A surprise bicycle

Courtesy of Pixabay

Josh was going to be celebrating his thirteenth birthday Saturday. His mom was sentimental about him becoming a teenager but never let her emotions overflow in front of him. If she felt a lump in her throat ahead of the tears, she would pull weeds in the garden.

He and his mom had been on their own for seven years. She didn’t like to talk about the day she found the sticky note on the coffee maker. Josh did know the words ‘I am sorry. I don’t want to be married anymore’ meant his dad was gone.

He sometimes sat on the front steps before supper looking up and down the gravel road. Maybe his dad would come back home after work one night. Maybe he would miss them like they missed him, and he would be welcomed back into the family. Now that Josh was leaving his childhood behind, his hope of seeing his dad again was no bigger than the rabbit’s foot in his pocket.

As he walked toward home with his heavy backpack, he decided today was the day he would stop sitting on the porch watching for his dad. That was kid stuff, and he wanted to show mom how strong he was. He didn’t look up until he pulled the bills and cards from the mailbox. An old bicycle was leaning against the oak tree. He touched the handle bars and checked the tires. Josh could smell the fresh black paint, and the tires looked new.

His mom opened the screen door and asked if there was a card with the bike, but Josh nodded no and shrugged his shoulders. Mom smiled and wiped a tear away with her apron. Sitting on the front steps, she said, “Sit with me awhile, and I’ll tell you about the bicycle. It’s from your dad. Your grandfather gave the bicycle to your dad when he was about your age. The first time I met him was when he delivered Grammy’s groceries to the back door. I’m glad he came by and gave you his bicycle. It meant a lot to him until he was able to get a car. Maybe I can reach out to someone in his family to reconnect. Maybe he is ready to see us again, and we can work on healing our hurt. We may just be friends, but that’s a start. Would you like to see him?”

A smiling son put his arm around his mom’s shoulder and said, “We’re strong enough to try now. Let’s do it.”

© 2021 All Rights Reserved

My writing prompt was to write a story with a bicycle in it.

Faceless

Photo from Pixabay

He came to me in a dream more than once
A kind faceless man at church standing by the door
An usher complimenting me on my appearance

I realized later he was telling me
What I wanted to hear from my husband
In my dream life I received the attention I craved

© 2021 All Rights Reserved

Bookshelf of my mind

Tired of streaming videos of kittens and puppies
Birds and babies and flowers and old movies
Washing clothes and vacuuming bird feathers
To pass another average pandemic day

My mind began to wander through the cobwebs
Past the gray hair roots and microcomputer coils
And magnetic sound receivers inside my ears
Deeper, winding, dark into the library of my life

Pondering my choices while fingering the dusty volumes
Of comedy and history and romance and fairytales
Or maybe a biography or religious studies or a mystery
Yesterday’s movie makes me choose romance

Once blue this volume turned gray with faded gold letters
The pages yellowed with many corners turned down
But the title was familiar to me because I penned it
The B rth and Deat of Lov

© 2021 All Rights Reserved

I can hear

When I get discouraged because I’m going deaf,

I also think of the woman who has never heard a sound.

She has never heard the happy song of a bird in spring, but I have.

She has never heard God’s power displayed through thunder, but I have.

At the wedding altar, she didn’t hear her husband vow to “love, honor and cherish”, but I did.

She’ll never hear her child say, “Mama, I love you”, but I have.

She has never heard the testimony of a lost sinner who has just opened his heart to Christ, but I have.

She has never heard a choir of believers sing “Because He lives, I can face tomorrow”, but I have.

Thank the Lord I don’t need physical ears to hear the Holy Spirit.

He reminds me, with a song I’ve heard, that “Christ is all I need, Christ is all I need, all that I need.”

(Written in 1975, long before my cochlear implants)

Yard Food

Courtesy of Shutterstock

As a kid, I was fascinated with all the flowers, fruit trees and pretty weeds in our yard. Sometimes I sampled things around the neighborhood, too.

I loved to get a close view of all the innards of a tiger lily, daffodil, iris or a rose. The scents were intoxicating to a little girl, and I loved the variety of colors like my crayons only better. Daddy grew them all mainly in the front yard. His favorite was yellow roses, and he planted a bush by the corner of the house in the backyard.

Squatting down to see what grew naturally under the shrubs across the front of the house, I discovered a tiny green plant with pods. My best friend and I pulled a couple of pods off to smell them. A couple of cat sniffs determined no odor, so we chewed on them. They tasted a little sour, but it became a favorite when we had tea parties in the yard. Mama said it was sourgrass.

