Not Blueberries

May 26, 2019May 26, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Photography, Reflections, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: Danger, Flash Fiction, Foraging, Forest, Keeping children safe, Micro-fiction, parenting, Photo Challenge, Picnic, Raising Children, Sunday Stills, Things Kids Say 18 Comments

Photo: Na’ama Yehuda

“Look, Mama,” the child called, a soft fist held aloft as she ran, delighted, toward her mother. “I found some polka-dot blueberries!”

“Wait, where? Let me see? Those aren’t … Did you eat any?”

The child shrugged and twirled away, fingers closing protectively over a grimy palm that still held some blue orbs of what-mama-said-are-not-really-blueberries.

“Wait! Get back here. I need to see those again … Are you sure you didn’t eat any? They could make you very sick! And …” the woman looked around their deserted picnic blanket. “Where is your brother..? Where’s Eric!?”

“Oh,” the little girl pranced out of reach, and gestured vaguely in the direction of the trees beyond the forest clearing. “There. He found polka-dot strawberry mushrooms!”

Note: Inspired by a true story of a family I know, whose summer picnic ended up with a call to Poison Control, an ambulance, and two children in the Emergency Department. One child was fine. The second child eventually got better. Mama still can’t touch berries or mushrooms. Teach your children about the dangers of foraging and instruct them to not pick or eat (!!) any plant they don’t show you FIRST. …

For Terri’s Sunday Stills: Danger

Homespun

May 25, 2019May 25, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: adoption, Family, Flash Fiction, Foster Care, Holding on, Home, Micro-fiction, Relationships, Spin, Trust, Weekend Writing Prompt, Writing Challenge 15 Comments

astronomy background constellation cosmic

Photo: Pixabay on Pexels.com

“Can’t say I’ve known all along,” he said.

She snuggled deep into his lap, safe under the quilt, warmed by his heartbeat, listening to the song of the stars as they marched across the canopy of the world.

A different sky. This was.

The other half of life, perhaps. Better, even, now that she found home.

She, too, hadn’t known. Rotation, yes, but only as rounds of emptied hope.

Though her soul perhaps did know. It must have seen the edge of the world spin, and held on, to keep her whole.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Spin in 92 words

First Day Out

May 24, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Courage, Creative writing, Flash Fiction, healing, Micro-fiction, New Beginnings, Patience, Recovery, Rehabilitation, WritePhoto, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 29 Comments

transition

Photo: Sue Vincent

It’s been a long time since she was able to hold her head up.

She knew every crack in the ceiling. Every shade of light on the walls. Every spider web.

They kept the latter undisturbed.

“Let them be,” she’d asked when the housekeeper had come in one day, armed with an upended broom. The matronly women had frowned only to have understanding effuse her face with something between pity and compassion.

“You keep ’em company, then,” the housekeeper had said.

She’d cried a little after the woman had left the room, tears accumulating small pools in her ears. In them was the relief for the small thing she could still control to protect, and the hollowing despair for how much of it she’d lost, that she begs company of arachnids.

Months passed since.

The webs accumulated. Elaborated.

The seasons changed.

She watched the spiders, and found her own cobweb to hang on to and get stronger.

She learned how to control a torso that would no longer answer to her command. She found ways to manage the awful dizziness of gravity. She made peace with her chair and its straps as her adopted exoskeleton.

And she was strong enough, finally. To hold her head up.

A gentle sun licked the edge of the gate. The mostly overcast sky offered her pallid indoor skin a needed measure of protection. A glint danced on the fence’s wall and she practically felt it.

As tender and tenacious as a spider web strand.

“I’m ready,” she smiled. “For my first day out.”

For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto prompt

Rosie Rhymes

May 24, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Creative writing, Denial, Flash Fiction, Nursery Rhyme, Posttraumatic Stress, Resistance, Short Story, SoCS, Tragedy, Trauma, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 37 Comments

Kate Greenway, Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes 1881

“Ring-a-ring-a-roses; A pocket full of posies; Hush-hush, Hush-hush; We’re all tumbled down!”

“She can play like this for hours,” Mary sighed.

Alice gazed at the child, who with arms spread wide to the sides, continued to spin about the garden’s green, dipping a curtsy at the final line before going back again to the first. Her pitch was perfect and her voice was sweet, but the bouncy ringlets and pinafore over a knee-high calico dress only highlighted the oddity.

It was adorable when Rosie was six years old. The girl was nearly thirteen.

“How’s Rosie’s schooling coming along?” Alice tried.

Mary’s smile faltered for a second before a placid screen unfurled over her face. “Just fine,” she breathed. “It’s coming along just fine, dear. Did you try the rose-petal marmalade? Mrs. Hannah outdid herself this year.”

It is like watching a wind-up toy, Alice thought. She never could get her sister to speak candidly about the child. None of them could. They all knew much was wrong, yet it was nigh impossible to discuss it. There’d been some concerns before the accident, of course, though Rosie had been very young then and much was explained away as the idiosyncrasies of an only child with an active imagination.

Then the accident happened and it was as if Mary had stopped the clock. On her own life as well as Rosie’s. The child seemed content enough, delayed and mostly mute outside of singing as she was. But how much did any of them know about the child’s true reality and potential, and how much was her mother’s doing, impeding her growth?

