A warm breeze pulled at a flurry of leaves that responded by floating down like children pouring out of the doors for recess. A scattering, having fallen some days before, had already gained their coppery, crunchy coat. Geese, not yet in a hurry, flew across the mild blue of sky. Other birds bunched and spread and bunched again in an artistic, undulating swirl.

Finding the balmy weather warmer than she’d anticipated, Mina unbuttoned her barn coat. It was a present received just in the last week from her neighbor for no good reason, though she was glad such givers existed. The neighbor thrifted at least once a week, and the coat was a find she said she couldn’t pass up. But it was too small for her, so the note attached to it said. Mina, I hope this fits. I found it a bit small, but such a good find!

Mina was on her bi-weekly morning walk to nowhere in particular, with little crossing her mind other than a fleeting admiration of her surroundings. It was, she supposed, a gift of the Almighty to folks like her – ones with not much to offer other than an unwelcome opinion.

She rounded a corner and sat on a bench that had been placed partly out of love and partly out of obligation by the city council two years ago. In grateful memory of Virgil Hanson for outstanding volunteerism.

She’d known him for thrity years. Nice guy. Never had much to say. But she was glad for a place to sit before moving on. A paperclip by her shoe caught her eye as she pushed off the wooden seat to leave. She picked it up, sat back down, and looked at it. It was unusual – a grasshopper was formed at the top – and the whole of the clip was slightly dirty. She couldn’t have said why she slipped it in her pocket.

A bell tinkled as she peeked into the bakery on her way home. It – the bakery – had only been around since May. La Boulangerie-Pâtisserie was written in a flourish on a sign above the door. Before today, she hadn’t taken the time to check it out, but the mouthwatering aroma that hit her the minute she stepped over the threshold, told her it was her loss. She walked out ten minutes later with croissants and a lovely loaf of bread baked fresh that morning.

The following day’s sun had just found its place over the horizon, as she sat on her porch and drank her first cup of tea. The weather had not yet turned, and warmth in the Fall was hard for her to resist. She bit into her almond croissant. Mmm. Even the day after, it was melt-in-your-mouth delicious.

Her mind mulled over the news; national and global, civic and familial, good and unfortunate. She waved at someone walking by, and drank her tea to the bottom of the cup. Lifting a stack of papers from the small table next to her, she began sorting through them, dropped one, then another as she bent to pick up the first one. Mina remembered the old paperclip and reached into her coat pocket, pulling it out. Ah. There. An old, dirty paperclip did just as well as one fresh out of the box. What needed holding together held. Mission accomplished!

And then she went to vote.

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It should’ve been here by now. I glanced at my watch, then at the giant depot clock, then at the arrivals and departures screens. A too-loud sigh escaped my lips. I’d planned for my trip – researched, studied, bought the tickets and items and clothes tucked safely in a bag I’d purchased especially for the journey. Now I waited. And waited. I had waited three hours and 5 minutes longer than anticiptated to be exact. I’d read through four magazines: 1 interior design, 1 architectural design, and 2 political rags; Chatted with a stranger for two minutes; Purchased a granola bar from the vending machine.

A clamor arose from a small crowd near the doors. I craned my neck to see if my train had pulled up, but no. The man I had chatted with for 2 minutes walked over to me from the group.

“A bunch of us are going into town for a decent lunch. Care to join us?”

“What if the train comes while we’re away?” I asked, pointing to the arrivals and departures screen.

The crowd was pushing through the doors now, and he started toward them.

“After all this time? And so many of us having waited?” he called over his shoulder.

I considered.

“Besides,” he reasoned, “even if it did come, there are so many of us, and we’re just stepping out for two shakes. I doubt it would leave us behind.”

It made sense. I trotted to catch up to everyone.

The diner was a block and a half away. I ordered a roast beef commercial and it was served by a chubby waitress named Allura. Oh this! This was what I needed. I was already in better spirits as was the crowd around me.

I took my first bite. The train whistle blew. I jumped up and was out the door in three seconds. I could feel the crowd running behind me. We shouted and ran like mad. And the train pulled away.

