Nancy Schoellkopf's Blog

Twyla, on Facebook

Written with the prompts: thank God none of this is real, write what first comes to mind, caffeine, cats and cuss words, false red lips, stop, I needed contact with those who would give me welcome, the night is young.  Most prompts were massaged a bit here!

Theresa was under the impression that Facebook was a role-playing game.  Every morning when she logged on, she’d choose from one of her seven personas to assume that day.  Her first four personas were women:  Laurie, a nurse; Meredith, a Chanel lipstick and nail polish sales executive; Randy, a stay-at-home mom/web designer; and a teenager who’d recently decided to call herself Califia.  It was so fun.  One loved caffeine, another loved cats, and teenage Califia regularly let loose a steady stream of cuss words.  Good times.

Eventually Theresa decided to up her game and she created Facebook pages for a few phony men.  She was Albert, the light rail train driver, Stephen, the vice president of the Franklin Mint, and Tony, a well-connected young man who had just left Uber for the more lucrative field of medical marijuana delivery.

Theresa enjoyed starting off each day with a few quick posts about the weather, the season or whatever fruit was available to slice onto her Cheerios.  On a good morning, each of her people would make a quick comment, like a few posts, and wish everyone a happy day.  In the evenings she would choose one character who would dive deep into the alternating angst and wonder of daily life.  All of her people were generally optimistic and philosophical. Theresa liked them all.  They were all people she would want to spend time with, you know, if they actually existed.  She assumed all the other profiles on Facebook were equally fictional.  She found the virtual world to be surreal and comedic.  Thank God it wasn’t real.

One day she decided her people needed a little shaking up, so she invented a mysterious, dark personality named Twyla.  As a profile photo she used a pair of fake-looking red lips like the ones from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.  When she logged onto this Facebook page, she’d write the first thing that came to mind. Her posts were dog star trampoline red ink.  Sometimes she’d add a smidgeon of iced tea granite pink eye.  Other times she was in a blue rain mermaid blown leopard spots kind of mood.

Often she included photographs of reptiles and empty lots, dented car doors and burnt-out light bulbs. The list of Twyla’s followers exploded. Theresa set up Twyla’s account to run on Twitter and Instagram.   Theresa and Twyla were a sensation migraine nectarine cougar chardonnay burglary Tuesday.

Theresa shut down the pages for her other personas.  She became Twyla full time candy wrapper china bowl river reed journey.  She began to spout off this way in business meetings and on phone calls with her uptight sister.  She was Twyla, thrilled to have found a world that gave her welcome door stop paper plate spiritual quest moose drool.

“The night is young,” she posted every morning.

Photo by Tony Liao on Unsplash

Waffles at the Lucky Cafe

Written with my Thursday night group with the prompts:  waffles at the Lucky Café, sure you’re ready for this, a little bit of sun, I’ve never had any goals, it doesn’t matter, I want my God scrambled, no ham, three daisies, counterintuitive, do you smell that, eyes silent, for fourteen days, dawdled, if I could see, 35 years ago, 54 holes, killing Tom wouldn’t stop him, love yourself first, like any other

“Do you smell that?” he asked me as we rounded the corner, and I had to smile.  

“Cinnamon, vanilla, maple syrup—am I right?”  

He ushered me into the Lucky Café, ordered the Belgian waffles, two plates of scrambled eggs, vegan sausage, no ham.  It was an opulent spread.  I was young and eager to be impressed.  While waiting for our breakfast, he slipped three daisies out of the vase on the counter and began to weave them into my braids.  I had waist long hair back then, and his ministrations made me giggle.  Oh, he was a charmer, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d leave me crying.  The waffles came and he ordered extra strawberries on the side.  Enjoy it while it lasts, I told myself.

Tom was a welcome tonic from the MBA/suit types I’d been dating since college.  “Goals?” he echoed.  “I’ve never had any set goals.  I know it’s counterintuitive; I believe in setting intention, and in paying attention, watching if I can see—you know—what evolves.”

He spoke in a rhythmic patter, as if his musings were song lyrics, gems he was spontaneously spouting for future collection.

