Two Goodbyes

For one of the last writing exercises from my writing class this past semester, I elaborated on a prompt given in class.  Originally, we listed five goodbyes and then detailed one of them.  I went into detail two more...

Goodbye No. 1 Spring Break

Airplanes roared overhead, car breaks squealed, suitcases hit the pavement with cluncks and ca-clacks, people shouted over the din.   I hopped out of the red Grand Caravan and hauled my hopefully (fingers crossed) less than fifty pound suitcase with me.   My Uncle got out with me and gave me a farewell hug.  The usual, these weeks go by too fast, we’ll see you soon, love you.  I shouted a goodbye to Grandpa through the open slider door and he waved from the driver’s seat.

I had no sooner turned to face the sliding doors and the imminent ticketing counter when I decided that goodbye simply would not suffice.  I made the split second decision to abandon my suitcase (sorry airport security voice) and dash around the van to give my Grandpa a proper goodbye.   His hearty laugh, one that always came from deep in his belly and could fill a whole room, and no less overpower the sounds around us came through the glass before he opened the door.

“I love you Grandpa, see you this summer,” I promised as I hugged him.   I breathed in his familiar smokey scent. 
“Love you too, kiddo.”   His merry eyes were full of laughter.
That was the last hug I gave him.

Goodbye No. 2 Wednesday 30 June 2010

“Hey Grandpa, Happy Birthday!” I spoke into the phone.  His laughter filled the receiver.
“I can’t wait to see you this weekend!” I told him.
“I’m looking forward to it. So what’s the plan?”
“Mom wants to leave early on Saturday, so we should be in by eight.”
“Well I’ll see you on Sunday morning then,” he chuckled back.  This was one of our jokes.   He always went to bed around seven at night, so whenever we drove up to New York for a visit and got in past seven, we wouldn’t see him until the morning.

“Guess what?”  I told him next, “I want to get a motorcycle!”   There was that belly deep laugh again.  “Oh really?  A crotch rocket?  Why do you want one of those?”
“Because they’re awesome and bad ass,” I promptly replied.
“I suppose you’d be the first in the family to have one,” he laughed.

“On another note, Mom and I were talking the other day and it looks like I should start getting things in line for my commission next semester.”
“Oh so you decided then?”
“Yup, the plan is as soon as I graduate in ’12, I’ll be heading off to OCS in Rhode Island.   I’ll be a Navy Officer, Grandpa.”
I could just see his smile as he replied, “That’s really something.  I’m really proud of you, kiddo.”
“Thank you Grandpa, I’m proud of you too.”  I replied back, “I guess I’ll let you go then, it’s getting close to bed time, huh?”
“Absolutely,” he replied, “I’ll see you on Sunday then.”
“Alright, see you Sunday. Love you, bye.”
“Love you too, kiddo.”

Three days later, my Mom, brother and I were en route to NY when we got a call that my Grandpa had died in his sleep early that morning.   He had just turned seventy-six.

XXX

Goodbye Grandpa, I love and miss you terribly.

Love,

RF

The Excuse

From The Pocket Muse by Monica Wood: Write a scene in which the dramatic tension revolves around a misspelling: a road sign, the name on a birthday cake, the directions to a doctor’s office, a word in a spelling bee…

I was running late as usual.  I promised I’d get the twin’s cake and be at the party by noon.  I kept thinking how my anal sister Caroline was going to positively murder me.  I could see her sharp glare already.  I eyed the ‘new and expectant mothers’ parking space enviously, half convinced to just go for it when I saw a restriction-free space open up.  My tires squealed as I nabbed the space. 

            Should I text her and say I’d hit traffic?  I could say I was stuck behind a blue hair doing twenty down K.  Maybe there was an accident, or a cop, or a parade.  The parade mightn’t be that likely.  I scratched that off my list of ideas. 

            Panting a little, I reached the bakery counter.  I thought how only then would I find it annoying that the bakery seemed to be in the furthest corner of the store.  I rang the bell a little too forcefully. 

            “I’m here to pick up a cake for Edwards, please,” I said promptly.  I took in the fresh-faced, curly haired young woman who seemed to pop out of nowhere.  Susan, her name tag read.  Susan was wearing candy apple red lipstick.  When she smiled I noticed she’d gotten part of her teeth as well.  The shade looked better on her lips. 

            I didn’t bother checking the cake.  I thanked Susan, grabbed the sheet cake and my purse, and power walked back to the front of the store where naturally every line was either full or cashier-less. 

