Meg Sefton's Blog, page 19

Thanksgiving Flash Mini-Collection

Turkeys at the Tot’s Tender Turkey Farm, Florida Memory, flickr

For a very small collected version of my Florida Thanksgiving flash fiction, see today’s post on Medium.

Day 20: A story where there is the smell of smoke. “Tiny Thanksgiving”

Cypress Tree by Roan Fourie, flickr

Every year, the Tiny family celebrated Thanksgiving in their cypress tree home along Shingle Creek, headwaters to the Everglades. There was Pa and Ma Tiny; Granny and Pappy Tiny; sisters Shushu, Mimi, and Darla; brothers Dale, Kyle, and Earle; babies Junior, Sarah, and Taylor. The guys played tiny palm bark banjos and doled out the blueberry mash they had fermented while the ladies cooked a mess of mushrooms in their tiny stone stove, the tiny stream of smoke wending its way to the rafters of the aged hollowed-out cypress. Every year, it was a feast around the cypress bark table kicked off by Pappy’s long prayer thanking the god they knew existed by the mere fact of their survival—how else to explain it? Pappy was usually a bit tipsy even at this point, having savored too many acorn cups of the mash and Granny would often have to lay him down in their Spanish moss bed, saving him a plate for later. The Tiny family never took much for granted. Stories and love filled their home.

Margaret on Medium

Face in the Sky by Shane Taremi, flickr

Hi. Do you read stories on Medium? Do you write and post them? I just got started.

Here is a piece of writing you may recognize from my blog in case you want to check it out and maybe even follow me. I published another piece several months ago.

I love learning new things and would love it if you followed me there.

I hope you’re having a good Friday night! —Margaret

Writing and social media

Shattered by Julia Joppien, unsplash

I think people coming together for short periods of time to share creative work can be a nurturing, inspiring experience. However, one thing I have noticed is that prolonged periods of sharing on social media platforms where writing is compared and “likes” are given as if by some kind of objective criteria, can be destructive.

Writers begin to compare each other. They begin to think the thing they made that received more “likes” should be the thing they should make more of. Or, they think the person receiving more likes is the better, more successful writer. In reality, “likes” could mean many things. What’s more, there are just as many readers for different kinds of writing as there are writers. But often we succumb to the forces of social media’s behavior modification. It can be hard to always be conscious of the game we are playing when we enter a virtual space.

Writers always need a strong backbone to say the things they need to say, write the things they have to write, no matter what. Sometimes it is too hard to put oneself in situations hard-wired to inspire self-doubt. We need all the belief and compassion we can give ourselves to pursue our words, our thoughts, our creations.

Day 19: Write a life story in three separate scenes involving hair.

manikin by Peter Clark, flickr

I have learned a few things by being someone with hair. Hair can help you win and it can cause you to lose—affections, jobs, confidence. It can help you lie and it can betray you. By its presence or absence, color or cut, it can reveal others’ true feelings and motives towards you. My hair is not part of my body, it’s a chameleon, an animal that shows by its changing nature what life is.

When I was young, my mother loved to fix my tow-headed hair, pulling the sides up into a yarn bow—red, yellow, white, blue—depending on the season, depending on my outfit. Although I was adopted my hair when I was young was the same color as my parents’ hair and matched their hopes, though when I grew up and it darkened, I had to dye it to stay in line with what they wanted for me. It was what good young women did. It was what my mother did and I would fall along her path. I had beautiful, light hair and married well.

The year after my divorce, I had to get a buzz cut from my favorite hairdresser. Chemo was causing hair to fall on my shoulders in places like the grocery. Although I had always been very vain about my hair, and it was still shoulder length and blond, it was thinning and falling out because of treatment. I began to think about those poor people in the grocery. What if my hair fell on their food? I sat with my sister in my hairdresser’s living room and we held hands as my head made its debut as an egg.

After treatment, I eventually shed wigs, not being able to take the itchiness in the Florida heat. I read my creative work in a museum downtown with some friends. I dressed up for the reading, but so much of what I had considered “me” had been shed and now, it was penciled in eyebrows and short dark hair, just as short as a pixie if not shorter. “What happened to your hair?” The organizer said, aghast, not realizing that the long blond hair I wore to the last reading was a wig. And that’s when I knew: You have to learn to love yourself no matter what you look like. Some people prefer people pressed from molds.

I thank my chameleon hair. She has always been wiser than I have been. I know so much more because I have had hair, no hair, worn other people’s hair. I could never have done it without her though I must say, I have experienced some pain in her lessons. No pain, no gain as they say.