“In essence,” he concluded as he sipped his coffee, “it doesn’t matter.  Few things do.  Nothing matters at all except learning to love you!  Love yourself.  First.  Love yourself.”

I watched him with silent eyes.  He seemed unconcerned as I dawdled over breakfast, saying little.

“When you’re done,” he announced, “we’ll go out for a little bit of sun.”

I agreed for 14 days, and 54 holes in the fabric of space and time.  We lived a lifetime, 35 years ago, and 35 years into the future.  We were musicians and poets, shopkeepers and accountants, social workers, politicians, mystics, and care givers for babies and the elderly.  He watched me give birth a half dozen times, and every six months he’d decide to die.  I even shot him once in a fit of rage when I caught him cheating on me, but killing Tom wouldn’t stop him.  For me he was that one, that focal point that twisted my path in a different direction.  But every time I met him, there were waffles, there were strawberries, there was the Lucky Café.  

“I’ll take my God scrambled,” he says to the wait staff each time we sit down at the counter, and then it begins again.  He turns to me.  “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” he asks.

“Hit it,” I say again and again.

Photo by Tangerine Newt on Unsplash

The Herd

Written with my Thursday night group with the prompts:  discombobulated, rhinoceros, rising sun, in this photograph, 1968

In this photograph, Jack is playing guitar for the children at the weekly sing-along.  He’d been doing it for decades, ever since I’d started teaching kindergarten when we were newly-weds. We’d continued the tradition even after I’d retired.  It was fun for us, and for the children too.  See how they’re gathered round him, all smiling.  And here, in this shot, they look serene, each mouth a perfect round o as they sing with him.

Lately he’d been including a lot of the old folk songs we used to sing during our activist days—Blowing in the Wind, We Shall Overcome, We Shall Not Be Moved.  I didn’t see anything wrong with that.  He didn’t mean anything by it.  Maybe House of the Rising Sun was a bridge too far, I don’t know.  Some of the parents said I should have been monitoring his set list, as if the whole thing was my fault.  I just don’t know what to say to that.  What could they possibly mean?  Maybe I’m just naïve.  

My favorite part of the House of the Rising Sun is the line about the narrator’s mother sewing his new blue jeans.  That always took me right back to 1968, when my mother taught me to do a little cross stitch on samplers and pillows, but all the girls were embroidering daisies and butterflies on the back pockets and worn knees of our levis. That’s what I wanted to do but I wasn’t very good at it.  At the craft store, they had these patches you could buy, mostly roses and peace signs, but I was attracted to the Disney characters, Tinkerbell and Minnie Mouse.  Then I saw the Seven Dwarves—and I decided on Bashful, the least remembered Dwarf.  Admit it, you don’t remember him, do you?  But he became my good luck charm.  

I was wearing those jeans when I met Jack at the winter carnival.  Jack was an extrovert.  He liked the spotlight, and I liked him.  He kept me safe.

The special thing about this photo was that it was the last happy time.  The kids were on their feet, singing and swaying, and Jack’s voice was clear of all the congestion that’d been plaguing him since February.  He sounded good.  He had nearly finished the song, and was holding that last note for dramatic effect, when the rhinoceros stampede broke through the cafeteria door.  They came up through the back, hurtling over the stage where Jack sat a bit elevated above the children.  I like to think they were calmed by Jack’s fancy fret work, because they slowed down a bit, giving us time to pull the children off to the side, and under the tables. So you see, Jack was the only one they carried off.  None of the children were hurt, though I suppose it was a discombobulating thing to witness.  The kids wanted to run out after Jack and the herd, but Mrs. Hardy screamed louder than I’ve ever heard a principal scream, and the kids sat down, chattering and bobbing like ocean waves on the cafeteria floor.  I was stunned, stiff as a statue, staring at the spot where my husband had sat, his guitar looking abandoned on the edge of the stage.

At the community meeting later, more than one parent seemed to think Jack had summoned the rhinoceroses, as if he was some kind of a wizard who’d called them indoors with the protest songs.  Mrs. Hardy told them this was nonsense of course, but I was suddenly bashful again, more so than ever.  I refused to speak, and most people were sympathetic to my grief.  But I just didn’t want to give anything away.

