The prompt at Simply Snickers was actually for poetry so I’m mixing prompts and sites tonight.  This is my attempt at a very short story.  Thanks for stopping by 🙂

The prompt consists of three words cast, confuse, catch
She wrestled with the lock, rattling her keys as she struggled to get in and get to the persistent phone.  She shut the door and raced to catch it before the answering machine kicked in.  As she picked it up she threw purse, keys, and bags on the table next to it.

“Hello?” She said, and then sucked in her breath as the voice on the other end answered.

“Hello, Sarah” he said.

The room was spinning and she shook so hard she could barely hold the phone.  “How did you find my number?” She asked.

“The internet, Sarah.” He explained patiently.  “It wasn’t that difficult.”

“Why now?  Why after all this time?” She was near tears and clutched the phone so tightly it hurt her fingers.

“I wanted to…I just needed to hear your voice” He spoke quietly, almost pleading. “I just missed you.”

It had been six years but her heart was pounding like it was yesterday.  The die was cast and everything had changed forever in an instant.

“Please” she begged, “this confuses me!  It took so long….”

She had moved away, changed everything about her life.  Maybe not enough, she thought.  She couldn’t go back.  She felt it all wash over her again.  “No! No!” she thought “I can’t do this again!”

“I know” He sighed “I shouldn’t have called.  I’ll leave you alone.” He hesitated.  “It wasn’t your fault you know.” He whispered.  He heard her shallow, panicked breathing on the other end of the line.  “Sarah, maybe we could..”

“NO!” She cried “please, just leave it alone. ” She hung up with a sob.

As Jacob gently laid the receiver back on the phone, a single tear made a path down his face.  He lived just down the block where he could watch over her.  The fire that had taken everything away from them, including part of her memory was long over with. The rubble from their house, hauled off with nothing left. He bitterly thought the vacant lot was a metaphor for their lives.  Just empty space where there used to be a family.  Her self-imposed punishment was forgetting.  His was remembering.

Sarah sank to the floor.  She couldn’t breath, couldn’t hear or see.  She didn’t know how long she sat there just staring.  The floor became her bed and the next morning she would awake and wonder how she got there.  For now she let the darkness take her.  She laid her head on the carpet and closed her eyes.  She wished for a second that she could be different, then sleep came.  She didn’t dream.

Scribblesoup for Writers Block has an intriguing prompt this week – your life as a computer program.

#57: Life, programs….viruses
If your life was a computer program what would it be? Are there upgrades, viruses…?

My life as a computer program

1. I would probably be one of those time wasting games that is fun but not particularly useful.
   
2. I would be a beta version (forever)
3. There are no cheatsheets – you just have to learn as you go
4. There will be spam and lots of it
5. There is a virus and it periodically slows everything down – it can be partially cleaned but never completely removed (guess I’m a PC LOL)
6. There are hotkeys that set off certain sequences of events (see number 3) and forget the undo button – it’s disabled
7. It WILL occasionally freeze up and nothing will work except to reboot (hope you saved – now I know I’m a PC)
8. Some parts of the program are poorly designed and while they serve a purpose, they could have been written much better.
9. There are “easter eggs” but you have to really hunt for them (if you don’t know what an easter egg is go here)
10. There is a manual but you will have to study it your whole life and you still won’t “see” until you die.
11. I will interact with other “programs” but not always well and often with unexpected results.
12. I won’t always do what I’m supposed to do, but sometimes I will do even more and better!
13. Sometimes you will click all the right buttons and I still won’t do anything.
14. There are upgrades but they are costly and don’t always get the desired result 🙂 (warning – they may not be compatible with the old system)
15. I will use a lot of resources and won’t always start when I should.  There are NO menus )see number 3)

My Mother’s Hands

The writing prompt at Sunday Scribbling was Aging

Well, we’re all as old as we have ever been, and we’re all at different stages of considering the aging process. What thoughts do you have on the subject?

As I thought about the prompt, I kept seeing my mother’s hands in my mind.  My mother had the most beautiful hands in the world.  Slender fingers that tapered to small oval nails.  They were graceful and talented.  I remember those hands pinning a hem on a dress as I stood, complaining and whining about how long it was taking.  I remember them peeling and chopping whatever she was canning at the moment.  Her hands would be red and chapped from hanging clothes out on the clothesline in the winter.  It would be so cold that the clothes would freeze and when she took them off the line they would be stiff, in the shape they were in when she hung them.

Mama’s hands could feel your head and tell if you had a fever, pop you on the backside when you needed it (and there were plenty of opportunities for that) and yank the hairbrush through my tangled, fly-away hair as I fussed, telling me “you have to suffer to be beautiful”.  I should have listened.

I remember wondering one time how she could do everything she did and still have such pretty hands.  I know now, that I was seeing her hands through eyes that loved her and were in awe of her.  As I look at my own hands now, I know she saw the same things I see now.  A scar that wasn’t there, wrinkles and discolored spots, where there once was smooth, pretty skin.  My nails are chipped and short where I have broken them or, I’m ashamed to say, peeled them down to nothing when I was nervous.

