Recess is hell.

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        Live long             

The teachers shivered as they watched the recess horde which never ever ended. It’s death or life, lies or truth. It's them or us. Their eyes glazed around the mob, knowing that some opportunity could lead to havoc.   

Like the crack of a jump rope, a type of sizzling chemistry suddenly burst around them, exploding loose. Screw philosophy and fact. Forget about instruction, all the facts from teacher education. Clothes? Who needs them when all hell breaks loose?

Somewhere, there is an agency, somewhere that will set the playground in order. Over near the swings there would be a huddled group of people, clutching boxes of books, reading as if their lives depending on it. The agency will know how to help them all. Soon.

I wouldn’t count on help coming anytime soon.

  This meme was started by Delores a long time ago.  Troubles led her to bow out, but the meme was too much fun to let go, and now Words for Wednesday is provided by a number of people and has become a movable feast. With Elephant's Child  and other blogger volunteers, Mother Owl's we will find the challenges. Underlined words are some of the words available.

The aim of the words is to encourage us to write. A story, a poem, whatever comes to mind. My difficulty is using words that were just released. Grant me some forgiveness, greatness cannot be hurried.

If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please let us know so we can come along to read it and add a few encouraging words. Head on over to play with words

I am well versed in recess duty.  There is no joy in that place.

 

 

 

Four on the Course

 

 

Made it 

  When Evan dropped dead in front of his golfing foursome, Frank responded quickly.

With his brand new MyJoy shoes, he nudged Evan, and turned him over.  “Damn!” Frank cursed, “Now I have grass stains.  Damn.”

Clem interrupted. “Well, you did insist on a morning tee-off time.”

All looked down at Evan’s still body.

Jack spoke up. “Who will be our fourth?!  It isn’t likely Evan will be regenerated anytime soon.”

Frank shook his head.  “No help for it.  Let’s head back to the clubhouse.  We’ll tell the Front Desk about Evan.” He nudged Evan once more with a heavy sigh.

This was a Wednesday Words Post, posts July 2015. Was reposted in 2018.

Another Day at the Doctor Office

Another day at the Doctor’s office, another slice of humanity.  Another day for observing the great lives that pass through the door.

Awkwardness melted away as the chairs filled up.  Patients were forced to sit next to a stranger.  And then, one person leaned over to the next and said something.  It didn’t matter what, because the forbidden veil had been torn.  People started interacting, sharing, making eye contact.

Different races, ages, experiences, and life choices poured out in a flood.  Vietnam vet was next to long distance trucker.  An elderly woman sat next to twenty-something woman.  A bicyclist with torn ACL (or ALC) talked to the sixty-something man who sported a graying ponytail and a Padres baseball cap. 

Everyone was there to see the doctor for some reason involving pain or illness.  Some were clearly in wrenching pain, but relating the events of the accidents helped them endure the waiting.

What was I doing, you may ask.  I was the one who leaned over to the person next to me, and started it all.  After that, my journal was open as I wrote, interspersed with conversation.

Just needed to get the ball rolling.

The Leaf

I was a bud when I heard a baby’s first word.  Her mother was below me, pushing the stroller.  “Bah!”  It was a great word. 

I was almost leafed out when the boy on a red bike slid into my tree.  He scraped his arm and knee; he ran inside crying.  The red bike lay below me for a while.  I don’t know its thoughts, but I am certain it hurt much more than the boy.

In bright summer, I danced in the warm breezes.  The young lady with yellow hair strolled beneath me with the young man in military uniform.  They leaned against my tree, whispering promises, planning the future, and kissing lightly.

As the air cooled at night, I felt my color seeping back into the tree.  I tried to stop it, but it didn’t hear me.  My edges became golden, and along my spine, burgundy red appeared. 

The boy on the red bike rode under me to start school.  I watched the baby taking her first steps; she stopped to pat my tree.  The young lady with yellow hair ambled along while reading a letter; she was laughing and crying, then laughing.

Daytime changed from cool to cold, and I let go of my tree, falling to the ground with the other leaves.  Next year, another leaf will watch for my friends.   Will it love them as much as I?

Putting pieces together

Garage sales are like candy stores for a lot of people like me.  We ourselves have a garage full of multiple collections of the stages of our life, our grown kids' lives, crushed soda cans, Christmas stuff, and camping gear.  I could go on, but that would be just plain embarrassing.  Even so, my car has a garage sale GPS, and it downshifts gears, and brakes when passing someone's driveway spread with all the stuff that their own garage has regurgitated.

Bright shiny Saturdays are great days for cruising the streets with swivel heads.  Yesterday was a day of discovery, on many levels.  My husband John and I pulled up along the curb, and ambled casually toward the day's sale items.  I had spotted two quilts hanging on a chair, and that was the bait for me.  I greeted the couple hosting the garage sale.  They were about my oldest daughter's age.  Their garage was clean, and this stuff wasn't typical for their age.  None of the things that clutter my daughter's garage were there.  No baby stuff.  No old blankets or linens.  No college bookshelves.  No, this stuff wasn't theirs.

I picked up the quilts, and they were old.  I mean old.  The quilt tops had been hand pieced, by someone with an eye for color, and who had a basket of left-over fabrics from other sewing projects. There were patient appliques and hand embroidery.  The quilt stitches were even and firm, as if done by someone who took her time and was thinking about the importance of making something that would last through many many launderings.

"How much?" I asked the ridiculously young man who owned the house.
"How about a dollar each?  That okay?"
A dollar each?  Seriously?  The work in these two quilts, the age they both held--shouldn't they be almost priceless.  "Really...why so cheap?"
"Well, it's either a dollar, or let the dog sleep on them."
I choked back a reply, and indicated that I would take them.  And then I wanted to know about the quilter, and I guess that is the real story here, not the garage sale itself.

His grandmother died a few years ago, and left a houseful of quilts, plates, glassware, doilies and tablecloths--all the things that a woman of her generation might have accumulated over a lifetime.  He said that the best memories he had of her were when she would sit and make something, telling him stories of her life.  "She always had something she was working on..." he said, trailing off to answer someone else's question about a Trivia Pursuit game.

People think of quilts and immediately the word "pioneers" come to mind, as if somehow the two are inextricably united, and have sole domain.  His grandmother was probably a young woman during WWII, and knew how to dance up a storm with the men in uniform.  She probably worn nylon stockings with a seam up the back of the leg.  She probably loved the young Frank Sinatra, and wanted to skate like Sonia Henning.  Then his grandmother married one of those men in uniform, had babies, and became a part of "The Greatest Generation" without ever even thinking about it.  And, at night, once the kids were in bed, she listened to the radio or watched a very small black and white television, while she quilted.

I brought the quilts home, spread them out on my quilted bedspread and looked at them.  'This is quilting from the heart,' I thought.  No co-ordinated batik prints, no die-cut pieces, no color wheel adherence.  No, just a woman sitting at night by the radio, talking and laughing with her husband and kids, while she patiently and firmly put one piece to another.  I like to picture in my mind how she held the pieces at arms' length, the way I do why I put pieces together, and think about how they will look in the scheme of the quilt.

So the quilts are in my house now, joining other quilts I own, made, or have rescued from being in a dog's bed.  There is no great single uniting thought here, no deep summarizing 'a-ha' moment, just a bunch of images stitched together like a movie of someone's life.