Jack often told me he had an inkling he’d go suddenly.  That I should be prepared.  Well, I’d always handled the finances and the computer repairs, so I wasn’t too worried.  But this was nothing I could have anticipated.  

I set his guitar in his favorite chair in the den where he often played along with YouTube videos for practice.  Sometimes when I’m in the garden or down in the cellar, I swear I hear his strumming and his humming.  When I sneak up the back steps, as quiet as I can, and creep down the hallway, I’ll still hear the music low and persistent.  But when I peek into the room, there’s nobody and nothing, no sound, no music.  It’s okay.  I’m not worried.  

I kind of like being alone, especially in the evening when it’s quiet and dark.  But lately, I can’t help but wonder:  what flock, what herd, what murmuration, or murder will come for me?

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

The Crevasse

Written with the prompts:  Dad was back, explore clean living and peace, go away, bottom of a crevasse covered in______, laced with ______ which made the men mellow, huddled in the kitchen, don’t antagonize the cat, for sale sign on the boat, singing, Gina saw his ghost, lost his voice, hiking in Yosemite, learn to surf, I know peace, two kinds, soon

Gina took up residence at the bottom of a crevasse covered in down quilts and fur.  Her Dad’s ghost had suggested it that first night when the mourners were huddled in the kitchen, singing sea chanties laced with profanities and a little bit of MaryJane that made her brothers mellow.  

Gina wasn’t smoking.  She’d given that up years ago so she was surprised when Dad was suddenly back, winking at her and gesturing to meet him on the patio.  She was tempted to tell him to go away; she did not want to be the recipient of his post-passage advice.  Why couldn’t he chat with her older brother Brandon or her younger brother Sean?  But he wouldn’t let up, so she slipped out the door and there he was bigger than life, and she had to admit she liked seeing him again.  He was younger, healthier, maybe the Dad she knew the year she was in 8th grade and they went hiking in Yosemite.  That was a great summer, a great trip.  Mom and Dad still together, still laughing at each other’s jokes, still teasing each other.  What happened to them?

“Now, Gina,” his ghost began without preamble, “first off I want you to go put a ‘for sale’ sign on my boat.  That’ll get you some fast cash, because, you know, it’s gonna take awhile to get the house and the stocks through probate, and I want you to get the money you need now.”

“Dad?” she took a step back.  “What the hell, Dad?”

“I know peace now, Baby.  I want that for you too.”

“You want me to die?”

“No, I wish I’d known this in life!  That’s all I really wanted: to explore clean living and peace.”

“Okay,” she said, squinting at his nearly transparent form.  “Um, you’re not making a lot of sense.”  She paused.  “Are you really here?”

“I found the perfect place for you.  Up north in Canada.  I know it will sound strange, but there’s a crack in a glacier, and—don’t worry—I’ll show you.  You’re going to love it.”

He seemed to fade away and Gina was left alone in her father’s back yard, wondering.  She was no spring chicken herself, and the idea of moving from the warm central valley to a glacier in Canada seemed way out there.  Then she remembered the first Christmas after her parents’ divorce when Dad insisted she learn to make two kinds of tamales, one for meat and one for fruit.  They were her grandmother’s recipes.  Gina still made them every Christmas—well, most years.  When she remembered this, she knew she could trust him.

Gina brought her cat Samuel with her to Canada, and together they moved into the crevasse.  It was a simple abode:  she felt like she was living inside a sapphire with shimmering blue walls made of ice.  Her father’s ghost visited on occasion, though he did little more than smile at her.  He seemed to have lost his voice now. “Don’t antagonize my cat,” she always warned him because she knew it would make him laugh.  

One night his voice came to her unembodied, perhaps in a dream.  “Now, Gina,” he said, “don’t get too comfortable here.  Next year you’ve got to move to Costa Rica.  You’re gonna learn to surf.”  Life is good, Gina whispered, and Samuel the cat blinked in agreement.  