“Ring-a-ring-a-roses …”

Rosie’s singing rang in Alice’s ears and suddenly she could not stand it any longer.

“Mary,” she pressed, “I know this expert …”

Her sister raised a delicate hand. “We have all we need, Alice.”

Alice shook her head. “No, you don’t. I love you, and I know you love Rosie dearly, but she’ll be a woman soon … and she can’t stay six forever. Let me get the both of you some help. It’s not about trying to force her to do what she cannot, if she cannot … I mean, I know she’s a little …” her sister’s eyes stopped her. Brittle. Angry. Warning.

“… I … I can see she seems happy,” Alice inhaled and paused, hoping for a relenting crack in her sister’s eyes.

There was none.

“Indeed she is happy,” Mary clipped. “And we shall keep it this way, shall we?” She turned her head a tad, so that her eyes rested partially on the closed wing of the manor where the stone would forever be a bit dark, and partially on the child she’d frozen in time. The sweet girl who did not need to know more than what she’d known the day before she had tipped a candle onto paper and accidentally, fatally, set fire to her father’s study. “Now, about that marmalade!”

For the SoCS prompt: Rhymes with rosy

Pinned Hopes

May 22, 2019November 12, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Speech Language Pathology, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Birthday, children, Disappointment, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Invisible, Isolation, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Society, Writing Challenge 75 Comments

Photo prompt © J Hardy Carroll

She planned every detail.

The dress. The cake. The decorations.

What games to play. Who to invite. The invitations.

She fretted over treats and props. The seating arrangement.

The day dawned bright. The weather fair.

The flowers gifted blooms. Butterflies came to visit.

The cake turned out close to perfect.

The dress fit well. Even her hair cooperated.

She breathed it in.

She smiled.

She waited.

The only thing she did not foresee

Was no one showing up,

And only her mama there

To wrap a scarf around her eyes

To hide the tears

As she pinned the donkey.

Note: Dedicated to all the children whose parties turn to pain. To those who are all too often left invisible due to social awkwardness, adversity, disabilities visible and invisible, social isolation, bullying, and the myriad ways indifference (let alone direct cruelty) can a child’s soul maim.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Part Of History

May 18, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Alabama, Flash Fiction, History, Micro-fiction, Old Live Oak Cemetery, Perspective, Selma, What Pegman Saw, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 17 Comments

Old Live Oak Cemetery, Selma, Alabama

Photo: C. M. Highsmith, Old Live Oak Cemetery, Selma, Alabama

“There is glory in the graves.”

“No there ain’t. There is only death in them graves. And bones, if they ain’t turned meal theyselves yet.”

“I’m only reading what it says, Gramma.”

“You is only saying what is lies, then, and it don’t make it no more true in the sayin.”

“I’m sorry, Gramma.”

“Hmm.”

Moss trailed from the old trees like cobwebs strung on homes for Halloween. There was eerie beauty in them. And sorrow.

“Why did you bring me here, Gramma?” she asked.

“Because it be part of history. Good and bad, you is supposed to know it.”

“It looks really old.” And peaceful, she didn’t add.

“I hear tell they’s started buryin’ here about 1830. Didn’t have no old live oaks then, or young’uns. Just dead peoples.”

“When did they plant the oaks, then?”

“Nearabout 1880. They trees is pretty, Chile, but they graves still got no glory.”

For What Pegman Saw: Selma, Alabama

It’s Your Sign

May 18, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Astrology, Beliefs, Briefly, Flash Fiction, Micro-fiction, Perspective, Relationships, Weekend Writing Prompt, Writing Challenge, Zodiac 2 Comments

Photo: Josh Rangel via Upsplash

“It’s your sign,” she said.

“I don’t care,” he muttered.

“Yep, in your sign, too.”

He scowled and she laughed and he knew that anything he’d do or refuse to, would become her proof of the zodiac dictating his life, actions, tastes, worldview.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Zodiac in 43 words

They Bowed

May 16, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: All is One, Creative writing, Flash Fiction, Folklore, Interconnectedness, Micro-fiction, Myth, Understanding, WritePhoto, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 23 Comments

Photo prompt: Sue Vincent

“They bow, you see,” Mir explained.

The child held on silently to his hand.

Mir peered down at the small head, so uncharacteristically still, the red curls shining like molten gold under the sun.

The quiet lingered and Mir did not break it. More words would not change how there was only so much one could say about some things.

A bird fleeted close. A bee buzzed by. Somewhere a donkey brayed and a dog’s bark answered.

Still the child did not move.

Mir let the air in and out of his lungs mark the passage of time, even as he knew it would not be measured in the same way by the child. Nor would it matter. Time is rarely what it seems to be, anyhow.

The air shimmered. The scent of smoke wafted from someplace beyond the fields, and in it mixed the faintest hints of manure and baking bread.

A caterpillar inched its way atop a blade of grass.

“There is no wind,” the child finally noted.

“There is not,” Mir confirmed.

“Are they tied together?”

“They are holding limbs.”

The child looked at her own hand in her grandfather’s. She did not look up, but Mir could feel the connection being made as it wove a thread of understanding between the two of them, between them all.

A hush fell. Then a sudden breeze rippled through the field and whistled an unnamed sound as it passed through the stacks. The tips nodded.

The child bowed back.

For Sue Vincent’s Thursday Photo Prompt: Wicker