Written for Song Lyric Sunday –
Inescapable Concept of Time.
Here’s how the theme inspired me.
Tag: Illness
Flowers For Sale
Written for Esther’s “Can You Tell A Story In…..?
#283” – exactly 38 words using the five required prompts:
‘operation’, ‘attract’, ‘vanilla’, ‘pram’ and ‘quack’.
In 38 words, this is my very short story.
It Is What It Is
Written for OLWG #412.
The three prompts are shown below.
This is my take.
Great White Plague
Written for Stream of Consciousness Saturday
where our prompt word is “sum” Here is my SoC.
When I was a very small child, one of my older cousins was suffering from a case of consumption, also know as tuberculosis. She was 16 years old and literally wasting away from this disease once called the “Great White Plague” due to the extremely pale complexion of those afflicted.
My cousin was always cold, requiring multiple blankets to keep warm, and time outside in the sun and fresh air, especially during the spring and summer. She was either in bed or reclining on a chaise lounge near the window in the parlor.
She looked like death. To the school age children in the house, this was a frightening time and they glanced at her with pity and wariness. They also avoided her, which was not very kind; some of them stayed away by spending extra time practicing their penmanship lessons and math sums.
At least twice each week my great-aunt Chesaria would stop by to administer her special “tonic”, light a candle and leave her mark on my cousin. The ritual never changed: first a dose of the safe-for-human-consumption red berry juice from the sumac plant. Next, Aunt Chesaria would draw a birdcage in blue ink on both of my cousin’s earlobes. The door to the birdcage was always drawn in the open position which allowed the evil spirits in my cousin’s body to find their way out. Finally, my great-aunt would light a tea candle and place it on my cousin’s chest to draw out the congestion. She would close the curtains and leave my cousin in the darkened room to allow her potions to do their magic.
Who knows if any of this strange “medicine” worked; our parents clung to the phrase “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. My cousin eventually recovered, because of or in spite of Aunt Chesaria’s administrations. She was never a robust woman after her ailment but she married and was healthy enough to give birth to nine children in just 12 years. She welcomed more than 40 grandchildren and a batch of great-grandchildren before passing away at the age of 86 just two years ago.
As a rule, Aunt Chesaria was summoned whenever anyone in the family or immediate vicinity became ill. She drew birdcages on my own earlobes during every childhood malady. But the question that remains unanswered is “Who took care of Aunt Chesaria when she became ill?” No one is around to fill in the blanks so I can only assume there was a witch doctor of sorts living in my neighborhood …. perhaps a black magic woman from Sumatra residing in the unassuming borough of The Bronx!
Presumptuous? Possibly. But fascinating, nonetheless.
NAR©2024
#SoCS
This is “Black Magic Woman” by Santana
All text, graphics and videos are copyright for The Sicilian Storyteller, The Elephant’s Trunk and The Rhythm Section and are not to be used without permission. NAR©2017-present.
Perfect Day For Planting
Written for Six Sentence Story where we are asked
to be creative in no more than six sentences
using the word “light”. This is my story.
We got a late start with spring cleaning in our yard, especially along the side of the house where our attached garage is located; even though the gardeners had cleared a lot of old shrubbery away for some new plants and bushes, it was just not meant to be after we were derailed by the sudden death of my husband’s twin brother on April 2 and me being sidelined since the first week of May by a major sinus infection (the heavy-duty antibiotics have left me “out of commission” and able to eat only extremely light meals or, at times, nothing at all).
In mid-May, we put in a couple of small white azaleas, relocated a baby rhododendron which wasn’t doing well in the far back corner of the yard and planted a bit of Blue Bugle and Lilies of the Valley for light ground cover (along the side of the house, not visible in this pic), but that’s as far as our broken spirits and depleted bodies would allow us go.
When Colette is here with us (Tuesdays, Thursdays and the occasional Saturday or Sunday) and the weather is good, she wants to be outside; hell, even if the weather isn’t good, she wants to be outside – a phenomenon about most children that escapes me as they (well, she definitely) seem to be impervious to heat or cold or rain or snow or wind – all the elements, times when Bill and I would prefer being inside nestled in our recliners with a lightweight blanket.
Speaking of nestled, we discovered that sparrows had made their nest in an old watering can in the corner of Colette’s playhouse; the mama and papa birds are very resourceful, building the new home in a location almost invisible to us, one which I discovered quite by accident when I heard a faint chirping noise coming from the playhouse and …. with my trusty flashlight in hand …. I went to take a peek but was immediately dive-bombed by a wildly protective kamikaze sparrow which, when it sped just inches by my head, had me believing it was a small bat …. terrifying!
Tuesday the temps soared to a scorching 86ºF – a leap from the mild low-70s of just the day before – so it was, according to Colette, the “perfect day for planting!” …. a concept I did not agree with thinking it was too hot and we would be in direct blazing sunlight for the entire time …. but I did not object (mainly because the child could not be dissuaded and it was far less taxing than yet another round of the Disney edition of Monopoly); armed with our faithful spades, Bill with his macho shovel and pitchfork, we planted another azalea along the side of the house, then Colette and I pulled all the weeds and detritus from the two ancient cement planters on either side of the bench you see in the above photo, replacing all of what was growing in them as haphazardly as Albert Einstein’s hair with two bright pink kalanchoe plants, then stood back to proudly bask in the glory of our gardening prowess.