            “I can take you on five,” I heard the voice say and I bolted for it. 

            As I was collecting my card and my receipt, I lifted the cardboard window on the top of the cake box for a little peek. 

            Happy Birthbay Manby & Abam!

            My jaw dropped.  I had to read the words again, surely I read it wrong.  I hadn’t.

            Feeling my face grow hot, I looked to the cashier for help.  I opened my mouth to begin to explain when I realized what a waste of time that would be.  Instead I put my energies in hauling my already tardy rear end back across the store to Susan.

Yep, I knew Caroline was going to murder me.

            “My cake is misspelled,” I explained to Susan hastily, setting the cake on the counter and opening the lid. 

            Susan frowned a little.  “What’s misspelled?”
            I stared at her for a good two seconds, thunderstruck.  “Um, my niece and nephew are Mandy and Adam.  That says Manby and Abam.”

            “It looks fine to me—oh,” came Susan’s reply. 

Oh? What does oh mean?

“I’m a little dyslexic,” Susan explained simply, turning up her food coloring stained hands.  She bobbed her head approvingly. 

I take it my reaction, one of  dumbstruck bewilderment, wasn’t on par with what she was going for so she elaborated. 

“I sometimes mix up my ds and bs.”

You think? I wanted to ask how she got hired to be a cake decorator in the first place, but thought better of it.  Time was of the essence, after all. 

“Okay, well do you think you can fix it or is there someone else here who can? I really need this cake like now.”  I glanced around, hoping that maybe someone else was privy to what was happening.  It was just me and Susan. 

            “I’ll have to take it in the back really quickly,” Susan explained before disappearing. 

            I checked my watch, it was ten-til and I was at least that far away.  I tapped my foot impatiently and clenched my hand around the receipt.  At least I didn’t have to stand in line again. 

            “That should be better,” Susan announced brightly. 

            It was. 

            At 12:10 I came bursting across the grass to the park pavillion, Mandy and Adam’s cake in tow.  I had broken a fair number of traffic laws, but I made it.  

            There was Caroline, standing with her arms crossed near a wooden pillar and surveying the kids crowded around the picnic table.  She noticed me and her body flailed into action.  She started towards me but before she could ask or say anything, I beat her to it. 

            “Gawd, you will never believe what just happened.”

Writer (noun) one that is excused for recurrent mental maladies

I write a lot of random words in my trusty sidekick notebook. Some are words I quite honestly haven't heard before. Others are just too amusing to be left alone. I find them in books, in eavesdropped conversations, and in my own house. So I decided to collect some of them and use them in a writing exercise. Said exercise is a throwback to the old grammar school prompt: "write each vocabulary word in a sentence." Sometimes the basics are the best!

1. The woman was in a cathartic mood, much to the chagrin of the study group. Instead of studying for the psychology test, the group had to endure a long story about the woman's deceased cats. 

2. The use of leeches for medicinal purposes is generally considered to be an arcane practice.

3. To prevent the extra guacamole from spoiling, we bagged it into aliquots and put them in the freezer.

4. The man was prone to apoplectic bouts, during which no one in his household cared to be within striking distance.

5. The driver of the blue Civic took umbrage at the driver of the red Camry who caused the accident.

6. The best time to harvest peppers is when they have grown large and supple. This ensures the best flavor.

7. The critic had the audacity to suggest the Tomorrow series is merely a rip off of the American film Red Dawn; I simply wrote him off as a literary ignat*.


*Okay so this one is probable a cheat because ignat technically isn't a word, but we use it quite often in our house. I suppose when I write my own language, it will be an official word *snicker.* Oh well. 

Pancake Crumbs

Donald was a spry old man, for being seventy-seven. He took the subway everyday from the station near his tiny Inwood flat to that near Central Park. With him, he carried a pink plastic folding lawn chair and a potato sack full of the pancakes he made every morning.
Two for himself, the rest for the pigeons.
There was nothing too particular about the Tuesday when he bought a lemonade from a vendor near Balto. He sipped the sweet juice, satiating his thirst, as he made his way to his spot.
The sky was a grayish color overhead and as a result not many people seemed to be out and about, but Donald didn't care about this.
He splashed through a large puddle made from the rain shower of the night before, sending ripples across his aged face with its goose fluff frame.
At the fountain, he set his pink plastic chair up an settled in. The lemonade rested beside his water stained house slippered feet.
Already a few pigeons had gathered, perhaps they expected him or maybe they really were an infestation to the city.
Donald smiled as he opened the potato sack, but his smile quickly disappeared.
He could see the fabric of his black sweatpants through the gaping hole in the bottom of the sack.
What was left of the pancakes hung in crumbs on the coarse lining of the bag.

