose them or his connection to this beautiful place. He would drive home on weekends. He would give them the gift of keeping their lives intact.

Posted in Non-fiction, Uncategorized

#SoCS – 02/03/2018

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Dogs are not dollar signs. This is both a personal stream of consciousness post and a sort of public service announcement/op-ed piece. In other words, you have found me up on my soap box today.

Yesterday, I had to have my beautiful little dog, Hanna, put down. Hanna was not yet a year old. A little more than a year ago, I had to have my sweet Cavalier King Charles Spaniel put down. Betsy was only four and a half years old. Why did Betsy and Hanna have to die so young? Because of poor breeding practices by the purebred breeders from which they came. Neither did any sort of genetic testing. Both were irresponsible.

Hanna’s breeder decided to develop a “designer” dog and mixed two purebred breeds. To my knowledge, they did no genetic testing. In doing that, they created puppies with extreme fear aggression who couldn’t learn and who were fear biters and worse. They didn’t know what they were doing. It wasn’t Hanna’s fault. She should never have been born.

In Betsy’s case, she developed a fatal genetic disease called syringomyelia that was incredibly painful. It could have been avoided by genetic testing and Betsy would never have been born and would never had to endure the pain she endured.

Both breeders saw dollar signs instead of sweet puppies.

I don’t pretend to know the answer to this problem since breeders of purebred dogs are not subject to any sort of controls by any governing body except the American Kennel Club and various regional clubs that set the breed standard and govern showing purebred dogs. Unless the various breed-specific clubs impose some sort of rules and sanctions, there are purebred dogs that are going to become extinct. The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, for example, is thought to have about fifty percent of dogs carrying the gene for syringomyelia, the condition that killed Betsy. Many breeds are known to be fear aggressive, like Hanna, and the condition is almost impossible to treat. The dogs have to be put down. I could cite many more examples.

Be very careful if you buy a purebred dog. Question the breeder about their breeding practices. Ask about genetic testing. Ask if they offer a health guarantee. Don’t just fall in love with a puppy, pay a huge price, and walk away. Ask questions. Get guarantees. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a lot of vet bills and a broken heart.

Posted in Fiction

Silence – #JusJoJan 2018

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She was one of the girls from the model school in the university town. There were fewer than twenty of them, moving lockstep through twelve grades together. Most of them lived a protected existence. Middle class. Some upper-middle class. Doting parents. Somehow they thought they were special. It wasn’t their fault. It was instilled in them. She knows there is nothing special about her, although there was about many of the rest. They loved each other as sisters. She looks back at that time, at those girls, and wonders how any of them survived in the big, wide, still scary world.

She wonders if she has survived these many years later. She knows her ability to find and have a decent romantic relationship has not survived. That has been gone for a long time if it ever existed at all. It might have been killed one night when she was seventeen. She won’t think about that. Maybe it was killed when they divorced the first time. Perhaps when a love relationship during the gap between the two marriages hadn’t worked out?

What she knows for sure is that this time, this failure of her second marriage to him has done her in. It wasn’t that the marriage failed. It was the way it failed that has hurt her so much. Eventually, she’ll go through the motions of life again. She can’t even do that now. But one day she will. Even as she hopes there will be another relationship, she knows there won’t be. She will never open herself up to that kind of pain again. She can barely sustain her friendships right now. Even those seem to be destined to cause pain. She isn’t able to show her friends how much they mean to her anymore.

Maybe this is the way it was supposed to be all along.

There is a silence in her heart.

THE END

This post is part of Linda G. Hill’s #JusJoJan 2018 Challenge.

 

Posted in Fiction

#Darkness – #JusJoJan 2018

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After she first ran from the situation with her husband, she was afraid of the dark. She hadn’t ever been afraid of the dark before or not to her recollection. She had always been a night owl. Darkness had been her friend. She had worked in the dark. Driven alone all across the country in the dark. When the world was asleep, she was in her prime. Suddenly, the first night that she found out he was not coming home again, she was afraid of the dark.

As the days passed and each day became shorter as the winter solstice neared, the thought of the impending darkness sat upon her like a heavy blanket. She was not a good sleeper and she was awake during all those hours of darkness. Terrified. Alone. She felt like she was the only person in the world in the cold of the winter. When she finally went to bed at night, she had to leave the lights on. She prayed for daylight.

She tried to determine what had happened to her to make her so fearful. The last months with him had been dark. He had said some terrible things to her and she had always been a sensitive person. Those things had hurt her deeply. She felt she had seen the darkness of her husband’s soul. He never smiled. He seldom spoke unless it was to belittle her. When she thought back, it seemed as if darkness surrounded them both. She didn’t see the darkness while she was immersed in it. She could see it when she looked back.

She was starting to see light again and she thought that maybe, just maybe, she was not quite so afraid of the dark now. She realized what good friends she really had. If one of them didn’t call her, email her, message her, another one did. They saved her life those first horrible weeks. They were still saving her life. They all knew, maybe better than she did, that there was still a long road ahead of her in order for her to untangle her from this situation. That the darkness would still come and go and threaten to strangle her. They were there for her. She loved them all for that.

He was out there too, somewhere. In the dark.

 

This post is part of Linda G. Hill’s #JusJoJan’s 2018 Challenge.

Posted in Fiction

Revolt – #JusJoJan 2018

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She had started to revolt against his jealousy years before. He was so jealous that she swore he was jealous of inanimate objects. She went into a career that was male-dominated. He was, of course, jealous of her colleagues and questioned her when she had to stay late at school. If he didn’t question her, he pouted. He was even jealous of her girlfriends. She seldom went anywhere with her girlfriends because she was basically a homebody, but when she did, he was convinced they saw “men” or met “men” or that they went out of their way to be around “men.” He was even jealous of the time she spent with her dogs. Her best friend was a man. Friend only, but of course, he never believed that.

