Robin’s robin

December 19, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: bedtime, CCC, Family, Flash Fiction, grandparents, Just for fun, Micro-fiction, Name, Photo prompt, Robin, Story Time 10 Comments

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“Tell me again, Grandma,” the child burrowed into the bedclothes.

“You heard it a million times,” she ruffled the girl’s curls.

“But it’s my favorite story, Grandma!”

The woman smiled. Begging was part of the ritual. Their dance of love. She made herself comfortable and felt the small torso snuggle closer.

“Remind me again how it starts?…” she teased.

“Grandma!”

“Silly me. Of course I remember… So, there you were, born early and a little wrinkled.”

“A lot wrinkled!”

“Yes, a lot. And with a howling mouth ajar like a hatchling calling for a juicy worm …”

“Eeew …”

“And we didn’t know what to call you …”

“Till you saw my hair …”

“Which was as rusty as a robin’s bib.”

“And …” the child wriggled with anticipation.

“And it is clearly the right name, because a robin has been nesting in the tree outside your window ever since!”

For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge

No Reflection

November 13, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, Ancestors, Family, Flash Fiction, Historical trauma, History, Micro-fiction, Mirror, Recognition, Weekend Writing Prompt 41 Comments

(Photo: Pixabay)

The full-length glass was bedecked in heavy gilded glory. A forest of paintings crowded around it, their layered oils glistening in the candlelight.

She stopped and stared back at the faces. Unsmiling figures in stiff postures clad in roiling silk and velvet cloths.

Perhaps they ought to have felt familiar. The line of jaw, the slant of brow, the coil of hair above a hooded eye. She had seen all those before. She could again. If she just let her eyes glide toward the mirror.

She would not.

Know them.

Her ancestors.

Her captors.

Both.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Mirror in 95 words

The Bet

September 29, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Family, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, grandparents, Loss, Memoriam, Micro-fiction, Spin, Surprise, Weather vane 72 Comments

“Stop the car!”

Milly hit the breaks and hid her smile. They’d wondered how long it would take Pappy to notice what they’d done.

Only two days … Which meant she won the bet and Ben will be raking leaves all autumn.

When Pappy climbed back into the vehicle, there was wetness on his cheeks.

“Your doing?” he whispered.

“And Ben’s.”

It had taken considerable begging and a promise to maintain the church’s lawn, for the pastor to agree to put Granny’s beloved weather vane atop the bell tower.

Pappy chuckled. “She always put on a good spin, didn’t she?”

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Photo by: Dale Rogerson

The Creek Don’t Rise

July 23, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: CCC, Chores, Creative writing, Family, Flash Fiction, Micro-fiction, parenting, Peer pressure, Photo prompt, Sayings, Siblings, Swimming 18 Comments

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“Tomorrow, God willing and the creek don’t rise!” Mama smacked the rug one last time, stepped back to admire her handiwork, nodded to herself, and shouldered the beater.

“But Mama,” Marlee whined, “everyone else is going!”

I watched the exchange from the safety of a leafy fork on the big tree. If Mama didn’t see me, she could not call on me for chores.

Mama stopped. “Everyone?”

Marlee straightened. Hopeful and suspicious.

“Every. Single. Person?”

Marlee’s shoulders dropped.

“Thought so.” Mama’s dress swirled prettily as she turned toward the cabin, and for a moment I could see the lass she’d been before Bobby and I and Marlee came and brought with us gray hairs and wrinkles.

“But …”

“But nothing. The creek is swelled with rain and more may be coming. No swimming. And,” she added, “You come down from that tree. I need help with the washing.”

For Crispina‘s Crimson’s Creative Challenge

Not Having A Ball

July 14, 2021July 16, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Ball, Dancing, Family, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Micro-fiction, Motion sickness, parenting, Train, Traveling 47 Comments

“I found it!”

Minerva sighed. She never did do well on conveyances. “Found what?” she mouthed, careful to not move her head.

“The perfect place!”

Minerva attempted to open her eyes, but the world whizzing by, combined with her daughter’s bouncing on the seat while turned in the opposite direction to the train’s travel, was too much. She clamped her eyes shut and groaned.

“Mom! Just look! We’ll pass it!”

One eye. A blur. Space under an overhang. Speeding rails.

“For what?”

“For the ball!” Swinging arms. “Can’t you just see us waltzing?!”

The bag! Where was the barf bag?!!!

