The girl looked out the window of her high-rise apartment at the skyline of New York. She was placing her few keepsakes from home on the window sill.
Except the last one. The distorted glass. Ellie found it lying in the gutter of a New York City street.
She thought it was welcoming her to New York. A striking city that was a bit contorted like the glass.
There was a rattle and the glass slipped off its perch. It shattered. Ellie gasped and hoped that her life in the city wouldn’t shatter like that glass.
Welcome, everyone to my #weekendcoffeeshare 165! There are several types of coffee for your drinking pleasure along with tea. Green and black. Let’s catch up after you get the beverage of your choice.
If we were having coffee today, I would tell you about the creepiest thing that happened to me this week! This morning, my husband was doing some weed eating around the house. We have two evergreen trees close together in the yard and he went there to weed eat. What he saw rattled him….no pun intended. It was a timber rattlesnake, a juvenile, which probably means there is a nest nearby. Now I’m afraid to go out in my yard! I’m posting a picture so anyone who lives in or near the woods will know what they look like. Be careful!
Timber rattlesnake
On Monday of this week, we had a little get-together at my house for Memorial Day. The U.S. celebrates our veterans on that day and the tradition, at least in the south, is to decorate their graves. We did that earlier in the weekend. Then, on Monday, we had a cookout for just a few friends. We had a really nice time! If you aren’t familiar with the U.S. tradition of Memorial Day, here is an article I wrote about it.
I’ve talked to some cherished family and a few good friends this week which is always nice. Besides that, it’s been a normal week for us, made better by beautiful spring weather. The gardens aren’t doing well due to the wild swings in temperature here and too much rain. See you next week!
“Captain,” the detective said, “we know that women are not often grab and go thieves.”
“In the past, that was true, but in the present time, I’d believe anything. How do you explain what Mrs. Johnson saw? What about the shoe in the gutter?”
Across town, Gracie was making her way home on the side streets and alleyways. She had taken off the hat and wig she had worn and ditched them. It had been slow going. She was walking with just one shoe.
“There is another mystery,” the Captain commented. “I find it really coincidental that the thief grabbed Mrs. Johnson’s purse. No one could have believed she would have $10,000 U.S. dollars in cash in that handbag.”
“Hmm…why didn’t the thief pick a rich-looking woman?” asked the detective.
Gracie was finally home. There it was, all $10,000 of it. She thought back at the conversation she had overheard between her boss and a friend. The friend had a debt to pay, and she was musing on when and where she had to go to get the money.
Little Eddie ran into the room and Gracie bent to hug him.
“Mommy,” he said, “where’s your other shoe?”
“Don’t worry, Eddie. We can afford to buy shoes now.”
The Captain started looking at the pictures a bystander had taken of the robbery. The face of the thief was clear and familiar to him. Even though the hair was different, that was Gracie’s face. Gracie, his housekeeper.
She sat on a bench across the street from the museum, studying the sculpture in front. It was a man, seemingly sculpted from wood, reading. He reminded her of a book she once read, “A Man of Two Faces.”
If you looked closely at the man, you could see his skeletal-like face. Above it, between his forehead and the crown of his head, another face appeared to her. You could distinguish two eyes and a nose that would be looking skyward if the sculpture could have looked up. He captured her imagination particularly given the times she was living in.
The outward looking face of the man was bowed, reading a book. The book he was reading, she imagined, was a book on American culture in these unsettled current times. There were bitter political rivalries, hundreds of conspiracy theories, religious involvement, misinformation and disinformation. Neighbors turned against neighbors and family against family. Long-time friendships were forever destroyed. The American dream to her seemed to be gone and she had no understanding of half the American population and its thinking.
She looked at the other face of the sculpture. That face wasn’t as clear, the expression was more off-kilter, perhaps confused, and a little dreamy. Maybe that face was dreaming of what could be, but wasn’t, in America. The American Dream, but this time an inclusive American Dream that was available to everyone. Was it now lost forever? Destroyed by greed and the lust for power? The sculpture had no answers.
Mollie scurried around her kitchen, cooking for the festival in her town. Food from the southern US is often prepared differently than food from anywhere else.
Mollie couldn’t decide between entering her stack cake or a cushaw pie in the competition. Her neighbor was going to enter cushaw pie, but Mollie’s pie was her specialty dish.
The day of the competition came and Mollie’s pie won the blue ribbon. Her neighbor was angry and threw Mollie’s pie to the ground screaming.
Mollie learned that real friendship is hard to find and should be cherished and nurtured.
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Note: Cushaw pie is not common outside the southern U.S. A cushaw is a gourd and the filling is used to make pie. Many think it is tastier than pumpkin pie.
I awakened with a start. What had I heard? Oh, it was only Sophie, my German Shepherd dog who sleeps beside my bed. Wait! Sophie! Why was she whining? I leaped out of bed realizing my clock said 6:45 a.m. I usually took her for a walk on the beach by 5 a.m.
We walked outside. She pushed open the garden gate and started for the beach. I followed trying to stop her. Since one of her strides is equal to three of mine, there was no hope of catching her.
I jumped in my car. What else could I do? My dog was taking herself for a walk to the beach.
I pulled up in a parking space watching Sophie run gleefully around on the beach. As soon as I stepped on the beach calling her, a police car pulled up beside me. Sophie immediately ran to me, fearing I was in danger.
Ma’am, get your dog off the beach.”
Sophie barked at the officer. Her bad dog bark.
“Get off the beach with that dog,” he said in a loud, aggressive voice.
“Officer, if you would just give me a………”
What happened next wasn’t very pleasant. Sophie and I ended up looking through the bars of the backseat of a police car.
I was unhappy. The officer was unhappy. But Sophie? She had gotten to defend me from the bad police officer. Now if she can only figure out how to charm us out of jail.
The old lady trudged up the street to the church she had attended for more than 60 years. The light from the steeple caused the white church to glow. She climbed the stairs up to the steeple.
The violin was lying on the table. She opened a window for some cool air.
The old woman started to play. She played Horner’s “My Heart Will Go On.” A crowd gathered on the street. They waited for her to come out to praise and thank her.
The steeple went dark. She didn’t appear. They looked for her, but she had vanished.
Lily always took her morning walks along the banks of the canal. She loved to watch the graceful and elegant swans as they glided across the water glistening in the morning light.
Lily was nostalgic about her own life. She loved the old, dilapidated boat docked there and she could see its potential. The boatman who owned it seemed content to leave it as it was.
One morning, Lily was standing near the old boat on the canal dreaming of taking it to far away places. A big, white dog bounded up to her full of joy and love. She wondered where he belonged and when she looked up, she saw a man approaching, calling the dog. He was an older man and handsome in a distinguished sort of way.
She and John fell into a conversation about their mutual love for the canal. Over the next few hours, John regaled her with stories of the history of the canal and they set out to explore it together. Over the next few weeks, John filled her heart.
One morning, John told Lily that he had bought the old boat from the boatman. He then declared his love for her, and she fell into his arms.
A few months later, they started off on a magical journey in the old boat. As they left, the swans danced in joy.
One year later, Lily thought back to that day. She was glad they hadn’t known what would happen during the coming year.
Thank you to CE Ayr and Jenne Gray for hosting #TheUnicornChallenge!
The Write Scribe 