Will my daughter look back and see mama’s hands?  Did mama look back and see beauty in Grandma’s hands?  So much of the good that’s in me comes down through the women in my family.  Whenever I create something special, whether it be food, or sewing, or painting, it’s mama coming through.  Whenever I do “the right thing” even when it isn’t the easy thing, it’s mama nudging me on.  Whenever I do something that is adventurous and out of my comfort zone, it’s grandma’s courage that takes me there.

If you are looking at your hands now, wondering how they got to look so old, and how they look worn, where they once were pretty as they wore a wedding ring for the first time.  Remember how your mother’s hands looked the first time they helped you guide a shoelace around the tree and through the rabbit’s hole.  Remember how your mother’s hands felt, the first time they brushed a tear away from your face when your heart was broken. Remember how they held your first baby and how you knew at last what it felt like to be her.

Aging is all about what is taken away from our outside.  Inside, more and more is added so that our hearts grow, as our bodies shrink.  We are able to hold so much more.  More love, more memories, more patience, and hopefully more wisdom.  I hope my daughter is able to look back and see what a gift the women who came before have given her.  How God shone through them, and how His hands lived in their hands.  I pray that His hands have moved mine, and that all that is good and right and beautiful in me, is Him working through the women before me to make me who I am to be mama’s hands for her.

I discovered several blogs today that give a daily or weekly writing prompt and then let you either post in comments or post on your blog and link back.  I thought I’d play a bit at OneMinuteWriter and I found out just how little I can write in one minute!

There is a timer on the site – you Just click and start writing.  These are the instructions:

1. Read the daily writing prompt.
2. Push “Play” on the timer on the right side of the screen.
3. Spend 60 seconds or less writing a response to the daily prompt.

The prompt?

Friday Fiction: Time
Write a brief, creative, fictional piece about time travel.

This is what I wrote

I kept my eyes shut for a moment until the nausea passed. It didn’t seem as bad this trip so maybe I’m finally getting used to it. After a moment, I open my eyes to the light and as I look around I know instantly where I am. I’ve been here before. I glance at the clock and as the hands click I run, knowing I have only moments….

Either I type slowly or some people don’t actually limit themselves to one minute 🙂

It seems like a good way to get ideas and practice.

The actual post is here

I used to write.  Before blogs, before the internet, before I knew what a computer was. In high school and just after, I wrote poetry.  I had a notebook that I kept it in.  I once wrote a long…long…long poem about peace (it was 1972 remember) and translated the whole thing into Latin.  Yes, I am that old.  It was the last class ever to be taught Latin in my high school and hey – it got me an A!

I had a friend in a band that read some of my poems and asked if they could try to make some into songs.  One of the guys in their band, Jim, wrote music.  they worked with it for awhile and invited me to a rehearsal session to work on some of them.  Just poetry is a little different than having a chorus or a bridge and we worked on that.

A week later Jim was dead.  He told his wife he was going hunting and went out to the woods with his gun, sat down on a log, and shot himself.

In all of my eighteen year old arrogance, I was more angry than anything else.  At that age your friends are EVERYTHING. You know all about them – every minute detail of every day.  Who they love, what music they like, what kind of trouble they are having with their parental units (because at that age we all did – let’s face it), their moods, and what ticks them off.  Jim was older and at the time I didn’t understand that as you get older, friendships change.  They are still important of course, but not as all consuming.  Other things in your life become important.  A confused girl grieved for you Jim and barely knew you.  I know now, the faces we show others often have nothing to do with our insides.

At that time I just could not see how someone could get to the point where they would kill themselves without someone who KNEW them for heaven’s sake, stepping in and doing something to help them.  Back then we believed you could fix anything by just talking about it.  Depression was not a medical problem – it was a counseling problem, we thought.

A week after Jim died, Paul brought my notebook back to me.  I never looked at it again.  I have no idea what happened to it.  I never wrote poetry again.  The band fell apart and I hope that somewhere, somehow, Paul forgives me for not being more compassionate about what he must have been going through instead of being so full of my adolescent, self-involved drama. I remember and forgive me.

When I was a girl
An old woman lived inside
She looked out through my eyes
She saw when I lied

But now I am older
The girl lives on still
Her heart is within me
My faith and her will

We’ve lived far apart
Through years and through living
Often at odds
My holding, her giving

I reach out before me
To meet her halfway
Will we now become friends
Keeping demons at bay

The past and the present
Now finally to wed
Hanging on to the best
Turning loose of what’s dead

We still are becoming
That young girl and I
The door has been opened
Her secrets are mine

The child and the woman
Hand stretching to hand
Our history stays with us
While futures are planned

The circle turns slowly
And life marches on
Fears are laid down
And the night becomes dawn

When we stop being so grown-up
When we love the young soul
When we heal them together
We again become whole

My blog is three years old today.  I reached my goal of losing thirty pounds.  I wrote a poem.

I think I will set some new goals.  Hello world.