Life

Horton and the dust-speck are one.

The other day when I was watching my granddaughters, I found myself up stairs and getting ready to watch a movie while we lay in Mommy’s bed. Both the girls were sick and asked me if I wanted to take a nap. It would be okay with them if I wanted. Sunshine found the TV controls, and zip-zang, she showed me how to do all the remote control stuff that previously eluded me. With “Horton Hears a Who” starting, the girls lay down, telling me I could have the middle between them. They had taken all the pillows, and the middle was perhaps eight inches wide. 

This isn’t going to work, I told them. I need more room than that. So I manually scooted them over, grabbed a pillow from the end of the bed, and climbed over them. The moment I extended my arms, they both rolled  to nestle into me. ‘Ahhhhh’. 

The Last Unicorn

Sunshine is somewhat like a puppy, which has to turn in circles a few times before finding the right spot. This time she was lying on her stomach, with her head at my knees and her feet at my head. “Draw pictures on my back, Grandma. I want a unicorn, a rainbow, a flower…” Before I drew the rainbow, Sunshine was sound asleep.

Bright Eyes placed her head on my chest. “I can hear your heart beating, Grandma,” she whispered. I wiggled my fingers into her mass of brown hair, and lifted the strands up to let the heat escape. She sighed, and blinked, then was asleep.

That left me with Horton. Before we settled in for the movie,Sunshine had found one of Daddy’s clean socks and placed it over my eyes just so. "Here, Grandma.  This will help your headache."   I could look down my nose and at the TV, if I wanted. 

When Mommy/my daughter came home, she found us three just like that. “Oh, my, that is precious.” I agreed with her.

Life can’t get much better than that.

Wikipedia Blogfest Flash

Arlington Baptist High School is located in Baltimore, Maryland.  Established in 1975 as an extension of the Arlington Baptist Church, the high school participated in many sports. It was a successful church and school, soon expanding to elementary and middle school classes. Later, it added a nursing home, a retirement complex, and a cemetery. 

This is an entry for The Great Wikipedia blogfest hosted by http://rachelbateman.com/
Link onto en.wikipedia.org, select "Random Article" on the left panel.  Read and synthesize the article, then create your own flash fiction.  This needs to be posted on June 3rd, 2011.

Baltimore was his home, his place of safety. Cable stood in the shadows in front of his old high school, Arlington Baptist High School. ‘Man, I was so young then, so strong,’ Cable thought, throwing his last cigarette on the street.

Memories of basket ball, the upbeat attitudes, the prayer before class—all flooded in on him in a wall of images. What had happened? Life happened, along with the drugs, the military, the secrets.

Cable picked up the cheap suitcase, groaning as the familiar pain lanced through him. ‘Damn cancer!’ he cursed. He limped across the street, and into the lobby of the Arlington Baptist Retirement and Care Center. A pretty woman his age looked up at him, expectantly.

Cable took her in, and saw the name, “Kathy Marks”.  ‘She was the cute cheerleader I was all hot about,’ Cable silently chuckled. “Can I help you, Mr….?”

“Yeah, I need to become a resident,” Cable slurred as he handed her documents and required statements. “And, I’ll be looking to buy a cemetery lot, real soon.”

Kathy looked up at him steadily, and then down at the papers. “Right this way, Mr. Cable. We’ve been expecting you.”

Home!

All through my adult life I have known there were options, if I ever needed to make a change and make it quickly.  I could close my eyes and see my parents’ home on the farm, and know that in a matter of hours, I could be there.  I could go home.

No matter what happened, the image of home hung in my mind, and I could face anything.  Just knowing that helped me find ways to work through a harsh situation or painful reality.

Built in 1860s, I think

Home meant that my mother would be making a pie in the kitchen and my father would be pulling into the driveway on his John Deere tractor.  We would sit at the kitchen table and talk, drinking cup after cup of coffee.  Dad would tell a greatly embellished story which I had heard a hundred times, but my children would listen to it and laugh.  He would sit with his long legs in front of him, and his feed cap tilted to one side, rakishly.  My mom would laugh, and hold one of my children on her lap, helping him/her to eat that last piece of pie.

Our old barn, wooden nails and all

Home meant that we would sleep upstairs with the windows wide open.  The silence would be broken only by a dog’s bark, or the sound of the hog feeders opening and closing.  I would listen to the sounds an old farm house makes.  I used to think that the old house would groan at night because its joints hurt; maybe they did.  My children would be safe in bed while I struggled with the dilemma that sent me running home in the first place.

North porch, Dad's boots

The old cistern and Mom's cactus

But now I find myself in a peculiar time of my life. The place I always called home is gone.  Gone.  When my father retired from farming, they left the farm and moved into a nice house in town, near wonderful neighbors.  The farmhouse was bulldozed away by new owners who built a modern home, and it won’t groan at all.  The house in town, which held together the concept of home, is now up for sale, along with all the precious things that defined home for me.  My parents are together in heaven, their new home.

So now my generation has the role as the keepers, the guardians of our own children’s concept of home.  My home is the place they will close their eyes and picture at the desperate times of their lives, and feel a rush of relief.  They can come home.

Now, I close my eyes and hear the sounds of my own home, enjoy the memories of my children running through the hall and eating my pie at my kitchen table.  My home.