Of course, manual labor such as that demands a reward and certainly not a monetary one which would be looked upon with disdain and confusion by a 4-year-old whose idea of recompense consists solely of instant gratification in the form of ice cream – the I-don’t-give-a-hoot-how-messy-I-get kind – and after getting Colette situated in her pink fairy chair, pinning up her waist-length hair and snapping on the 15-year-old bib we originally used for our first grandchild, Mckenna, I disappeared into the kitchen and returned with fudge-covered vanilla ice cream pops for Colette and Bill and a lemon ice for me; judging by the look on her face and the twinkling, totally satisfied light in her eyes (photo below), Colette was over the moon with her sweet, sloppy treat and …. you know …. she was right after all about it being the “perfect day for planting!”
NAR©2024
This is “Let It Grow” by Eric Clapton
All text, graphics and videos are copyright for The Sicilian Storyteller, The Elephant’s Trunk and The Rhythm Section and are not for use by anyone without permission. NAR©2017-present.
GUEST POST: I LISTEN – BY ROSEMARIE HOULIHAN
It’s always a thrill for me to open my page for guest posts and share some great writing. Today it’s a special honor to present a very meaningful and personal story written by my sister, Rosemarie Houlihan. I believe her words will touch your hearts as they did mine.
If I believed in saints, my mother would be one.
Mom had a very difficult life. Her mother was an invalid requiring daily injections and healthcare which my mother gave her. Yet, despite my grandmother’s fragile health, she imposed rules and regulations which my mother had to follow.
As a child my mother did all the heavy household jobs such as scrubbing the marble steps leading up to the first floor of their three-family house. Her education was limited to the eighth grade because she had to go to work to supplement her father’s income. Mom’s first year of work was as an unpaid apprentice dressmaker. She remained a dressmaker most of her life and her work was unparalleled.
When my parents married in 1939, they lived with my mother’s parents. My father and grandfather worked conflicting hours, so Mom was always cooking a meal for someone.
A baby boy was born in 1941 but he had kidney disease and died at home at the age of two. War had already broken out and my father was called to serve. Married men with children were not being drafted at the time so all Mom’s aunts had their husbands and babies home with them. Mom was bereft, at home, caring for her mother and mourning the loss of her baby. She would sit on her bed folding and unfolding her baby’s unused clothes. Her aunts saw what this was doing to Mom and convinced her to accompany them on an errand. While she was out, her uncles dismantled the crib and put all the baby’s things in storage. Mom was furious when she returned but this act of tough love probably saved her sanity.
I was born after my father returned from WWII and then exactly four years later, on my birthday, my sister was born.
Throughout her life Mom cared for someone who was sick. Her mother, her baby, her father and eventually her husband who was ill for more than thirty years. When my great-grandmother Mada Rana found herself in need of care, my mother took her into our home and looked after her as well.
I was so used to my mother always sewing at home, doing alterations for friends and neighbors, making clothes for me and my sister, I thought nothing of “volunteering” her to sew all the ladies’ costumes for a Gilbert & Sullivan production at our high school. As busy as Mom was, she got the job done and became the official costumer for all our plays until my sister graduated high school.
Despite all she did for us, I remember feeling “cheated” that my mom was not like other moms. She didn’t sit with us after school and chat; in fact, we never really “talked”. She was always working at something – cooking, sewing, cleaning.
Into her old age Mom continued caring for my father – and he was a handful! He was a good man but incapable of doing much. Still, Mom took great pride in taking care of Dad, calling it “her duty”. I’ve often wondered if Dad was truly incapable or did he feel inadequate because Mom could do anything she set her mind to? Mom was a powerhouse and Dad may have felt overwhelmed. Who knows what he might have been capable of if given half a chance? Maybe he could have helped Mom but she didn’t know how to share the load.
When Dad died, Mom aged abruptly; she became overwhelmed with day-to-day life. The change was shocking but when I think about it, she relaxed for the first time in her life and just let go.
Throughout her life Mom never complained. She never cried, never shouted – and everything stayed inside her, tightly sealed.
I am in a place now where I compare myself to Mom because my dear husband of 54 years has major health issues – not only physical but emotional. And I am failing miserably at caring for him.
I say I’m failing because I do not have the grace that my mother had. I cry, I yell and curse, chastise and apologize and resent him while always loving him. I start each day saying I will do better, but he rarely smiles or says “good morning, how are you” – and, of course, I take it personally which I know I shouldn’t.
But it hurts. The man I married and looked up to is facing his inability to live as he used to. His eyesight has failed him, his memory is poor, his ability to do anything physical, mechanical, technical – all gone. He feels diminished, sad, useless.
And I don’t know what to do.
Oh, I participate in a twice-monthly caregivers’ group and it is cathartic. I make promises to myself. And when I “talk” to my mother, the memories of her ability to cope often come to me. And I listen.
Do I believe in saints? Actually, I do.
RH © 2022
The Elephant's Trunk 