Photo by Jennifer Latuperisa-Andresen

What Remains

For this writing group meeting, my friend John went to Home Depot and gathered up paint chips:  euphoric magenta, misty lavender, planetary star, Renoir bisque, canyon dusk, blueprint, what remains

In my dreams, the dead refuse to talk to me.  They show up often enough, passing me in the hallways of hospitals or on the sidewalk in front of the state capitol.  My mother wears euphoric magenta lipstick.  My father sets grocery bags on the counter and a planetary star pops out.  My friend Craig pulls a blueprint from his pocket. I awake on the cemetery lawn, wondering.  

When they were alive, we communicated often even when they were on the other side of town.  I’d hear my mother telling me about her favorite new TV show.  My father sent investment advice.  Craig sometimes treated me to a view of my kitchen from above.  Once when he wasn’t there, he told me there are no masters, no angels, no guides—even though he’d spent decades telling me just the opposite.  

There is only energy.  Watch it moving, it expands and contracts like lungs and heart, river and wind, flowing together, beating softly like a child in stocking feet, a cat jumping lightly onto a book shelf.  It is easy, 100 percent pure, misty lavender, Renoir bisque, canyon dusk.  

I sought him out the next day.  Did you really tell me this?  Was that you?  

He shrugged.  I thought it was time you knew.

When he died, he sent no word.  A week later, crying so hard in my car I had to pull over and park near the deli, he appeared in the passenger seat beside me, and he said nothing.  Yet I could feel his sadness, not for himself, but for me.  Because it’s gonna be hard, that’s what he was conveying.  Over and over again, that’s the message:  it’s going to be hard.   

But this is why you came here.  To this planet.  At this time.  Take notes.  Write it all down.  It’s what you agreed to do.

Photo by Veit Hammer on Unsplash

Holding the Vision

Written with the prompts:  Teletubbies, c’mon, tug at my sleeve, the big lie, awareness, Joe liked to torment me, harbor, push, father, took me a long time, yellow, smells like chicken soup, Bailey Island

“C’mon,” Joe said, tugging at my sleeve, hastening our progress as we attempted to maneuver through the crowd.  I felt overwhelmed with an acute awareness of the people around me—the smell of chicken soup splashed on the necktie of the man next to me, his amber eyes and yellow hair, the mixture of sweat and lilac cologne of the woman behind me whose elbow unavoidably pressed against my shoulder blade, every one of these dozens, no hundreds, frantic to make it onto a ship.  Joe held our three-year-old son, Nathaniel, who had taken on the role of Teletubby, a computer monitor hidden in his abdomen.  It was Joe’s idea, a way to smuggle a device across the harbor, out into international waters.  I’d been against it, but I was overruled.  

“If they discover it, they won’t blame the boy,” my father-in-law had said.  “Stop worrying about that.”

“And they’re not going to discover it,” Joe said decisively.  “They won’t.”

Big lies, I thought silently.  Joe tormented me with these lies, gaslit me, made me feel crazy for worrying .  My own mother was more pragmatic.  “You know,” she said.  She paused.  “Say it with me.”

“I know,” I repeated.  “I know.”

“Yes.”  She gripped my hands.  “Imagine the end of the journey.  When you’re safe on Bailey Island.  You must visualize that, you and Nathaniel, safe on Bailey Island.”

I closed my eyes.  “Nathaniel, Joe, and I safe,” I repeated.

“You and Nathaniel,” she said emphatically.  I opened my eyes and stared into hers.  She nodded.  I understood her meaning.  It’s taken me a long time to understand.  If it hadn’t been for Joe’s misplaced loyalties, we wouldn’t need to run.

The ship was in sight.  But I was thinking of the island.  There is a peach orchard there near a lake where my mother’s sister lives.  I imagine picking peaches with Nathaniel.  The peaches are red and fragrant.  

The crowd began to disperse, and a path opened up.  I darted in front of my husband and easily lifted our child from his arms.  We were running toward the boat, our footsteps pounding on the wooden pier.  

I can taste the peaches.  I have held the vision.

The boat welcomed us aboard.  I turned, but Joe was lost in a sea of faces.  Maybe he would join us, maybe he wouldn’t.  The purser escorted us to our cabin.  I slipped Nathaniel’s sweater off.  The screen on his tummy emitted the songs of red-winged blackbirds while a grandmotherly woman hosting a cooking show sliced peaches for a pie.  The ship was moving.  There were no windows, but I could hear sea lions barking.  We were safe. 