Story prompt: Matthew 25:1-13; taylor-beach-xi0OWUlTfso-unsplash-scaled.jpg; brian-suman-8eId7mS_FCY-unsplash-scaled.jpg

Two weeks following my last letter, I received one from Andrew Cordell, Esq. requesting a meeting. I took a week off. The meeting apprised me of Ginn’s death. She had previously made arrangements for no funeral and a quiet burial. I fervently wished I had broached the subject, but I had thought there were more years, more summers, more time. As I wiped my tears (tears that seemed to have no end to them), Mr. Cordell further informed me that I was the single recipient of all of Ginn’s earthly possessions. Questions swirled in my mind; questions Mr. Cordell could not answer. I signed papers he placed in front of me with barely a glance.

I’d been to Ginn’s house the past summer, of course, but this time as I crossed the threshold, I felt as I had many years before and almost expected her to peek her head out of the kitchen door with two cookies in her hand. At first I just sat at the kitchen table imagining her sitting there across from me. At last I shook myself, and began the slow process of sorting through her things. It appeared to me that she had rid herself of some things over the years, and my task wasn’t at all overwhelming. I was able to bag and box much of it within two days. I set aside a few things I recalled from my childhood; mementos of happy days.

In the evenings, I made myself a glass of lemonade and sat out on her front porch swing, reminiscing of our time together and of our conversations varying wildly from fire engines to flowers, Harpo Marx to heaven; then later conversations with so much talk of heaven; in Ginn’s words, “the restored Eden”. It gave me some comfort thinking about her exploring the truly beautiful and important things there.

I slept in her bed at night. Perhaps to some it might seem morbid. To me, it felt just right. In fact, one night I dreamed she was standing next to it, smiling at me and I awoke with tears on my face.

The day after that dream, I sorted through her desk drawers and came upon a very large envelope full of legal documents; with her name and also – surprisingly – with my name. As I read through the papers, it appeared that her parents had gotten over their disappointment of her pursuing work in the entertainment industry and left her the family wealth: stocks, bonds, several bank accounts (one overseas), and a house on the Cape. It felt a bit overwhelming and I began to understand why she embraced a common life.

I was done, actually; done with sorting and boxing and bagging, with going through the things from a life filled with experiences and stories and homespun philosophy. And as I sat on the porch swing wondering what to do with her furniture, it occurred to me I could stay. I’d missed this little town when we had moved. My eyes roamed over the house and yard (and, yes, profusion of flowers) and I thought how I would prefer a house to my apartment. I went back inside and penned my resignation that night.

The day after, I cleaned the house to within an inch of its existence. That’s when I discovered a small cubby hole in the hallway by Ginn’s bedroom. A memory tugged. Yes! I recalled loving it when I was three years old. Ginn had laughed, and said maybe I could explore it another day. But I never did. And later we’d moved. I smiled to myself at the thought it took so many years to “explore” the little thing. It was dark – I would need a flashlight – but I reached in and knocked over something inside. Tinny.

Having retrieved a flashlight, I pulled out a 7 inch cylinder. Ah! Inside were two surprisingly well-preserved sugar cookies. Dear old Ginn. And a cigar. Smoking it would’ve probably made me sick, but I resolved to keep it on display. It deserved the remembering.

There were rolled up papers, too, tied with a velvet ribbon that reminded me of the velvet ropes in a movie theater. I unrolled them and my breath caught. They were adoption papers along with a birth certificate and additional information. Ginn was listed as the mother. There was no name for the father. My parents’ names were listed as the adoptive parents. And – I read it over once, twice, ten times – the birth date was mine.

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I found her at the town’s old folks’ home. That’s what everyone called it when I was a child, and that’s what most people still called it. The large Victorian house with an abundance of rocking chairs on its wrap-around porch had a dignified sign at the front of the property reading Sunset Haven. I asked at the front desk, and was directed to room 1.

I knocked lightly and had barely set foot over the threshold, when Ginn sailed over to me and, letting her cane fall to the floor, wrapped her arms around me. Oh it was good to see her! I hadn’t guessed how good. It was beyond good. I picked up her cane, offered my arm and we soon found ourselves rocking away on the wrap-around porch.

