Short Story

CUTTING BACK

Nancy's Notes 🖊️🎶

Once again Denise from GirlieOnTheEdge
has challenged us to create a Six Sentence Story
incorporating the word “balance”.
I have used one of my own photos for inspiration.

Some of my plants

My mother-in-law Gertrude was a wonderful woman; she raised a family of four kids (including one set of twins) and provided quite well for all of them on one income – her husband’s very ordinary salary for his work in the produce shipping department of the Long Island Railroad – not an easy task but she managed.

She was a homemaker – one of the vast majority of American women in the 1950s who chose not to work outside the house; while doing all the household chores, caring for the kids, attending Mass, going to school meetings and leaping tall buildings in a single bound, my mother-in-law still found the time to cultivate an impressive green thumb – a skill she taught me and one I am now passing on to my granddaughter.

One of the first times I met Gertrude, she brought me up to the enclosed front porch of the house to show me her impressive collection of plants; they were all nature’s incredible works of art – healthy green leaves with swollen, flowering buds – and I was immediately stung by the gardening bug.

Sometime after Bill and I were married, my mother-in-law gave me a plant – a coleus she had rooted from cuttings of one of her own plants; I placed the new addition to my small collection on a windowsill in our apartment and proudly watched it flourish, but one day, to my dismay, the coleus did not look healthy and eventually started losing its leaves and became spindly.

When I told Gertrude about my bad luck with the plant, she gave me some pointers and then said something that I have never forgotten: “Sometimes you just have to be ruthless; cut the plant back, way down to the dirt, remove all the dead stems and give it another chance to grow.”  

I’ve be trying to apply that philosophy to my personal life when people or things become too demanding, draining me of my time and energy, pushing me to the limit, overwhelming; balance is not something we find but something we create and there are times when we have to be ruthless and cut back, way down to the dirt, let go of those outside forces dragging us down and give ourselves another chance to grow.

NAR © 2023

Sunday’s Six Sentence Story Word Prompt!

This is Rascal Flatts doing “I’m Movin’ On”.

44 thoughts on “CUTTING BACK”

  2. Gertrude would be pleased her wisdom has traveled the world! Wonderful piece, Nancy. I shall take all of G’s words with me today, however, “sometimes you just have to be ruthless…” shall be my reminder. Wise and strong woman.
    Btw, the coleus. The only plant I could never keep alive more than a few months. No more for me, lol.

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  3. Great advice from Gertrude, Nancy! It looked liked Granny’s remedy. But the real talent is the way you weaved your words in six sentences. I always love your six sentence stories.

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  13. What a clever lady your mother in law was….mine was of the same ilke, she would of been 103 years had not covid claimed her at 100 years ( she received her much desired Birthday Card from our Queen), she also processed green fingers ( mother in law I mean, though our late Queen was a dab hand with flowers and plants)….she failed to pass it on to me!
    So you in my book you’re very clever too not only have you taken on her ‘green thumb’ and you are passing it on to your granddaughter you have learned to apply balance not only to your plants but to your life…. Bravo 💜💜

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      1. Hm. Now you have me thinking … root cuttings … Oh, I know something else! I can’t ride a bicycle anymore. I fall off and crack things (like 2 ribs and … a tooth) and I plough through fences in order to miss teenagers walking 5 abreast on the pavement. I gave the bugger-all thing to a lovely young mother during lock-down, and she zips around the neighbourhood on it now. I still have an old Raleigh bike disassembled and hanging above my car in the garage … tyres as narrow as my thumb. You want a bike, sis? It’s going cheap.

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    1. Mighty big sandals to fill, the telling of parables. 😊

      It’s not often I come across someone who can kill a cactus; it’s not that easy. I better cancel that delivery of “plant of the month” I arranged as your Christmas present. 😂 🌵

      Buongiorno, caro 🤗

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