Photo by Job Vermeulen on Unsplash

The Horrible Secret in Arriana’s Diary

Written with the prompts: body speak, Peter came across a horrible secret in Arriana’s diary, wet her pants, invisible threads, the bowl hit the tile floor, hospitality

Peter sat up a little straighter at the breakfast table when he heard Arriana’s footfall on the stairs.  He glanced at his sister Phoebe slicing strawberries at the cutting board.  She looked nervous too.  “I wish you’d never—” she muttered in a stage whisper.

“All right, all right,” he exclaimed before lowering his voice.  “We agree.  I shouldn’t have looked in her diary.  But I did look, and now we know and we can’t unknow—okay?  So—”

“Shut up,” Phoebe chirped for Arriana was crossing the threshold.  They both affected a feigned nonchalance neither one of them felt.  Surely Arriana would notice, wouldn’t she?

Neither Peter nor Phoebe was adept at subterfuge or pretend.  But it seemed vital that they not reveal the horrible secret Peter found in Arriana’s diary.

“Strawberries,” Phoebe blurted.  “We have strawberries this morning.”

“Oh!” Arriana responded at Phoebe’s unconventional greeting.  “How nice and good morning to you too.”

“Yes, yes,” Phoebe agreed, suddenly remembering what normal looked like.  “Good morning.”

“Did you sleep well?” Peter asked a bit too enthusiastically.  Arriana squinted, surprised at his vigor.  “I did,” she said in a low voice, attempting to model a bit of restraint she hoped they might emulate.  “I did indeed sleep well.”

She slipped across the room, her near silent body-speak affirming what they already suspected.  She could move quickly and quietly.  So fast, Peter thought, so fast!—had she even moved her feet?  It seemed she had flung herself across the room propelled by invisible threads.

Watching Arriana, Phoebe looked like she might vomit or wet her pants.   She leaned forward and placed the bowl of strawberries awkwardly on the table, afraid to step closer.  Peter thought about moving a few seats away but he was the consummate people pleaser and Arriana was their guest; he was more scared to offend than he was to survive a bite or two.

Phoebe moved to the far end of the kitchen, stacking boxes of cereal on the counter.  “Will this be enough for you this morning, dear?” she asked.

“Oh,” Arriana said mildly, “nothing warm?”

Phoebe blushed, aware she was shirking her duties as B&B hostess.  “I suppose,” she said darkly, “I suppose you’d like some meat.”  She paused for effect.  “I have some blood sausage in the freezer.  I could defrost them in the microwave.”

“You needn’t go to so much trouble, Phoebe.  I can make do.”

“No, no,” Phoebe insisted.  “I wouldn’t want you to be unsatisfied.  I wouldn’t want you to have to hunt elsewhere.”

Peter stood up abruptly, appalled by Phoebe’s indiscretion.  “I should get going.”  He saw Phoebe’s panicked look.  He knew he shouldn’t abandon her but he was going to get out while the getting was good.

“Are you driving into the city?” Arriana asked him.  “Could I impose on you for a lift?”

Now it was Peter’s turn to feel panicked.  Phoebe smiled and gave a smug retort.  “He’d love to give you a ride, Arriana.  Wouldn’t you, Peter.”

“That’s so generous of you, Peter,” Arriana gushed as she snatched a large strawberry from the cutting board.  She held it for a moment with her long slender fingers, finally popping it into her wide red mouth.  “Mmmm,” she hummed.  “So sweet.  That’s all I’ll need.  I’m sure I can find something more in town.”  She smiled broadly at Peter, allowing her gaze to linger on his chubby cheeks and neck.

At that moment Phoebe dropped a ceramic cereal bowl.  It hit the tile floor and seemed to explode, shattering into a dozen or more shards, scattering from the doorway to the table.  Phoebe flung her arms into the air, and sooty black wings stretched out from her shoulders.  “Not my brother!” she squealed as she morphed into a compact flycatcher, her black wings tinged with white, her black beak pointed and agile, her white breast nearly blinding in its iridescence. 

