Her Reflection

June 25, 2020June 25, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Beach, Breathing Space, Creative writing, Flash Fiction, Mothering, parenting, Photo prompt, Reflection, self-care, Take a moment, WritePhoto 35 Comments

Photo: Sue Vincent

She walks along the dunes. There had been very little time away from others. So very few opportunities to be alone. She needs this more than air.

Morris agreed to keep an eye on the children. They were not enthused.

“He’s boring, Mama!” Ethan complained.

“Yeah, and his breath smells!” Lilly pouted.

“You don’t have to kiss him,” she replied. “And if you are bored, I can leave you some chores.”

They skulked away, displeased, but there was nothing for it, grumpy neighbor-as-babysitter or not. She knew she was becoming increasingly impatient. She did not want to cross the line into unkind.

It wasn’t their fault that Paul left. It wasn’t their doing that their dad did not see fit to shoulder any responsibility. She knew they missed him. He didn’t even think of calling on their birthdays. She knew Ethan cried for his dad in his sleep.

She almost took them with her to the dunes. Almost made it a family outing. Lilly loved running in the sand. Ethan’s eyes always lit up at the space. Like her, he loved the breeze and silence.

But she could not. Not this time.

This time she needed to replenish. For herself. For them. They needed a sane mother. She was running low on how.

She walks and breathes and ruminates and lets the worries and the sorrows stream out and flow down her cheeks and neck and chest till they evaporate.

There was a time she had hoped to have a house on the dunes. There was a time she had a dream of living in the solitary calm of gulls and tides and estuaries.

It wasn’t that she regretted having the children (marriage was a whole other story, given what non-partner Paul turned to be). She did not. Not once. She couldn’t imagine her life without them. Just for this morning, though … she needed to let be a part of herself that did not have them in its center.

She walks as if in daydream. The light shimmers and the estuary glints silver in the shrinking distance. It gives her peace. A reminder of how every stagnant-looking pool may in fact be only a pause in flow.

For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto challenge

To Know Good

May 31, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: better future, Cruelty, Current events, Elders, End violence, Good, kindness, Moral compass, Poetry, Promises, Racism, RDP, Support, Truth 20 Comments

Photo: Valario Davis on Unsplash

“So how do you,” he asked,

“Know good

From bad?”

“By the heart,” she replied.

“By the actions that

Build

And prop up,

And the words that

Support

And patch the

Cracked places

Inside broken parts.”

“And how,” he pressed,

“Do you know what

Just needs

Giving up?”

“By the soul,”

She patted the warm place

On her lap.

“For breath

Matters,

And hope

Matters,

And kindness

Is superior to any

Pass-by-night

Emperors

Full of promises

Of might,

Touted

For our good

But seeped in

Falsehood meant

To bring on

Plight.”

He shuddered

And she stroked his wet cheek

And held a cool

Palm to his brow.

“Now sleep,

And let spirits

Of light,

Hold back the bad

And

Fill your cup

With good

Till the world grows

Up.”

For RDP Sunday: For Our Good

No Fade

May 16, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Creative writing, Current events, Dawn, Finding a way, hope, humanity, Micro Poetry, Poetry, Weekend Writing Prompt, World's future, Writing Challenge 13 Comments

Photo: Lerone Pieters on Unsplash

Where faith remains in morning’s dawn,

There will not fade

The hope of light,

Breathing

Life

On.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Fade in 17 words

The Wait

May 8, 2020May 8, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: All is One, Ancient, Community, Evolution, Flash Fiction, Folklore, Homecoming, humanity, Photo prompt, WritePhoto, Writing prompt, Yearning 12 Comments

Photo: Sue Vincent

In the days of old they’d walk out on the water at high tide, appearing to float atop the waves.

It was a sign of trust.

Also of recognition. For they’d come from the water, after all. Their bodies might have forgotten how to live in it, but their cousins — seals, dolphins, whales — still held links to what was possible. And they spoke of long swims and deep dives and frolicking, and of how one day they’d all come home again.

And so they hoped.

And let themselves be carried by tentative feet on mossy rocks built far in and well past the breakers, all the way to the beginnings of the depths.

First as children whose hands were grasped by others’. Then as youngsters showing off their balance and their fearless speed (and perhaps a bit of memory from within their cells, of swiveling agility and joy being in of itself a kind of swimming). Then as new adults, saddled with fuller understanding and big bellies or wrapped by legs and arms of small ones holding tight around the waist and neck. Then as elders, wary of a fall and fearful even more of a child letting go of their hand and drowning. And at the last, as age counted no more, carried, offered, sent home to the sea.

Yes, in the days of old they’d walk out onto the water.

In celebration. In commemoration. In passage. In ritual and prayer and courage and communal hope.

Till they forgot.

And the waves licked the rocks till very little path was left, and dolphins and seals and whales no longer were spoken to and had moved on, and the earth and depths curled tight to wait.

For the people’s lungs still ached for the swim, and their heart still beat to the rhythm of the surf as they slept, and they still made a bit of ocean in their eyes, especially when they wept.

For Sue Vincent’s Write Photo