She insisted I fill her in on my life before sharing anything herself, so I did, but not before pulling some sugar cookies from my purse. We had a good laugh over that. They were every bit as good as the ones we’d enjoyed long ago, if I do say so myself. I told her I’d sent some mail to her that unfortunately hadn’t reached her.

Then she told me about a pretty bad fall which had landed her in the hospital for a hip replacement. The hospital had insisted she stay somewhere before she went home, so here she was and had been ever since. In the name of care, some institutions – even families, I suppose – deny a person’s own desires. And the efforts given and the decisions made are not as much for the person as for the person making them. She knew it and I knew it and the hospital and nursing home knew it. It was one of those things everyone knows and no one admits. We sat in silence for awhile. I don’t know what she was thinking, but I was pondering over why people think it’s better to be safe and sad than to live a life of contentment with some risk. All she said was,  “I want to go home.”

Then, in a moment of wild abandon, we told the person at the desk we were going on an outing.

Ginn’s house was just as I remembered. What an afternoon we had! Well, it was actually more than an afternoon. We managed to get permission for an overnight, then two, then a week, and eventually got the permission she needed to move back home.

I stayed the summer, making sugar cookies from her hand-written recipe card and eating beef stew that no one made like Ginn. She regaled me with stories from her time in the entertainment business and I told her stories of the children in my kindergarten classes. We planted a profuse garden with more flowers than vegetables, and I began to understand why those conversations of long ago included flowers. I understood, too, why she hadn’t minded a weathered house. She’d grown up wanting for nothing, left her two disappointed parents to pursue something as frivolous as entertainment, and had discovered the common life was the best kind of life.

“Oh how we all yearn,” she said. “We want what is pretty and what makes us feel important. But it seems to me that in doing so, we miss what is truly beautiful and important.”

She didn’t elaborate. I painted her house anyway.

I asked her why she smoked one cigar every evening. All she would say is that it was her special time for memories. So I gave her that and pulled weeds in the garden while her mind drifted to people and places all her own.

We spent some time every day on the porch swing and talked of everything from flowers to fire engines and Harpo Marx to heaven. Only now she spoke less of Harpo and more of heaven or, in her words, “the restored Eden”. Our descriptions impressed even ourselves and there was never too much in the describing because, we concluded, heaven is so expansive our words were only like a single droplet in an ocean.

The summer went too fast, and soon it was time for me to attend school meetings and parent meetings and student meetings. We promised each other to keep in touch. And we did through long, newsy letters. Then one spring day her letters stopped coming and I discovered some things Ginn had left unsaid.

to be continued . . .

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I sat back on my knees and thought, tinny. That was the best I could come up with. My mind was so muddled from the recent state of affairs that clear thinking, much less accurate description was a degree of okay at best.

For the better part of a week I’d been going through a house that suddenly belonged to me. It was someone’s will – a neighbor who I affectionately remembered from my very young childhood – that bequeathed me her house. She, as I recalled, wore what they used to call a house dress every single day. Never pants, but in that time no self-respecting woman ever did wear pants. I looked down at my by now filthy jeans and thought an apology to her. Her name was Virginia, though she had allowed me to call her Ginn because at age three one syllable was easier for me than three.

She was short and wrinkled and smoked one cigar every evening. She always had sugar cookies in a jar on her kitchen counter. Her house was, even then, weathered: a white clapboard with green trim and a front porch with a swing that held two or three depending on the size of a person.

I wandered over most days, walked in uninvited, and she would peek her head out of the kitchen door with two cookies in her hand (one for me and one for herself) and a small glass of lemonade like she’d been expecting me. We would enjoy the snack at the kitchen table, then move outside and sit on the porch swing.

Our topics of conversation varied wildly from fire engines to flowers, Harpo Marx to heaven. Harpo, Ginn had commented, wasn’t as quiet as everyone thought. She’d met him when she was a performer within the entertainment community. When she talked about him, my three-year old self wondered if he might have been an unrequited crush, but all she would conclude is that after he died, his wife had donated his harps to Israel. Anytime conversation wandered to Harpo, we’d sit in silence for awhile so she could, I suppose, let memory have its way. Or maybe not. My three-year-old self knew less than nothing about such things. Maybe she was waiting for me to leave so she could eat another cookie.