“Phoebe, Phoebe,” Peter lamented.  “Not again.”

She threw herself at Arriana, aiming for her eyes, but landing in her yellow hair as Arriana morphed into a white spider, exuding a cloud of silk she thrust into Phoebe’s beak.  But Phoebe kept striking, even as Arriana darted across the room, up onto the window sill to squeeze out under a loose screen.

At Arriana’s exit, Phoebe transformed back to herself again, sitting on the counter by the sink, straightening her hair and apron.  

Peter sighed.  “Another paying customer you’ve scared off!” he exclaimed.

“I have her credit card imprint,” she assured him.  “Do you want anything more to eat?”

“Those blood sausages sound good,” he noted with a throaty growl.  

“Coming right up!” she said.

Photo by Tetiana Bykovets on Unsplash

Memorie and the Coyote

For a final summer rerun, this is one of my favorites.  I hope you love it too.

 

Written with the prompts:  monster, did it wander off, but that’s why you want to be there, beautiful but scary, slower and more careful, underwater, he started to cry, a cozy place

 Memorie is in a cozy pace, propped up with pillows and notebook, iced herbal tea and the most affectionate of her three cats at her right hip on the sofa next to her.  She has arrived at this place finally after decades of effort and conflict.  Now she celebrates being slower and more careful.  She has the time for it now.

It is a hot night for late May.  She sits in the darkness of her living room under a small circle of lamplight, the sliding glass door to the backyard open behind her.  The other two cats sit in front of the screen, enjoying the night air. There is no breeze yet, and the TV meteorologists have predicted more heat for the coming week.  Memorie is happy to be retired, to have no place she needs to go.  She jots lines of poetry in her notebook, images of green, life underwater, the verdant kelp-like hair of river maidens swirling up toward the surface.  Memorie lives on the flood plain, beautiful but scary, yes—but that’s why she wants to be there.

Suddenly the two cats at the open doorway charge toward the couch where Memorie is sitting, the anxious scraping of their glossy long claws frustrating their progress over hard wooden floors like cartoon characters who can’t get traction, but in a split second they are leaping hard and awkward over her shoulder onto the coffee table. Magazines, papers, pens, cook books, bowls of chocolates and Rainier cherries, everything sliding and flying as all three cats are on the run, their tiny feet usually light, now heavy and thumping like crazy on the green Chinese rug in the green light, green air and water.  They escape down the hallway.  Memorie leaps up to shut the door, unaware of what has scared them, but trusting it is some thing, some unknown monster or man or raccoon possum skunk bat hawk turkey vulture, or a man, a prowler, a man.  She grabs the door handle and begins to pull, to slide its bulk along its dusty track.  Now she sees it in the reflection of street lamp on cloud shadow, the glow of amber eyes, a coyote, large and gaunt and hesitant near the pond.  Is it wandering off?  Yes, please leave.  But it raises its head and their eyes—do their eyes meet?  No—she looks away, pulls the door closed.  But he is upon her, just beyond the screen and glass, young and tall, sandy haired and hollowed cheeks, the animal has morphed into a human.  His right palm is pressed against the door.  He is starting to cry.  Memorie feels hypnotized.  “You are she!” he whispers, and she snaps out of her reverie.  He is a coyote again, darting across the yard.

She pulls the curtain across the glass, horrified, unbelieving, doubting her vision.  The room is green and stuffy.  The cats are stalking back into the room, ears back, pupils big as copper pennies.  They gather round her protectively.  She herds them back to the couch, and they all settle into the pillows.  “He recognized me,” she tells them.

 

Read more stories like this one in Wild Imaginings, a collection of flash fiction and short essays, available for free download when you fill at the form at your right.

The Passport

An August rerun for your reading pleasure!

Written with my Thursday night group with the prompts:  he had no passport, typing blind, a friend went with me, winds off of Carmel, you can smell the money, true love, it was a surprise to me, Carol are you there, critter, does the door open, how do I look, junk drawer, he wants to but, guilty pleasure

He has no passport so I offer to create one for him.  He is skeptical, knowing that I am blind, but as we speed down the coastal highway, winding away from Carmel, he relents.  Confessing true love, true love, true love, he tells me he will follow wherever I lead.  This comes as a surprise to me.  Can I trust this sudden declaration?

