Magpie Tales - Kids in a Car

Magpie Tales is a creative writing blog by Willow at Life at Willow Manor. Click on the link to see the other entries.

Love this picture. It reminds me of piling into an old car with laughing friends to drive across the causeway to Clearwater Beach. The radio was playing and there was a cooler with some beer in the trunk. I pretended to like the taste. The trip and the anticipation were part of the fun. We were on our own with no adults around and a long summer day ahead of us. The trip back seemed a lot longer - tired and hot, hungry and sunburned with sand in every crack and crevice. We would rush home to shower and get ready to go to the drive-in movies that night.

Front Porch - Magpie Tales

Magpie Tales is a creative writing blog by Willow at Life at Willow Manor. Click on the link to see the other entries.

Breathless anticipation on a hot summer night. Wondering if he will come by. Coy conversation, teasing and taunting, acting as if she doesn't care. If only mama would turn off that damn porch light.

Pretty - Magpie #69

Magpie Tales is a creative writing blog by Willow at Life at Willow Manor. Click on the link to see the other entries.

As I grow older, I become a concentrated version of myself gradually discarding all the extraneous bits from my environment. I slowly realize that I don't really need this or that thing and I let go of my attachment and welcome the simplicity of scarcity. Strange the little things I am still unable to release - useless object but so pretty.

Here is another take I feel the need to add:

Sensuous tip, smooth and glistening, hypnotic destination and, for a few timeless moments in a lifetime, the center of the universe.

The Eyes Have It

Magpie Tales is a creative writing blog by Willow at Life at Willow Manor. Click on the link to see the other entries.

They say the eyes are the window to the soul, but this eye has no soul. So why is it so difficult to look away? It is beautiful, really, in a disturbing way.

Actually, my ex-husband has a glass eye. He lost his eye in a bar fight years ago. A pool stick was involved. I don't like to think about it and have not seen him in person since sometime around 1975, long before the accident. My son wrote a very bawdy but entertaining song with his brother, Chad, called, "My Dad's Left Eye." Little Jill was afraid to meet her grandpa for the first time. What if he removed the eye??? But she came back from her visit just fine and is very fond of him. The eye stayed where it belonged.

Now that I think of it, I know why dolls are sometimes scary. Especially the old ones with the cracked faces. It is the eyes . . .

Mystery - Magpie Tales #66

Magpie Tales is a creative writing blog by Willow at Life at Willow Manor. Click on the link to see the other entries.
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It's not like her to steal a book from the library and boldly display it among her own. Of course, it does have a nice binding. Did she love it so much she just couldn't take it back? Or did she claim it was lost and pay for it? Or just stop using her library card? Maybe she bought it at a book sale because the library had more than one? Too late to ask now. She is gone. This book is just one more little mystery from my list of unasked questions.

True Family Story - Magpie #64

Magpie Tales is a creative writing blog by Willow at Life at Willow Manor. Click on the link to see the other entries.
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For some reason, this week's Magpie prompt reminds me of an old family story. For my daughter.
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Jaime, your grandma on your dad's side grew up on a ranch out west. She had an identical twin sister who got sick and died when they were about eight years old. I have seen an old picture of them together once. You should ask your Dad or your Aunt Diane to see it.
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Anyway, her mother, your great-grandmother Pavey lived out west and they say she was even on a real wagon train. Your dad has the cast iron dutch oven that went on the wagon train with her. It has a trivet that fits in the bottom for cooking biscuits over the fire.
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Your great-grandmother Pavey was known for her housekeeping skills. To hear your grandma tell it, she was the Martha Stewart of her generation. She baked all her own bread and she had a big press that she used for ironing sheets, pillow cases and even her husband's underwear.
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An Indian woman used to come to help her with the house work. The Indian woman would hang her baby in a papoose board on a tree limb outside. Great-grandma Pavey worried for a long time that the Indian baby needed a bath. One day when the mother was not around, your great-grandma decided to take that baby out of the tree and unwrap it. The baby, unused to being handled this way by a stranger, began to cry and the mother came running. The story always ended there. I don't know what happened after that but I don't think the baby got a bath that day.

Kaleidoscope - Magpie #63

Magpie Tales is a creative writing blog by Willow at Life at Willow Manor. Click on the link to see the other entries.
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The universe spins and galaxies collide. Here on our little planet, seasons change, mountains erupt, seas rage and recede. Birth and life, suffering and death continue on. Elements split apart and recombine in endless repetition. Another turn and look, something beautiful is born.