But besides harps and fire engines, we did, I think, have some philosophical heart-to-hearts. For instance, one time I’d been recounting a disappointment and seemingly out of the blue Ginn had remarked, “Sometimes a person would rather hide who she is. It’s easier.” She bit her lip, then looked down at me, “But easier isn’t necessarily the best choice. You understand?” I’d nodded, though my comprehension of her comment was surface at best.

My family had moved when I was six. I’d gone next door for one more wild chat and stayed until sunset. I’d hugged her tight and she’d hugged me tighter. That was the last I saw of her. I’d asked my mother one time if we could go back to visit Ginn, but she said she couldn’t imagine why and that was that. I did not argue because arguments with my mother always ended in me losing and feeling as though I should apologize, though to this day, I don’t know why. So I chose what was easier and didn’t argue.

After high school, I took a filing job at the courthouse downtown. Then I moved, went to college, and became a kindergarten teacher. Sometimes I thought about Ginn and how small I must have seemed to her even up until the time my family moved away. I sent a few cards to her address, but they were returned. Then one summer, I decided to find out why my cards had been returned and what had happened to Ginn.

to be continued . . .

Image: considerate-agency-Mb1wyoOquSg-unsplash-scaled.jpg; pexels-kate-l-2149358429-31116128-1-scaled.jpg; any; this story is fictional and any resemblance to an even or character living or dead is coincidental.

I don’t normally call woodpeckers stupid. I don’t. But the incessant ringing of my doorbell for more days than I care to admit had me on the verge of either name-calling or digging my Daisy BB gun out of the bin under my bed where I keep my winter sweaters.

I figured out the inconvenient bell wasn’t a mischievous sixth grader when I detected a small hole in the push button. The next time I examined it, the hole had grown along with the ding dong ding dong ding dong which stopped every time I placed my hand on the doorknob. Of course it did. Any movement on my part probably sounded like it was coming through a bullhorn to the bird who could hear the little sounds of insects

To be fair, the few glimpses I caught of it showed that it was a cute little thing – not one of those huge woodpeckers, but a respectable bird. Still. One cannot hear a doorbell ring throughout the day without being set on edge. My eye was beginning to twitch.

I gave the situation plenty of thought. I had plenty of time because I work remotely – unfortunately in the current situation. Although I wasn’t ready to become a falconer, (which, what would they do, anyway, bring me a mouse?) I knew a hawk might go to war for me. But I had no idea how to attract a hawk to dispense of my doorbell nemesis. I was reticent to use my aforementioned BB gun because of my sign neighbor. I call her that due to the always present signs she has in her yard letting the neighborhood know what we should or shouldn’t think. The woman loved a good cause whether the rest of us did or not. And I was pretty sure my use of BBs would lead to her posting another sign and maybe having heart palpitations which I didn’t want to be responsible for. If only the woodpecker had chosen her doorbell!

Wait-a-minute! The idea that popped into my mind could lead to trouble or it could lead to peace and quiet. I chose to believe what I wanted to believe.

That afternoon I took a walk around the neighborhood and nonchalantly (and in my mind surreptitiously) tossed some blueberries toward my neighbor’s latest sign. When I got back home I made a little trail of berries from below my doorbell over as far as I dared to my neighbor’s yard. I thought maybe I spied Woody (as I’d begun to think of him) hopping around them, but I couldn’t be certain. The bird seemed to make a game of evading me.

I picked up stray pinecones here and there and smeared some peanut butter and birdseed on one. If I was a sports announcer, I would’ve called my pitch high and wide; but I got better with each toss. Don’t judge. It isn’t littering when it’s nature.

Maybe it was my imagination or perhaps I was learning to tune them out, but the ringing of the doorbell seemed to be decreasing. And in a month’s time Woody had discovered a new favorite, I bought a new doorbell, and my neighbor? Well let’s just say she’s found a new cause.