A childhood through plants

My creative writing class today began with the following prompt: list fifteen plants from your childhood; why are they memorable?

Call me crazy, but I enjoyed this exercise.

1. Elephant ear hosta. I'm not sure if that's the technical name for them, but they're big and leafy and Momma used to plant a zillion of them in her "river garden" i.e. the garden I so christened as we spent a weekend one spring many suns ago adjusting the landscaping in our front yard and the result was a winding sort of garden that resembles a river.

2. Black eyed susan. In the back corner of my Godmother's backyard, which happens to border my own, there is a huge chunk of garden devoted solely to these cheerful yellow flowers with their black eyes. To be fair, there's brown ones too. Those are called brown eyed susans.

3. Marigolds. When I was a little tyke in Girl Scouts, my troop decorated terra-cotta pots for Mother's Day and planted marigolds in them. Mine died within a week. I was interested to learn not many years later in Spanish class that marigolds are associated with death in the Mexican culture, they make wreaths of the pungent orange things and decorate ofrendas for dia de los muertos i.e. altars to deceased family members for their holiday the Day of the Dead, which is around the same time as Halloween but an entirely different concept.

4. Mums. These are my Mum's (pun intended) favorite flowering bush and another candidate in the river garden. She buys them by the cartload in the late Summer/early Fall. The whites, yellows, and ruddy orange-reds remind me of harvest time.

5. Blackberry bush. These used to grow in abundance in the woods behind my old house outside Seattle. There was a little path we'd take through those woods to get to the shore. Along the way there and back, we'd collect stains on our hands and faces from eating the blackberries. Momma always said she'd make a pie with those berries, but they never made it home to occupy a pie in the first place.

6. Raspberry bush. My maternal grandfather, Grandpa L, loves his gardening. He especially loves his raspberry bushes, which grow in huge clumps behind his garage. I used to take great care in sneaking out there to munch on the berries when we'd come around for a visit (shh, don't tell him that).

7. Bradford pear tree. This flowering beauty used to stand in our front yard, right in front of my bedroom window. Every spring, the dainty pink and white blossoms would almost completely obscure my view of the street. They also added a light perfume to the air in late spring. I was standing in my room during a particularly strong thunderstorm one late afternoon. There was a massive crack, like a gunshot, and nearly half the tree fell over into the yard. We weren't able to salvage the old thing and it was subsequently cut down. The new cherry tree we replaced it with still looks scrawny in comparison all these years later.

8. Easter lily. My church sponsors Easter lilies each year. We always purchased two of them- one in memory of Aunt D and the other in memory of Grandma P.

9. Poinsettia. I'm not sure if this one counts because my memory is actually of an obviously fake-looking poinsettia bush we drag out every year at Christmas to add that "touch" to the house without poisoning our plant munching cats. Goofballs.

10. Peonies. These were my first plant, if you can have one, and they grew outside my window for many years. The pair have since been relegated to a plot in the backyard, which they've taken to nicely.

11. Frasier fir tree. Every year, my folks and Tapeworm and me sell Christmas trees. These puppies are my favorite to sell because A) they're beautiful and B) they have nice soft needles which are kind on the hands of tree lot workers.

12. Black hills spruce tree. And this one is my least favorite tree to sell at the lot. While these bad boys are a lovely deep shade of green, much darker than Frasiers, BHPs have unforgiving spiky needles that scratch, scrape, prod, and poke whoever is unfortunate enough to have need to move one. Snarl.

13. Fuzzy lamb's ear. Another plant I'm in serious doubt regarding the technical name for. No matter, these little plants have a misty grey-green color and are silky smooth. True to the name, they're fuzzy and I like cuddling these little guys. Don't judge me. They also grow like fertilized kudzu and as such there's quite a population of this plant in Momma's corner garden.

14. Azalea. I helped pick one of these dark red plants out once when Momma was in a landscaping kick. The thing died within six months. I always felt like this was my fault. RIP Azalea bush.

15. Catnip. A.k.a. kitty crack. My feisty felines love this stuff. I grow it in excess, which isn't difficult because it spreads like crazy.