The Sweets of Life

Writer’s Cramp Prompt:

Use the following in your poem or story:

mini mystery

sixties evening

moonlight shadow

sweets

The Sweets of Life

Under the moonlight shadow four couples sat, each of us seeking a last moment of joy after an otherwise extremely gloomy day.

Carolyn had been the one to call us together. She claimed we needed a sixties evening with music by Bob Dylan, the Mamas and Papas, the Beatles, and a bit of the Beach Boys – the last of the four being one Sammy urged on us. No one else was a Beach Boy fan, but since it was important to her . . .

While listening to the Mamas and Papas, Carolyn started us off with a mini-mystery, the kind where pieces of paper told secrets about each of us and we had to guess whose secret it was. We ended up laughing, changed CD’s, ate some dinner, then traded a couple of jokes. For awhile we forgot the approaching tragedy.

Then Sammy demanded the Beach Boys. We groaned but put on her music. Despite the head-bobbing songs, melancholy descended.

“What the heck does that mean?” James asked, breaking into a light-hearted tune. “I get the part about the good vibrations, and I know all about those excitations," he said, tickling his wife, Stella, until she broke into a serious case of the giggles.

Everyone laughed, then listened harder for the line to come again.

“There,” James said. “Hear it?
When I look in her eyes
She goes with me to a Blossom World.
What's a Blossom World?”

It was strange how playing old tunes had taken us back into our teenage years. Carolyn and Stella were the youngest of the group – both in the early years of the senior zone. We called them the babies. The rest of us were white or bald-headed oldsters, none of whom were likely to see seventy again. Yet, when I closed my eyes, I saw myself time-walking, seeing myself there -- falling backwards, so to speak.

Thinking about that, I almost lost the train of conversation. I blinked and caught up.

“I love that part, “ Sammy said, giggling so hard I almost thought she’d been drinking beer, though none of us were. That was something we’d decided, wanting to revere each precious moment that remained.

Sammy stood up to make sure she had everyone’s attention. She usually did, to tell you the truth. Although she was edging eighty, with a figure like hers, we men couldn’t help still noticing when she wanted us to.

“Don’t you see," Sammy said. “She goes with me to a Blossom World. Why that’s totally apropos,” Sammy added, getting a laugh from the others for the way she’d lapsed into Valley Girl talk, stringing out the word “totally” with a raspy voice that still dripped sex -- just as in her cheerleader days.

“But what’s a Blossom World?” James asked again. “A drug trip?”

Several shook their heads.

“It means going mentally to whatever or wherever you want,” Paul clarified. The emphatic nod that accompanied Paul's explanation caused his jowls to jiggle back and forth, but even with that distraction I saw that everyone was thinking hard about what Paul had just said.

“We can go any WHEN we want,” Carolyn whispered.

That launched a heavy dose of reminiscing about our long ago's. We had lots of those between us, and each and every one of them seemed a better place to linger than thinking about what was heavy in our minds that evening.

Lots of good memories came forward, and we enjoyed the sampling, even began to see each other in new ways.

We were supposed to talk about our favorite memory, so I took the opportunity to give my wife, Bess, a special thrill. I told them how meeting Bess was the biggest delight of my life.

All the women sighed. The men didn’t, though; they glared at me. But it didn’t matter because my Bess smiled with a special brightness in her eyes as if all the sadness had just eased. She mouthed, “I love you.”

“Hey, you’re making the rest of us look bad,” Howard said, but he gave his wife a quick smooch, and the other men followed suit.

It was a good moment. Even amid the despondency of that evening – the sudden flow of love outweighed grief and fear.

After that it was John’s turn to talk. He took us back to his high school graduation. I couldn't imagine that being someone's highlight, but who was I to judge? The sweets of life are personal moments, the whens that we hold most special and dear. Kind of too bad, if you ask me, that it takes a radio announcement from the president of the United States to make us relive them, rethink them, savor them.

Which was why we'd all gathered together -- after hearing the world's scientists announce how our planet would be ending that night -- total destruction --annihilation.

Only it didn’t happen.

Call it a miracle, if you like; but despite all the data and failed missile blasts, the approaching comet completely missed us.

Of course, we didn’t know that then. The eight of us woke in the morning all misted by the dew. It was then we discovered that life was going to continue. Funny how you can go from doomed back to normal in 24 hours, but, I don't think you can ever reverse the emotions such an experience provides.

After talking it over, my friends and I decided to repeat the Sixties Evenings monthly just to listen to old songs, to talk about life -- about what’s important -- the whens, whys, and wheres.

Maybe it was almost dying – or it was that old Beach Boy song about Blossom World, but I learned something, something very important. It seems that you can go to Blossom World with your wife – or with a good group of friends. You can even journey there by yourself, just as long as you appreciate MOMENTS; for those moments of memory are (like love) the true sweets of life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was 1,000 words, but I think, after the judging, that I changed a couple of lines.