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Spring was just on the other side of the threshold: icy rain on this side and sudden sun with warm petrichor on the other. He thought, as he clicked the fob of his Subaru, that his impatience for indifferent weather – weather without event – had reached its peak in the last week. Maybe it wasn’t just the weather. And it was due to his restiveness that he had decided to drive out (way out) into the country on roads that would take him out of the city’s dirty curbs and unshoveled slush.

A couple of hours led him to a small cemetery with not quite twenty gravestones showing varying degrees of weathering. But it was through the quiet site to the hill beyond it that he ventured. He descended a steep embankment and came to a stream recently released from the restrictions of ice and snow as it rushed and gurgled over cold rocks and downed branches.

Released! What a good, good word. He reached down and splashed the cold water with his hand, then yanked it out

quickly. It was freezing cold, yet pure and clear; and he supposed that’s what release from whatever burden or chain one wore, would feel like: bracing, maybe not even appealing at first, but then? Then the purity of freedom would race through his veins and into his very soul.

The afternoon spent itself as he thought over what that meant. He had a vague awareness of shemita, and, of course, a closer understanding of his own burdens and unmet desires and asked Almighty God above for such a release from something he couldn’t even name.

A cold raindrop fell, then another and another. He rubbed his arms and slipped on some gloves from his jacket pocket, then scrambled up the hill to his car. The rain changed from polite drops to the splat of threatening snow, and as he drove back to the bleakness of the city, he pondered the amount of time it took the stream to move from restriction to release.

The afternoon had done something to his tired spirit and somehow  rubbed away a little of clouded vision that had been his uninvited companion for too long. A muted future lost just a bit of its indifference. Burdens? Chains? Unseen restrictions? They would be gone! He didn’t know when or how long it would take, but he could even now feel the excitement of the early spring stream. And life again would see cleansing. Freedom. Release!

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Boy, this was going to be good. He’d thought it over for years. It would be the home of a lifetime! He had begun with the foundation – solid and broad enough to hold whatever he dreamed up. And dream he did. Along the top of the foundation, he engraved a logo he used in his business; a mark of ownership consisting of interlocking half-circles.

Eight steps led up to the portico (portico!), and he made sure the first story had a stone-look design. Three arched windows were placed on either side of the arched entry door. They were perfect for letting in sunlight and sparkles. For years, he’d admired the porte-cocheres off mansions on Summit Avenue. His house must have one, so he added one at the side of the house.

The second story was peppered with windows: Six on each side of the building – twenty-four in all. Next came an outdoor winding staircase. How he’d thought of it, he couldn’t say, but he prided himself on the creativity he’d used in its design.

At one point – as he munched on a grilled cheese and red pepper sandwich – he decided his house (house? In his heart he began thinking of it as a castle! Didn’t they say a man’s home was his castle?) needed a third story. He made certain the exterior matched the second story, and it did with precision.

He had thought it was complete, but as he observed it from a distance, he decided it needed turrets. So what if such things were from another era? He would have them! And he did, placing one at each corner of the structure. They would be perfect for looking at things going on outside. He imagined a window seat or low desk would be just the thing for doing so.

Finally it was complete. His gaze followed every inch of the structure. He recalled the initial foundation and how excited he’d been with engravings along the top of the base. And he loved the arches on the first story! He’d always been partial to them and was glad they could be included. His eyes moved to the very top. No, not the roofline, although its asymmetrical silhouette made him smile. Sometimes it was brilliant to go against expectation, and this was one of those times. But the top – the points of the turrets . . . Well, the depth of his satisfaction could not be described.

He sat in a chair, soaking in the design with admiration. It was everything he’d ever imagined and more. He was tempted to say it was the accomplishment of a lifetime!

And just after the sun had set in a brilliant blaze of oranges, pinks, and gold until the sky faded to dusky blue, the ocean’s waves which kept time with  their soothing sound rose to high tide and washed it all away.

Image: joe-dudeck-5cLevaOKG5U-unsplash-scaled.jpg; Matthew 7:24-27