She tried to talk to him about his jealousy. She reassured him. She certainly didn’t have to be with him. She had her own money, her own means. She was with him because she wanted to be and for other reasons as well. Nothing could ever reassure him and he took his jealousy out on her. She thought his jealousy caused him to start questioning her every move. Caused him eventually to start hating her. It was so unnecessary.

Then she found out about his former ten-year affair. She quit cajoling him, reassuring him. She didn’t care anymore. She came and went as she pleased. She didn’t answer his questions anymore. She didn’t let him persecute her over a lunch with a girlfriend or a phone call from her best friend. Perhaps that had been the beginning of the end. She doesn’t know. Divorce is usually caused by a lot of little things.

She had spent the early years of this nine year marriage trying, really trying. The harder she tried, the more he expected. The more jealousy surfaced. It just wasn’t meant to be. Why couldn’t he just be a man and confront her? Tell her face to face it wasn’t working? He did exactly what his father did to his mother. The same thing as going to store for a loaf of bread and never coming home.

Why did he have to be such a sneaky coward?

Why does that have to hurt so much?

 

This post is part of Linda G Hill’s #JusJoJan’s 2018 Challenge.

 

Posted in Fiction, Price-gouging

Contemplation – #JusJoJan 2018

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She found herself in a contemplative mood today. Not just about her marriage. About the state of being married as well. She doesn’t feel like she knows much about marriage. She’s been married to only one man. Married to him twice, but just to him.  They were divorced for 14 years in between. A long time and there were other relationships, but not other marriages. She had read somewhere that only two percent of second marriages to the same person work. She was certainly not going to be in that two percent. Made sense to her. People simply don’t change that much.

She knows that she needs to accept her part in the demise of their marriage. She didn’t ever trust him after the events of their first marriage and contentious divorce. She tried to trust him, but he gave her little reason. When they got back together, he seemed like himself. By the beginning of their second year together, he either revealed his true self, which was quite changed, or he had grown into someone different in just a year. They should have spent more private time together, but the years apart had changed them and they had almost nothing in common now. He was resistant to developing common interests. Their one common interest, their beautiful island in the south, turned out to be the destruction of them. That, perhaps, broke her heart the most.

She knew that she would never marry again. Never even consider it. She would like to think that there was still a relationship out there for her. A nice guy, perhaps an intellectual, but a fun one. Someone gentle and kind. Someone she would enjoy talking to. Being with.

Her contemplation complete, she knows that time is short for her. Not that many good years left.

Was it possible?

 

This post is part of Linda G. Hill’s #JusJoJan 2018 Challenge.

Posted in anxiety, Fiction

Justice – #JusJoJan 2018

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Sitting in her home, wondering if she could find the inspiration to write again, she pondered whether or not she would ever recover from the farce of the marriage she was trying to end. If she were honest with herself, she had to admit she didn’t only want the marriage to end, she wanted justice. She wanted to be treated fairly and she felt that she had been treated terribly by him.

Who did what he did? Did people really just decide to end their marriages by walking off? By telling their wives they would never be home again over the telephone? By changing their phone number and stopping all communication? She had been humiliated and embarrassed. She felt used and exploited. Violated. Could she ever trust anyone again? Not only did she want a divorce, she wanted justice. She knew she was unlikely to ever get it and that was distressing.

After all, what could you do to exact justice on a person who clearly didn’t care? Nothing, that’s what. He would just laugh. Nothing would be enough for her to feel the situation was resolved in a just manner. She wanted him to suffer like she had suffered in the last weeks. He wouldn’t because if he had ever felt any emotion that was positive toward her, it was long gone. So she would have to settle for a divorce and probably a contentious one at that.

She refused to think back trying to figure him out. How do you figure out an accomplished liar? She had to begin moving forward. To take her own life in her hands and start rebuilding it. He wasn’t worth her thoughts, tears, tribulations.

She hoped karma would catch up with him someday. She wouldn’t spit on him if he were on fire.

 

This post is brought to you by Linda G. Hill’s JusJoJan 2018 Challenge.

Posted in Fiction

Ultimatum – #JusJoJan 2018

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She didn’t believe in ultimatums. She thought they were too confrontational and just brought out the bad qualities in people. Before she took the next step, she felt that she had to try to have a conversation with him. She realized she was probably being foolish. Being too nice. She wasn’t at all hopeful. She felt she was being fair even though he had not been fair to her. She was trying to take the high road. What she had to say would amount to an ultimatum, but he had left her with no choice.

There was only one way to try to reach him since he had changed his telephone number. Before that, he wouldn’t answer her calls. She didn’t know why. All she knew is that he had said he would never be home again. She could call his sister-in-law, his only remaining family who still talked to him. She made the call and only got her voice mail. She left her message. A message that simply said she had something important to talk to him about and would she give him the message.

Two days passed before her appointment with the attorney. No call. No contact. For her, that made her final decision. He must know that without any contact, this is the decision she would make. The next step on their road. She drove to town, parked at the attorney’s office, and met her new divorce lawyer. As she left the office an hour later, she knew she liked her very much.

She had a sense of finality. She had started down the road to the end. It was time and past time.

 

This post is part of Linda G. Hill’s JusJoJan 2018 Challenge. The prompt is brought to you by Itinerary Planner. Take a look at their site!