Succinctly Yours Week 239: Too Pretty to be Silly

Thank you to Grandma of Grandma’s Goulash for hosting Succinctly Yours. Participants are invited to write a story of 140 words or 140 characters or fewer based on the photo. This week’s bonus word is “evaporate.”

Beneath the amber autumn canopy, the elixir of leaf-spiced dew evaporated all tenseness, all toil…all time.   92

Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place. ~Iain Thomas, often mistakenly attributed to Kurt Vonnegut

Book Love

So sorry about my recent and unexpected blogcation. Every now and then I just get completely overwhelmed.

One thing that helped me get through the chaos, it turns out, was sitting down with LisaRicard Claro’s first book in the Fireflies Series, Love Built to Last. When the going gets tough, I often reward myself in ways that would make Pavlov himself proud, and this book felt like therapy (along with a little mall-medicating). In this case I did in fact salivate…over the story’s main character, Caleb Walker. Ooh, Caleb! How I wish he had a real-life, gracefully aging uncle!

Every now and then I read a book that draws me in like a hug from an old friend. I think about it when I’m not reading and plan how soon I’ll be able to relax and sink into the story. That was exactly how I felt about Love Built to Last.

Part of the magic of this story was that it explored not just the relationship between Maddie Kincaid and Caleb Walker, but a number of other relationships as well. Because this book was much more than a romance for me. It had quirky characters who were all connected. It had warmth, light, and nostalgia. It had a touch of Southern charm that brought back my two years living in Savannah, Georgia—yet it never felt regionally distinctive. It even had a story line about something else that's near and dear to my heart: rescue animals. It had a sense of humor, relatable scenes, authentic dialogue, and just enough heat to make the relationship between the main characters sizzle.

And it was just a whole lot of fun.

I’ve always admired Lisa’s clever and thought-provoking writing, but turns out she is also a master at crafting characters and their relationships. She captured small gestures and nuance so well that I was right there in the scene…and with no intention of leaving.

So how long before the next book in the Fireflies Series is out again?

Also, I am excited to report that my piece, “Powwow at CampSmooshabosom” is over at Sasee along with Linda O’Connell’s “Halloween Cats on the Prowl.” Be sure and stop by for a real Halloween treat!  

Writing is seduction.  ~Stephen King, On Writing

Succinctly Yours Week 223: Skunked

It’s time again for Succinctly Yours, a weekly meme made possible by the lovely Grandma of Grandma’s Goulash. Each week, Grandma posts a photo with the challenge to come up with a story of 140 words or 140 characters or fewer to go with it. The bonus word this week was “gargle.” Ouch, Grandma! My second offering is the true story, written in 140 words, that inspired the first offering, written in 140 characters. Phew. Or is that, pew?                                                                                                                         

Gladys planned to steep a dead skunk in the wading pool so she could gargle before meeting the handsome new dog next door. She wanted to be at her best; that Dane was great.  140

She was Buddy’s best girlfriend ever, a blonde shepherd mix named Amiga who appeared from time to time in our yard sporting a new bandana that signaled a recent bath. She was a big gal who could handle his obnoxiousness and keep him in line. When she needed to rid herself of that spring-fresh smell, she knew he could be counted on to dispatch the insult toute de suite. The two of them made a great pair, leaping and snuffling and gargling in each other’s slobber. Then she’d go prancing back home, bandana torn and covered in dog spit.

Once she got skunked along the way and was thoughtful enough to return the favor. It was a skunking-by-proxy. After two baths, I had to resort to V8 because I didn’t have tomato juice.

It had been love at first sniff.   140

True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in their worth and choice. ~Ben Jonson

There is a Very Fine Tree

I love trees this time of year. As if there weren’t already an ancient part of my soul that worships them in the first place.

My grandmother had a magnificent one that dominated her front yard. It was an alpine wonder: a mountainous blue evergreen straight out of a fairy tale forest with ancient, droopy boughs and an air of wisdom and permanence. I once hazarded a hero’s quest through its prickly bowers with some of the kids from her block, and inside we found a hidden fort carpeted in old needles. That was the first time I realized magic sometimes hides right out in the open. All we have to do is know where to look.

