(Photo: Anna Sullivan on Unsplash)
“It was never a matter of reach, but of scope,” Morris mouthed the words around his pipe.
Ethel harrumphed under her breath, but gently. She had to take care to not move the petals or she would have to restart the lot, and there was nothing she disliked more than having to redo tediousness. Be it in business or in marriage.
“Cannot see what you find in him,” her mother had criticized her daughter’s choice of man.
“Perhaps we look at him through the wrong end of the long telescope of Time,” her father had chuckled in knifing disapproval.
“Too long a telescope it must be,” her mother had deadpanned.
Her parents were both gone now. To the shorter end of cholera. Left Ethel and Morris the house. And a failing botany business which they were slowly but assuredly pressing into sought after art.
Prosery quote: ‘We look at him through the wrong end of the long telescope of Time’ (Hummingbird, D.H. Lawrence)
For the dVerse prosery challenge
Na'ama Yehuda 
Wonderful take on the prompt, Na’ama. You weave stories so well.
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Yay! So glad you liked it! 🙂 I wasn’t sure how it would end up ‘looking’ but I’m glad if it was pleasing! 🙂 xx
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I was considering doing this prompt but decided… nah… 😉
You, however, did a bang-up job 😉
xoxo
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Well … I hope you’ll have a muse-spiration and write something. Or, that you’ll just relax and do other prompts as they speak to you. 🙂
I’m glad you read mine!!! 🙂
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How sweet are you?
I love to read you. 🙂
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🙂 Yay (doing a sort-of-jig, because I just had a humongous bowl of lotta-chicken-in-the-chicken-noodle-soup … a desert of ice-cream … 😉 ) so it is a careful kind of jig but no less happy than the before-dinner one. 😉
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Just had me a chicken tomato basil frittata… Was pretty darn good, too.
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ooooooooooh maybe should use the rest of the roasted chicken (some of which ended up in the chicken-noodles soup) for that tomorrow!
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And I have a small piece left that might go into a soup!
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I love the balance of it!!! All is one, eh? 🙂
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Mmm hmmm!
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yummmmyyummm … 😉
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“knifing disapproval” is a wonderful term I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of. Glad to see she and he are still together despite her parents.
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Thank, Lisa … yeah. … nor would I … And, it sounds to me like Morris may not be the most exciting man, but he may be a comfortable and steady and not-so-judgmental-as-her-childhood-home calm. 🙂
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Amen!
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😀
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There’s a lot in this, could be the start of a very interesting longer story. I love the phrases: ‘there was nothing she disliked more than having to redo tediousness. Be it in business or in marriage.’ and the disapproving parents!
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Thanks, Ingrid! 🙂
Isn’t it fun to paint characters? Even more fun when people ‘get it’! Thank you! 🙂
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I like the way Ethel juxtaposes business and marriage, Na’ama, through the petals and the thought that ‘there was nothing she disliked more than having to redo tediousness’. It’s interesting that her parents weren’t keen on Morris, but left their house and business to them.
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Yeah, I think she’s a bit of a practical woman, perhaps not seeking too much excitement but not necessarily enjoying the details of tedium that stability requires … 😉 Glad you liked it! As for her parents, I think she might’ve been an only child, and therefore the house and business were passed to her when both parents died … Or, her parents, while critical and unkind, still cared about her in their own way … 😉
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I wonder if her parents would have approved if not Cholera had come… somehow I think they would have found the telescope shorter than the expected.
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I love this comment! Yes, I think it is quite possible that they’d have come to see what she’d seen and appreciate, at the very least, the stability of it for her. 🙂
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It all comes down to perspective doesn’t it? I love how you describe the complexities of human nature and how it takes time to truly appreciate and know someone. 🙂
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Thank you! I love this comment! 🙂 Yes, people are so complex, aren’t they? It is what makes writing (and reading) about people – in poems or stories or novels – so much fun!
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Precisely 🙂 You are most welcome!
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😁
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Good use of the quote. Like D H Lawrence, and not just because reading him as a teenager so annoyed my mother (it was only his poetry)
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Thanks! Ah, I don’t think I’d have been brave enough to read him as a teenager … not in my household, though oddly enough, we were allowed to read Auel … Go figure. 😉
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It was the poetry. Although there were a couple of his novels I also red while still at school. I was encouraged to pursue literary works. Mother thought that was preferable to my preference for sc-fi/fantasy!
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Ha! Well, I think my mom did read his ‘other’ books but I was too miss-goodie-two-shoes of a child to take those off the shelf by her bed when she borrowed them from the library … 😉
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There was nothing “wrong” in them. It was only Lady Chatterly that caused such a fuss. And once tarred for one thing… you know how it goes
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Yep … though the man, somehow, not so tarred … hmm … It annoyed me to no end. Dumped the book and never wanted to read it again.
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Plenty more books in the library… 😊🌞
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Eeezatly! 🙂
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🙃😉
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