Day 18: Why my nose is bleeding “high anti-social functioning”

Mask by Richard Harvey, flickr

What with the sight of one of the receptionists stumbling into my general physician’s office looking tumbled down drunk, her ignoring me at the desk, the other receptionist seeming sweet, apologizing for her colleague, but speaking too softly so I can’t hear, and then asking questions I had long since answered on an intake, and then not hearing my concerns about the lab not having my correct address and I, thinking maybe she can’t hear me because of my mask or the counter-to-ceiling glass partition or because she didn’t like the look of me with my red hello kitty t and the pink puffy headband with my now shorter hair and the leather backpack I sometimes wear on both shoulders and my height being very tall and my frame being reminiscent of my biological grandfather of six foot five descended from full blooded Cherokee, I repeat myself several times and then she turns to her colleague and I know she hasn’t understood a word I have said or she hasn’t listened, and so I semi-lose it in a way that it is not frequent for me, though not quite in a youtube-video-lose-it way, but so that I see her flinch slightly, though the check-out receptionist kinda digs me and maybe that woman drives her nuts too, and what with all of that, and Florida having finally implemented infrastructure measures, and high-speed rail being built but a few miles from my apartment, and at night the ground thundering slightly, and hearing it the first first night I was terrified but then remembered the petition that was being signed, though by that time it was too late, petitions hardly ever mattering anyway, and my busy neighbor overhead this morning whose child is often screaming and running around as early as 6:00 a.m., though this morning she was doing a craft project using a tiny harmer to drive in something placed on the floor, and what with all that I stand in the doctor’s reception, over-warm, my face sweating under my mask and the taste of iron on my tongue—blood.

Oopsies

Sometimes I can’t spell. But if you revisit my blog a couple of times, mistakes will usually get cleared up! Ugh!

Day 17: Write a story where something is canceled “Aunt Maureen’s Thanksgiving”

Underwater Thanksgiving at Rainbow Springs, FL, Florida Memory, flickr

I will miss Thanksgiving at Aunt Mareen’s this year. In a strange turn of events, Covid has wiped out or incapacitated many of the city’s fat Santas and Aunt Mareen has signed up for holiday appearances as Mrs. Clause. She was skinny as a string bean and not super Clause-like we mused as we thought of how to keep her spirit alive at our table. We decided we needed to borrow her plastic pilgrims and Indians for our tablescape with the solid cranberry jelly with the can rings. She sent us selfies on her Santa throne at Disney Springs. There was enough room for children to sit beside her on the massive red chair. As a former underwater Weeki Wachee entertainer, she looked right in her element. We were jealous of her little believers and we said they must be spoiled little monsters.

The Perfect Ladies Literary Society

Experimenting by Jean L, flickr

Ladies, do not show your dark unpleasantness, your unhappy, sardonic droll creative pieces. Pursue art in keeping in your faith that beauty is in what is pleasant and proportionate, not in what is felt or experienced. Don’t you know that in prizes given by organizations such as The Perfect Ladies Literary Society we have criteria in keeping with being perfect literary ladies? Unwieldy desires expressed in unbalanced, unwelcome forms surely will not find favor and will lock you into obscurity and loneliness. Do not indulge in darkness—such as anger and bitterness—and in what is occasionally referred to as “truth.” Don’t even entertain this in your creative studies so that these nasty habits cannot take hold. Let us be charming and beautiful. Cause no discomfort. Instead, let lightness of heart and hand win the day. You will be happy. So will we.

Day 16: Photo prompt “Ms. Myska’s Sweet Love Grams”

Photo by Alisa Anton on Unsplash

Every year for Thanksgiving, Ms. Myska loved to give of herself in a way that was wholly singular. However, being a low-key mouse type of person, she sought no fanfare. And because this year, she was without her beloved Queen Annie, her Coton de Toulears, the holiday was threatening to be dreadfully lonely. Ergo, she became prodigious in gifting—gluing little chocolate kisses to her dribbles and drabbles of written thought, and leaving her “sweet love grams” in random places.

Here is the story she decided to duplicate in her own hand this year, leaving copies in coffee shops and bars; neighborhood book exchange boxes and libraries; churches and synagogues; gyms and homeless shelters: “Do not let bitterness build up within you. Let it flow out in your tears, flowing out of you and down and around, becoming lakes and ponds, rivers meeting with the sea and supporting creatures, evaporating and feeding life, becoming rain that quenches fire and thirst, renewing, refreshing, sustaining, gentling.”