Our backyard fence that divided our yard from the neighbor’s had honeysuckle climbing all the way to the trench at the end. When the bees weren’t around, I loved to suck on honeysuckle. I don’t remember who taught me how.

A grumpy old lady on the corner had a crabapple tree. Ours was the first house on the street, so her backyard met the side of our front yard. When we kids got together, crowd mentality was king, and we wanted those crabapples. One of the brave ones would climb her fence and throw a few apples to us hoping she wouldn’t catch us. Well, apparently she was watching from her kitchen window once and came to the porch to scold us. After that day, we realized we had a problem. If someone missed catching the ball, and it went into her yard, she kept it. I guess I never told Mama because I don’t think I ever apologized.

My other best girlfriend, everyone needs two, and I went down to the field of electrical towers at the dead end of her street. She showed me wild blackberries growing, and we filled our pockets with them. Wonder if we even thought to wash them before eating until our tongues were purple?

Miss my childhood some days and being fearless to eat from the yard!

© 2024 All Rights Reserved

Special Valentine Friend

Maybe I haven’t expressed myself
And maybe you don’t know
But it’s hard to tell a very good friend
The things you want to show

Friendship is a possession dear
And you are dear to me
There is no other
Whose friendship’s so true

At this time of year,
We recognize our friends
This is my thoughtful recognition of you
May our friendship last to Eternity.

~ written in 1965, age 16, for my best male friend

© 2021 All Rights Reserved

Epitaph of Sage

Courtesy of Pexels

A broken blue clay pot and one wilted wildflower rest between two small tombstones.
Ashes of my hippie neighbor, Sage the artist, dust the graves.
The graves of his two wives, the recent and the ex.
He promised to love and cherish till death, and he did.
I stood a few moments lost in memories of his art, alcoholism, and watching him care for his sick wives.
As the sun peeked out from a gray cloud, I knelt and pushed three poppy seeds into the broken pot.

© 2022 All Rights Reserved

Where does love live?

Courtesy of Pixabay

The words you speak in tender moments

The touch of your fingertips on my face

The firm grip when you hold my hand

The tears on your cheeks in sympathy with mine

The respectful way you treat my family

The patience you exhibit when I make a mistake

The way you stand by me when others flee

That’s where love lives

© 2021 All Rights Reserved

A little charm

Vintage charm bracelet

Upon my recent relocation, I donated half my furniture, but my son encouraged me to keep the old cedar chest. I opened it at my new apartment and fingered through small items in the top tray. When I discovered my old charm bracelet, I decided to move it to my jewelry box. It needed cleaning and was a dated version of today’s charm bracelets, but the charms were still special to me. I closed the cedar chest and placed trays of my beautiful blooming violets on it in front of the bedroom window.

Since becoming a widow, I have treated myself to a nice dinner each year on my birthday. I decided to have lunch at O’Neill’s in a nearby town to check it out. The potato and leek soup was tasty, so I asked to view the dinner menu while I stayed for coffee.

As I glanced around the dining room, I noticed a man with faded red hair staring at me. When our eyes met, he smiled and walked over to my table. His first words surprised me. “You look very familiar. I’m from Atlanta originally. Maybe you lived there at some point in the past?” A little surprised that I would meet someone from home since I moved to another state, I responded, “Why, yes. Atlanta is my hometown.”

I asked him to join me, and we spent the next fifteen minutes trying to figure out how our paths had crossed back home. Just as I lifted my coffee cup for the last sip, he glanced at the charm bracelet on my wrist. His eyes widened as he exclaimed, “Now I know who you are. I gave you that tiny ring charm from my mother’s bracelet. You were my first girlfriend. Remember kindergarten? 1953?”

“No way! Paddy? Is it really you?”

I did not want this conversation to end. “Are you free to join me tonight for a special dinner here?”

“Sure. What’s the occasion?”

With a demure smile as I glanced into his Irish green eyes, “It’s the sixtieth anniversary of my fifth birthday, Paddy.”

© 2020 princess2ears

A final kiss

Courtesy of Pixabay

When we kissed goodbye, a final kiss it was. Not a gentle touch but a salty caress of tear-stained lips.

I licked my mouth to taste your goodbye as I watched your silhouette fade away into the night.

Walking home alone, the heavens cried with me. I did not even care that I got wet. Soaking in my emotions.

I wish I could have saved your tears. I wish there had been no tears at all.

©️ 2020 princess2ears