There’s a tree near here—a rare old mimosa that changes drastically in every season and takes up most of a corner lot, but it’s so enormous and exotically shaped that it might as well be a lone tree on an African savanna. I don’t drive by it often, but when I do I always check to make sure it’s still there. Because life just wouldn’t be right without touches of the unexpected like that.

But the one I always think of this time of year was outstanding in more ways than one. It was a towering old sassafras that appeared suddenly after a curve. In fall it would go from being merely majestic to being majestic and red. When I rounded the corner, it would suddenly pop in all its startling cranberry-colored glory. When I slowed my car—as this tree invariably made me do—I could see those vibrant little mitten-leaves waving in the chilly air.

When they tore it down for the new highway, I mourned. That was several years ago, and I still mourn whenever I make that turn.

Do you have a tree you worship?

Mr. Darcy: There was one very fine tree [in Lambton] that I remember.

Mrs. Gardner: On the green! By the smithy!

Mr. Darcy: The very one.

~Pride and Prejudice, 1995 BBC version, adapted by Andrew Davies from the Jane Austen novel of the same name

Down the Line

It was a dingy little storefront in a questionable part of town with a blue neon hand over the door. All it said was “Palm Reader.”

“We have to go!” my adventurous high school friend said. So of course we did. The medium looked like the lady down the street, only more tired, like this might be the end of her second shift. And she wasn’t named Madame-Somebody or Serenity or Natasha or even Lilith. It was something like Mrs. Palmer.

I refused to pay the full $20 for something I didn’t believe in. So Mrs. Palmer read half my life for ten bucks. No kidding. On-sale palm reading. Half my life for half the money.

Here is what you don’t want happening when a palm reader looks at your palm: she looked upset. She sort of had an upset-looking face, anyway, but I’m certain it got worse. More frowny.

And she told me something sort of negative. Then she said she was feeling tired and not very psychic, and she gave me a coupon to come back. I didn’t even get my full half-a-life. Of course I didn’t go back, either.

Much later, I was sorry I didn’t. The negative thing not only came true, but it came true in a big way. In fact, it could be said that it became the bane of my life for a long, long time.

Last weekend, my more adventurous friends exclaimed, “We have to go!” So of course I did. It was still $20 after all these years. Ironic that at my age, I paid for the whole life this time. But here’s the weird thing: I was a little nervous. Silly or not, I was scared that my palm, my fate and my life were tainted somehow.

Instead, this happier-looking palm reader—named Bree—immediately announced that I was a writer. “It’s like you have to write,” she said. I found myself looking at my clothing to see if I had on anything that might give it away. Not a hint. Then she told me that I’d been through some bad stuff, some of which she described so accurately that I felt shocked and raw. How odd it feels to have a stranger tell you your secrets!

But then she told me I’d changed course, and now I was back on track. She predicted some good things. Very good things. “The lines in the hand change, you know,” she said. Did she make that up? I don’t care.

When I was young and smart, I viewed the life I hadn’t yet lived through the safe, logical theory of black and white rules. Now that I am old and silly, I view life through the reality of experience—experience that tells me life is wild and colorful and risky and full of broken rules. I no longer worship logic because I no longer want to explain everything. Life is much more fun with a little mystery. The question is no longer, “What do I believe?” The question is now, “What makes me happy to believe?”

This does. Having adventurous friends who go to see palm readers makes life better. I love knowing even at this age, I have a new hand.

 Not all those who wander are lost. ~J. R. R. Tolkien

A Message in Coconut Sorbet

I smiled, standing there in the frozen food case, with a cloud of cold fogging the glass freezer doors and a flush of warmth rising up in my heart. Someone had oh-so-carefully taped a little message to the lid of a carton of coconut sorbet that I was getting ready to put into my grocery cart.

Every day may not be good, but there’s something good in every day.

I had heard the saying before, and now I liked it all over again. It seemed serendipitous that I had picked it, like a bright flower in a cold winter. It’s not that I was depressed or even upset in any way, but I love, love, love little messages from strangers. They remind me that there is kindness in the world that exists for the sake of kindness alone. They remind me that even small things can spread in a big way. They remind me we are all connected somehow.

But why the sorbet? Did this person think that anyone desperate enough to buy it must be depressed? And why the coconut?

I’ll never know. What I do know is that someone out there is sending inspirational messages to others. And that is always a treat.

Luminous beings are we…not this crude matter. ~Yoda