Emergency! - Magpie #62

Magpie Tales is a creative writing blog by Willow at Life at Willow Manor. Click on the link to see the other entries.

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Something happened only a moment ago. See the egg yolk hasn't even dried on the plate. Something interrupted a peaceful breakfast. The scream of a child? Fire on the stove? A screech of brakes on the street outside? Or was it just a knock on the door? A neighbor with a coffee cake or a pitcher of fresh squeezed orange juice, perhaps?

Wine on the Porch - Magpie #61

Magpie Tales is a creative writing blog by Willow at Life at Willow Manor. Click on the link to see the other entries.

The thing I missed the most when I was alone -- a glass of wine on the porch, quiet conversation. I've learned to do without the after dinner cigarette. Maybe the wine could be a cup of coffee or a glass of tea. But I need the companianship. . . After thinking about it, maybe any two out of three would suffice.

Rainy Morning - Magpie #60

Magpie Tales is a creative writing blog by Willow at Life at Willow Manor. Click on the link to see the other entries.

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A rainy spring morning. Cool and wet and gray. Falling like a veil over the world, softening the view, drowning out the clamor. Private and quiet. A day to sleep late wrapped in the cool sheets, or to make love, or to get up early and have a cup of tea. Or to bake. Or to make soup. Or, if you have to go somewhere, to dash to the car and be so glad to be inside and shake off the rain when you get to work feeling energized and proud just to have arrived.

Magpie #59 - Woman

Magpie Tales is a creative writing blog by Willow at Life at Willow Manor. Click on the link to see the other entries.

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The invisible bond that ties mothers and sisters and daughters together. Starting out as a young, innocent girl who believes in fairy tales, then learning of love and heartbreak. Loving a man and all that entails. Feeling life growing inside, the pain of bringing a child into the world and of loving that child with all your heart. Feeding, clothing, cleaning, making do, taking the smallest piece or doing without. Taking care of the young and helpless and the old and frail. Beauty secrets and giggling conversations with girl friends. These are the things that tie me to this world and give meaning to my life. Only the procreation of the species -- as magical and yet mundane as that.

(edited to better reflect the prompt)

Camelot - Magpie Tales #58

Magpie Tales is a creative writing blog by Willow at Life at Willow Manor. Click on the link to see the other entries.
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I really believed you were my knight in shining armor. The one who would understand and love and protect me. I trusted you. I idolized you. Even now my heart still yearns for Camelot. Who would have ever thought we would turn our weapons on each other?

Shamrocks and Violets - Magpie Tales #57

Magpie Tales is a creative writing blog by Willow at Life at Willow Manor. Click on the link to see the other entries.
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Shamrocks and violets. Luck and Beauty. I tend not to believe in luck except in the past tense. Then I call it grace as in "There but for the grace of God, go I." Maybe I think it is bad luck to wish for good luck. I prefer beauty. I believe those who train themselves to look for the beauty in everyday life are happier and luckier than most. At least that is the one trick I have learned to make my life happy and myself contented with my lot. I wish that you who read this are lucky enough to learn to find the beauty in life.

Garlic - Magpie Tales #56

Magpie Tales is a creative writing blog by Willow at Life at Willow Manor. Click on the link to see the other entries.
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A lover who taught her many things before he left. Pasta, garlic and olive oil in the night. Provolone and Parmesan. Crusty bread and Cabernet Sauvignon. Candlelight and classical music. Laughter. Appetites whetted by lovemaking. Garlic and sex linked forever in her mind.

Lemonade - Magpie Tales #55

Magpie Tales is a creative writing blog by Willow at Life at Willow Manor. Click on the link to see the other entries.
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A pretty party for spring. A picnic on the wide front porch with tulips on the table and a big glass pitcher of cold lemonade with mint and sliced lemons. Ham, potato salad, deviled eggs and coconut cake. Children running on the lawn and through the kitchen. And then ... who thought there would be so much blood? Gushing. Screaming. A wet kitchen towel to wrap up the wound. A quick trip to the emergency room. Hope someone cleans up the kitchen before I get home.

Magpie 54 - Puzzle

Magpie Tales writing prompt #54. Click on the link to see the other responses.
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So many years spent gathering the missing pieces, trying to make sense of the random patterns. I can only hope the finished work will be beautiful.

Little House - Magpie 52

This is a writing prompt for Magpie Tales which is celebrating it's first anniversary. Click on the link to see the other entries.
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It's a perfect little house. I wish I could step inside. I can't see a busy family there. Maybe two ladies, a mother and a spinster daughter. It would be very quiet and tidy. I see a stiff little settee and a side chair. A flowered rug. A wooden rocker with a seat cushion and some needlework waiting in a basket. Lace curtains. A linen-covered table set for tea near the fireplace. A grandfather clock in the corner. A neat little kitchen with embroidered tea towels. An old fashioned bathroom with lavender soap and a clawfoot tub. A landing on the stairs where the peaked window looks out onto the street. At the top of the stairs, two small bedrooms with iron bedsteads and white sheets and fresh flowers on a writing desk or a chest of drawers. I wonder what they dream about behind the pretty front door.
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I had to come back to add the sleek white cat in the window sill and the daughter coming down the stairs in the morning in her old chenile robe and fluffy slippers to start the kettle for tea and stir up the fire. Church suppers, card games, choir practice and ordering plants for the garden in the spring. Visiting neices and nephews and an old piano. They are doing just fine in this little house.

Home - Magpie Tales #51

Magpie Tales is a writing blog where writers respond to a photo prompt posted by Willow at Willow Manor.

Funny how a small thing can make all the difference. When I saw the narrow brick street lined with grandfather oaks with a canopy of gnarled, leafy limbs above, I made up my mind. The old house had a big covered porch with wide steps and fat brick columns and a white porch swing. It was autumn and school had just let out. Laughing children were running home in the slanting sunlight. My husband didn't get it. He saw missing roof shingles, crumbling foundation, old plumbing and ancient wiring. But I knew. He left long ago, but I will never leave. It is my home.

Time Travel - Magpie Tales

This picture is a prompt for Willow's writing blog called Magpie Tales. Click on the link to see other entries and to add your own.

The stars roll around the heavens, the earth turns as it circles the sun. The universe moves inevitably toward its destiny. Perhaps it will expand forever until it is cold and empty. Or it might crash back onto itself only to explode again in unimaginable violence. Perhaps there is an infinite number of parallel universes where each choice we make branches into a new reality. And still, time moves on. Einstein said that time and space are intertwined, that time slows down as you approach the speed of light. I have heard that our concept of time doesn't exist at all and is only the invention of man, that everything that will ever happen has already taken place. I am fascinated and awed by these ideas and by the idea of time travel. I remember reading in a comic book about Superman flying around the earth so fast that time turned backwards.

I also remember clearly when I first saw the movie "Back to the Future". It was 1991 because I was about to attend my 25 year high school reunion. I loved all the twists and turns that travelling back in time created. I remember near the end when the hero was leaving and the girl who was to be his mother said to herself, "Marty - that's a nice name." And so, he was named after himself. I remember taking a long walk after the movie thinking about time travel and my upcoming high school reunion. I wished I could know the future.

Well, I've done a little time traveling since then. Forward, which is the only way we know for sure that time can flow. It has been almost 20 years since I took that walk. I went through a painful divorce, I had to change my career, my children grew up, my mother died. I wonder what I might have done differently if I could have seen the future that day.

Well, I wish I would have made some different career choices, I wish I hadn't chosen to refinance my house. The main thing I wish is that I was kinder, more patient with my mother and my children, more accepting of other people and their choices - even if I didn't understand those choices. I would focus more on my own life and the options I had control over and less on trying to make other people change to meet my expectations. This sounds a lot like the Serenity Prayer.

God, grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

Guess what? I had no idea where this post was going when I started!

Aunt Esther's Farm - Magpie #39

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Connections

A few special summers at aunt Esther's Oklahoma farm. Real butter and cream for breakfast. The crowing of the rooster at daybreak. Waking in the little white bedroom up the steep stairs and looking down into the yard from the old wood-framed windows. A green Hoosier cabinet in the kitchen. A bathroom that used to be a porch. An unused formal parlor with carpet, a wood-trimmed velvet sofa and an old piano. A rose garden. Learning to sew. Searching through the hay bales in the old barn for eggs and trying to catch the wild kittens. My aunt cracking fresh eggs at the stove and tossing the shells over her shoulder into the sink. Eating fried chicken that had just been walking around a little while ago. Feeding a calf from a bucket with a large rubber nipple. Riding on a tractor. The sweet smell of cutting into a ripe, red watermelon right out of the field. Oh, and getting trapped in an outhouse by a mean rooster. (There was a ripe smell in that outhouse, too!) A few old photographs and some family stories. Some old phonograph records. I was a modern girl from the 60's. These are the only fragile connections I have to a simpler life style that is older than time. I treasure them now.