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Photo prompt: © J Hardy Carroll

Sitting Duck

May 27, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Babysitting, CCC, Creative writing, Duckling, Family, Flash Fiction, Just for fun, Micro-fiction, New Beginnings, Photo prompt, Siblings, Spring 13 Comments

“It has no feathers.”

“Of course it doesn’t,” Molly noted. “It’s a duckling. It has fuzz.”

Duffy was not impressed. The small thing was squeaky and looked utterly too squeashy. She wasn’t even sure it was waterproofed.

She shook her head. She never was good with small squeaky, squeashy, clingy things.

“It’s only for a short while,” Molly’s voice was soft, but Duffy recognized the little waves of irritation that signaled turbulence just underneath the surface.

Best not mess with that.

Duffy sighed and peered closely at the fuzzball. “So what am I supposed to do with it?”

Molly flapped with such relief that Duffy wasn’t sure whether to be reassured or terrified.

“Just keep it out of trouble,” her sister called, already on the wing.

“What kind? How…?”

Silence.

Then a squeak.

The fuzzball waddled, pooped, and attempted to preen its zero feathers. Ridiculous.

Her nephew.

Also kinda’ cute.

For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge

The Seeing

April 30, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: belief, CCC, Creativity, Death, Family, Flash Fiction, grandparents, Life Lessons, Micro-fiction, Visitor 27 Comments

“When I die,” she’d say, “I will not be truly away from you.”

Both sides of the statement used to worry him when he was little.

“Will I see you?” He once fretted. It was the day they had buried the pup who did not last the night. The runt who never whined and did not wriggle by the time the sun awoke. They’d laid the tiny bundle under a small mound of dirt in the yard. And it was lost to sight.

“In a manner of speaking,” Grandma had replied, untroubled. “For not all seeing is done with eyes.”

He did not understand her then.

Or when she died.

He wasn’t sure he understood her still, with many years passed.

Her absence a hole in his heart.

Then he came across the giant burl.

And he felt her in it. Waiting. Smiling. Seen.

He carved her out.

For Crispina‘s Crimson’s Creative Challenge

A Rare Root

April 9, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, adoption, Family, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Looking for answers, Micro Fiction, Roots, Secrets, Shame 42 Comments

It took her sixty years, but she finally did manage to maneuver the tangled maze of history and silence.

“Why do they make it so difficult?” she had demanded one day, flooded with frustrations.

“Shame, I suppose,” the woman at the records office had shrugged.

And a shame it was.

One that too many women carried, and too many cultures reinforced.

Sealed hopes.

But shame could not, in the end, keep her story from being told.

She watched the ancient lady in the market. Half-bent. Wholly recognizable.

Her birth mother.

A rare root unfurled inside her heart. Sprouted. Took hold.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Wrinkled Thorns

February 24, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Acceptance, Family, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Let it be, Life Lessons, love, Micro-fiction, Respect, Roses 56 Comments

She always left one rosebush alone. Let the flowers bloom as they wanted, curl and unfurl as they wanted, dry and droop as they wanted.

“It is an eyesore,” her mother-in-law criticized, ever eager to point out imperfections to the daughter she did not birth and that her son had chosen to love more than he ever did the one who’d labored to bring him into the world.

“Perhaps,” she smiled, but did not yield.

Thorns and wrinkled petals seemed fitting. Frosty resentment prevented closeness, but the old woman had given life to the man she loved. It was enough.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Photo prompt: Dale Rogerson

His Hummingbird

February 5, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Things Kids Say, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: CCC, Family, Flash Fiction, grandparents, Grief, Hummingbird, Loss, Memoriam, Micro-fiction, Sign, Things Kids See, Visitor 14 Comments

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The day had been dreary so far. The cold. The damp. The boring wait for the car’s repair. The need to keep her body still and her mouth from chattering.

Gran did not let her wander. Or climb. Or touch things.

“You’ll get filthy.” Gran had stated. Like an ultimate sin.

At first Beth did try to argue. Daddy always said that filth is easy to wash off and that a bit of dirt was no excuse for sitting out good fun.

Gran did not think highly of Daddy.

“What judgment that man could have had in him,” Gran grumbled, “he’d given it up when he chose to leave my uterus early … and it only went downhill from there.”

Or up, Beth thought. He had promised to watch over her. Before the angels called.

“My Hummingbird,” he’d called her.

Her eyes rested on the sign. She smiled.

Hi Daddy.

For Crispina‘s Crimson’s Creative Challenge