Sore Throat

I was sound asleep as I heard my little guy say quietly beside my bed, “Mommy, I have a sore throat and it hurts really bad.”   I rolled over and looked at him and told him to go and get one of the sore throat lozenges from the cabinet in the bathroom.   He looked at me and told me that one of those wasn’t going to help at all because it hurt so badly.  I looked at him and a with little more firmness told him to just suck on it and it will help.  Whining was definitely not going to help and informed him of this.

I heard him rummaging through the plastic bag of drops in the bathroom.  I didn’t want him to be sick and sure hoped he wasn’t coming down with strep throat or a cold.  It’s no fun having a sick child.  A few more minutes went by and I thought I heard him crying.  (I had let both boys sleep on the floor in our room since Daddy was out of town.) Sure enough he was whimpering on the floor holding his cough drop. He saw me look at him so hopped up and came over to sit on the edge of the bed when he started to tear up even more and continued to tell me it still hurt.  I saw that he was holding the cough drop instead of sucking on it and told him he had to put it into his mouth if it was going to help at all.  Holding it was of no use. 

He put his left foot onto my chest and asked me to rub it.  I told him that rubbing his foot wouldn’t help his sore throat, and asked him to try and rest.  He started crying again, so I knew this was bad.  I asked him to open his mouth so I could take a peek and he started laughing.  He said it wasn’t his throat that hurt, but his foot.   We all started laughing.  I obviously heard him wrong.  Throat. Foot.  It all sounds the same when you’re half asleep.  We couldn’t stop laughing. I had told him to get a cough drop and that would help and he was so obedient and just did what he was told, but knew it wouldn’t help. Too funny.   We laughed out loud for several minutes and cried from laughing so hard.  I began to rub his foot as his tears quickly turned to giggles and the “”sore throat” went away.  

A Writer

A writer likes to be alone in a room

Happily writing sparkling prose.

The quiet lends itself to flow

Of the words that linger in the soul.

A writer voices what stirs the heart

Providing others with the beat.

The words are only a small part

The rest, we complete.

A writer has something to say

About the world or small detail in life.

They hope to inspire, amuse or relay

A point of view unique to their beliefs.

A writer truly wants to be read

On a bus, by the lake or in the car.

Opening up thoughts in your head

Taking you places afar.

A writer is what I aspire to be

Finding a place for the words within.

Opening the doors to what I see

This is how I will begin.

The Card

Fiction

The card was baby pink and had a red heart in the middle of it, with a cursive “I love you” written across the center.  It was the only one left at the gas station counter at 11:37 P.M. so he had no choice but to buy it.  It would be the vehicle that would say what he wanted to say yesterday but couldn’t.  He had to tell her he loved her or he just might die. At least that’s how he felt. Death would be better than letting this crack in the window of their relationship close too quickly. He started writing under the phrase printed on the inside of the card, “it’s how I feel about you”.  He began to put down the words that were his thoughts and couldn’t stop writing.  He had to draw arrows directing her where to read next so that his midnight poetry would make sense to her.  He didn’t leave anything out.  He told her his life meant nothing with out her in it and would make her happy if it required his last breath.  He needed to tell her. She had to know this.  He signed the card with his initials and sealed the envelope, addressed it and then went back into the gas station to buy a stamp then dropped the white envelope into the mailbox slot out front. 

When he got back home, his granddaughter was sitting at the kitchen table crying.  He held her until she stopped.  It had only been a week since her mother, his daughter, had passed away. Her two younger sisters were asleep on the couch.  They were too young to lose sleep over their loss.  He gave her a kiss on the forehead and told her to get some sleep and that things would be better in the morning.  She curled up next to her sisters and closed her eyes.

He climbed the stairs and got into bed, and he too began to cry, for his loss and fear of losing once again in what little life he had left in this world.  Tomorrow would be another day.  A better day.  He hoped, a day closer to loving her. 

Daydream

When I daydream, I always wander to the same place.  The road is covered by trees and shrubs and vines are creeping up the trunks of all the old oaks. When I see the wooden fence line on the left, I’m almost there. A natural opening occurs in the trees and there is a dirt road on the left that leads to the cabin. The dirt is soft and moist from the rain.  I always roll the window down to listen to the drops of rain falling from the leaves onto the wet undergrowth.  The smell fills my lungs with moisture and makes my heart ring.

The cabin is almost a mile off the road and is over 100 years old.   It was built by a man and his wife and took over two years to complete.  The porch is slanted towards the east side and two boards are cracked on the second step leaving a hole big enough for the rabbits that reside under the porch to come and go as they like. There really isn’t any paint on the house anymore, just chips of white flake here and there.  To paint it would spoil the charm and character the house worked so hard to achieve.

The view is nice, (a small lake surrounded by sugar maples) but it’s the atmosphere of this nook that draws me in.  The sky is barely visible due to the height of the trees and the ground is covered with leaves of every color the autumn weather can create.  It’s not cold, but a sweater is always around my waist.  The air is heavy from the rain and the trickle of water running down the side gutter can be heard ever so slightly. I can smell the lake and its muddy bottom from the steps. 

It is in this daydream that peace wraps around me like an old fashioned shawl.   I feel embraced by warmth and serenity just by “being” in this place.  I always sit in the rocking chair on the porch for an hour or so before going inside to light the logs in the fireplace.  Solitude.  Quiet.  Nature.  All in their place in this place. My daydream.  My place. 

I'm No Expert

I am not one of those who know the names of all the Presidents (I think I could name ten), nor do I claim to be an expert on all things baking (that requires skills I don’t have).  I cannot tell you the type of bird that sits on my fence in the morning to greet me at my kitchen window and I most certainly will not be able to help my children with their calculus homework in a few years (we have Uncle Jason and Arif Cha Cha for that). 

Now, am I capable of learning all those things? Of course, but do I need to know those things?  Not really.  I can Google a list of the Presidents in record time. I can buy beautiful cupcakes at the store, and I could probably take a picture of the bird and figure out if he’s a chickadee or a wren.  As for the calculus homework, I have the phone numbers of the uncles aforementioned, so am good there.

There are some days; however, that I wish I was an expert at something.  I don’t know in what, but it might be nice.  At dinner with friends, if the conversation happened to turn to, let’s say, animals of the artic and you were an expert; how splendid! You would be able to add your two cents about the Narwhal’s eating patterns or how the Arctic Tern migrates over 22,000 miles each year. “Fascinating, just fascinating,” they would say.  You’d smile and feel all “know-it-all” like inside, but that moment would pass and then the discussion would turn to finance and everyone would order dessert. Would being an expert on arctic animals benefit the conversation at dinner?  Maybe - Maybe not.

Perhaps that’s what this is about.  I’m searching for that subject I enjoy enough to become an expert on the topic.  Not so I can fluff up the dinner conversation, but to fuel my soul and keep my mind wondering and wanting to learn as an adult.  My dad and I have often talked about the fact that the value of education is lost on teenagers. I didn’t pay attention to Mrs. Peterson’s lectures, as I should have, but learned enough to take the test and pass.  There was no joy in 8th grade English, but now as an adult, I wish I knew more about punctuation rules and when it’s appropriate to use “…” or a hyphen.

As an adult, my interests continue to change and am enlightened by all that there is to learn and know.  For now, learning about writing and all the possibilities that come with that subject is fascinating, just fascinating. (To me, anyway.)  I hope that you will take a minute today to embrace something that fuels your soul and read about it, learn about it, watch a movie about it.  Because when our souls are fed, we are happier people.

A grammar book I checked out from the library is calling my name.  I’m off to learn and fuel my soul.