“Carol,” he asks me, “are you there?”

A friend goes with me and I bring my emotional support critter as well.  We venture down to the artisan market, my right hand on the coyote’s leash, my left hand on my friend’s shoulder for support.  They guide me, describing the quality of paper and ink, the authenticity of national seals and rubber stamps.  “How does it look?” I ask again and again, but my friend knows that doesn’t matter.  When we get to the border, the most important thing will be the way the paper smells.  This is my talent as well as my guilty pleasure:  I can concoct a scent that will overwhelm the sight of fraudulent letterheads and verbiage, that will make the texture of the embossed paper irrelevant.  We will find the spices in a shop around the corner, but I won’t decide what I need until we get there.  I will simply know.

Sometimes I use lavender, other times rosemary.  Fennel has become a recent favorite.  But of course the secret ingredient is kept hidden in my kitchen junk drawer, and I will never reveal what that is.  

“Carol, are you there?” he asks again.

I am typing blind on my special laptop.  The passport is almost ready, and then we may leave.  We can leave right now or we can wait till morning.  I know he wants to, but I sense hesitation.  “Does this door open?” he asks and I know he is seeking escape.  I can take him where he claims he has always wanted to go, to a land of big trees with deep roots.  But he doubts, and I know he always will. 

“You are an oak,” he tells me.

“No,” I correct him.  “I am a redwood.”

“Always the Californian,” he says, and I admit it is true.  Perhaps it is I who will not leave.

I give him the passport.  He may use it when he’s ready.  We both know he won’t stay forever.

Photo by Convertkit on Unsplash

Communal Meltdown

Please enjoy this August summer rerun!

Written with my Thursday evening group with the prompts:  communal melt down, the mist, her head rode the beat like a boat in the waves, the wind-up bird, alpacas, evolution, discovered and rediscovered, what happens, bonding, rolling, patterning, coloring, combinations, suppliers

Sometimes, Marissa knew, you just had to step back for a minute and let what happens happen, allow your heart to ride the energy like a boat in the waves, and hope you don’t succumb to the vertigo of sea sickness.  Now was one of those times, as her little class of misfits dissolved in a communal meltdown.  She felt like she was watching a dozen or more wind-up toys groan and chatter and spring and squeak in a chaotic mass of screams and tears, swear words and thrown books.  All blamed Frankie, the new boy, with his helmet and his leg brace.  He was unable to blend in at recess and his awkwardness had unmasked them all:  they were revealed as the kids on the short bus, the ones with special needs, the challenged and challenging kids.  No, they didn’t want him at their lunch table or in their game of catch or hanging out with them under the valley oak.  Even James, who was often the odd kid out, was happy to have someone lower than him on the totem pole, even he was ragging on poor Francis.

Marissa had sent Frankie to help the librarian so now she could sit back, nodding and listening, letting them blow off steam.  And yet she could see the mist rising in the back of the classroom.  There was a thin place there, where she knew an adjoining dimension often leaked through, a place of winding mountain trails, meadows with grazing alpacas, the heavy scent of fennel.  Marissa had discovered and rediscovered constellations of stars above and wild flowers below, a patterning that shifted and swayed to foretell her future and guide her present like yarrow sticks thrown to discern a reading from the I Ching.  She could hear now the stit stit stit of a hummer, so deceptively small, yet these birds were fierce, squealing and chirping like a wind-up tin machine.  

She blinked and the kids were quiet now, coloring green shamrocks and Easter bunnies.  Had she slipped through the tunnel or had she managed to calm them all with a box of Crayolas and a CD of Mary Youngblood’s flute music?  The years were rolling by, combinations of joy and frustration, and she wondered if she could invent new words to describe this bonding of opposites, this blurring of boundaries, the keen sharpness of being unable to absorb their pain.  They were evolving beyond her, but she would remain as she was, caressing past failures like memories of old lovers.  Was she here, now, or was she tripping down the narrow hallway to meet her supplier at the bus stop?   

Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash