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 |   Reflections and ruminations from a modern day Alice - Life is Wonderland |
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Reflections and ruminations from a modern day Alice - Life is Wonderland  Welcome to the place were I chronicle my own falls down dark holes and adventures chasing white rabbits! Come on In, Take a Bite, You Never Know What You May Find... "Curiouser and curiouser." Alice in Wonderland    |
| 30-Day Blogging Challenge-Day 25 prompt On October 25, 1616, the Dutch discovered Australia. Write a journal entry as one of the explorers The rich, red clay was caked inches deep on the toes of my hiking boots. I had walked for a few miles along a rough cut path that looked like a blood-stained artery against the thick-bodied brush and scrub that seem to cover every other space. The land wasn't so much forested as it was consumed by the wild and dense vegetation that had begun at the edge of the beach. The white, soft sand dropping away suddenly, replaced by the strange red clay, ever thickening trees and low creeping scrubs. I'd scarcely been walking for three minutes and already the path was narrowing under my boots. I could no long hear the sounds of the sea birds and pounding surf. There was an odd silence, as if the wild wood around me was absorbing all ambient sound. The trees, brittle wooden structures that seemed to wind and bend against the elements, grew taller and broader. I could discern some tracks in the red power of the earth, something with oddly toe-ed feet and another that looked to be made by a side-winding serpent. The silence around me was shattered by a sudden crashing of tree limbs twenty feet ahead of me. I caught my breath as a creature leapt from the undergrowth and stood, looking at me in the middle of the path. It was a large animal with red fur covering its broad and thick body. It stood nearly as tall as me,with a long,heavily muscled tail it seemed to rock back on for balance. It had a surprising delicate head and feminine face head with large, brown eyes that turned to take me in. Then with a quick flick of it's large and donkey-like tuffed ears, it was gone, thundering away into the woods. This place was only beginning to amaze me. There was an entire world to be explored beyond the lagoons and beaches, a wonderland of red clay and giant jumping beasts! |
| 30-Day Blogging Challenge - Oct 17th Share a list of your top 5 favorite books and give us a short blurb on each. I have to start off by stating that these five are in no particular order. I have always loved to read and over the years, I have found that these five books have stayed with me the most among the hundreds I have digested over the years. "Salem's Lot" was Stephen King's 2nd published novel and though I read most of his work, this early novel has never been unseated as my favorite. The novel takes place in Jerusalem, Maine. Writer Ben Mears returns to his hometown to discover that the townspeople are being systematically turned into vampires. It is wonderfully campy, borrowing on all those original, "bump in the night" fears from one's nightmare landscape. King's descriptive prowess is on full display here, making even the most predictable scenes read with razor edge tension. It is a classic good verses evil story that pits faith and conviction against fear and corruption. “You have forgotten the doctrine of your own church, is it not so? The cross… the bread and wine… the confessional… only symbols. Without faith, the cross is only wood, the bread baked wheat, the wine sour grapes.” Barlow, Salem's Lot Jim Lynch's "The Highest Tide" is an almost complete departure from my first choice. It tells the store of Miles O' Malley, a thirteen year old boy who battles insomnia by searching the tidal flats of Puget Sound for exotic sea specimens to sell. It is at the same time, about so much more. This is a coming of age story, set against the backdrop of a boy who finds a mysterious creature on the beach at night. At the same time Miles is making his discoveries, he is also dealing with the fear of his parent's impending divorce and a man-sized crush on the girl next door. At all times this book is sweet and sensitive but packs a really meaningful and engaging story. Lynch's descriptive phrasing is broadly appealing, especially for those who appreciate the ocean and its creatures. "A feisty entourage of purple shore crabs scurried alongside the snail, their oversized pinchers drawn like Uzis. I thought about grabbing the moon snail, but I knew that even after it squeezed inside its shell like some contortionist stunt, it would still hog too much room in my pack. So I noted where it was and moved on until I saw the blue flash. It wasn't truly flashing, but with moonlight bouncing off it that was the effect. I steadied my headlamp and closed in on a starfish that radiated blue, as if it had just been pulled from a kiln. But it wasn't just the color that jarred me. Its two lower legs clung strangely together in line with its top leg and perpendicular to its two side legs, making it stand out in the black mud like a blue crucifix." Miles, The Highest Tide "Of Love and Other Demons" by the amazing Colombia author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is the book that made me fall in love with words. Marquez's prose is so breathtaking beautiful, I can only imagine how much more compelling it would read in his native Spanish. The story is about a young girl, Sierva Maria, who is bitten by a rabid dog. She is sent to a monastery to presumably live out her days in isolation. She meets and begans a relationship with a young cleric there named Father Cayetano Delaura. It is a tormented love story that is ripe with beautiful anguish. And without giving his panic an opportunity, he unburdened himself of the dark truth that did not permit him to live. He confessed that every moment was filled with thoughts of her, that everything he ate and drank tasted of her, that she was his life, always and everywhere, as only God had the right and power to be, and that the supreme joy of his heart would be to die with her. He continued to speak without looking at her, with the same fluidity and passion as when he recited poetry, until it seemed to him that Sierva María was sleeping. But she was awake, her eyes, like those of a startled deer, fixed on him. She almost did not dare to ask: "And now?" "And now nothing," he said. "It is enough for me that you know." Peter Straub was another author I discovered at an early age. His novel "Ghost Story", was the first book that really scared me. It kept me up at night, literally. There is such an amazing story that kicks off with four men discussing the one tragic night and horrific mistake they all have in common. It is a tale that travels through decades with characters that climb right out the page and sit, waiting for you in the dark corners of your room. Both this movie, and Salem's Lot were made into movies...and neither film came anywhere close to being as good as these books were. Aptly titled, Ghost Story, this is the one you will compare all others too. From its ominous opening line, it grabs on and doesn't let go. “What was the worst thing you've ever done? I won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me...the most dreadful thing...” Peter Straub, Ghost Story My final entry to my top five is one of my favorite authors...James Lee Burke. While I have read all of his novels, "Tin Roof Blowdown" was my first introduction to this master storyteller. No writer can transport me to places better than Burke. His descriptive powers, in my opinion, are unrivaled. His characters are teeming with life and vitality. This particular novel kicks off with a shooting of two looters in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. This wasn't the first book to feature his recurring characters or the setting of Southern Lousiana, but it endeared Dave Robicheaux and his buddy Clet Pursell to me forever after. Burke has expertly crafted their characters and over the years, has given them lives that you can almost swear must exist outside the pages of his books. I repeated find myself reading a paragraph over just to more fully appreciate the care in which he has described a particular place or feeling. He is an absolute master of the craft. "MY WORST DREAMS have always contained images of brown water and fields of elephant grass and the downdraft of helicopter blades. The dreams are in color but they contain no sound, not of drowned voices in the river or the explosions under the hooches in the village we burned or the thropping of the Jolly Green and the gunships coming low and flat across the canopy, like insects pasted against a molten sun." Dave Robicheaux, Tin Roof Blowdown. There are so many other books that come close to making the cut that I can recommend. Like, Sara Gruen's "Water for Elephants", "Horns" by Joe Hill, anything by Greg Iles...If you loved the show Stranger Things, I would highly recommend you check out, "Summer of Night" by Dan Simmons. I could go on but this entry is already pretty long and I surely must have lost most of my readers by now...  ** Image ID #1774840 Unavailable **  |
| "Blogging Circle of Friends " DAY 2158: October 16, 2018 Prompt: October 16 is Dictionary Day . It commemorates the birth of Noah Webster (October 16, 1758), the Father of the American Dictionary. Do you prefer to use an online dictionary or a book dictionary? Why? I can't remember the last time I used a book dictionary...which makes me sad in some way. I typically do most of my writing at the computer now so I easily access the online dictionary whenever I need it. It is very convenient. I'm typically a holdout for actual physical books in every other way. I don't own a kindle or other electronic reader. I prefer book shops and libraries and of open a real book when I want to read. Yet when I am writing, I can't help the accessibility of the online dictionary. My free time available to devote to my writing is so limited, I have to use it all wisely. That makes stopping and fetching an actual dictionary impractical unfortunately. |
| 30-Day Blogging Challenge" October 16th Prompt: Share a list of your top 5 favorite songs and tell us why they’re your fave. I have been consumed by my sister's nuptials for almost two solid weeks and now that she's finally married, I feel like I can re-enter the blogging world once more. I've not been very active in the challenge but here is to hoping I can at least finish out the month strong now that all my commitments to everyone else have been satisfied. I have extremely varied musical tastes. My father was in a band and so classic rock has always been a cornerstone of my musical foundation. Santana and CCR and Jethro Tull still number among some of my favorite bands from my Dad's bass playing era. Over the years I've added many other acts to the roster, from a wide variety of genres. It is extremely difficult to pick my top 5 favorite tunes of all time...with only one or two standing out as clear front-runners and all the rest, falling into so many different categories that is it hard to compare favorites. I'll give it a whirl though starting with the one song that has been my absolute jam for as long as I can remember. Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" is an almost near perfect musical composition. The live version, with the drums and the pan-African ensemble including Youssou N' Dour is magnificent. It gives me chills every time I hear it and the lyrics are inspired poetry... "In your eyes The light the heat In your eyes I am complete In your eyes I see the doorway to a thousand churches In your eyes The resolution of all the fruitless searches" There couldn't be a more romantic and stirring refrain in my opinion. It has been covered so many times but nothing touches the Gabriel's original. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRSktm7GCmk Taking second place is a piece of classical music. Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy" from the Nutcracker. It makes me feel like Christmas inside every time I hear it. It builds and floats and bounces, I love how you can hear the individual instruments and it is the perfect accompaniment to a magical fairy with winter-dusted wings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rapf3g_XvCc And now it gets harder... Jimi Hendrix, "Little Wing" would be one I would have to include. My classic rock roots may be showing but there is something about this song that always brings me peace. The melding of Hendrix's guitar with his simple, fanciful lyrics just moves me, always have. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5Vki76x-EU I was a huge Concrete Blonde fan in college. Johnette Napolitano's distinctive voice remains one of most favorite ones today. Her haunting vocals on the song "Joey", just speak to me. There is a rawness to her that I love and that song in particular would end up being very poignant to my life later on when I would meet, love and lose my own "joey". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdpTcvSn8HQ There are so many other great songs...by amazing artists like Joss Stone, Santana, Jack White....my list is virtually endless! To be fair, my last slot isn't filled by one song. I'm going to cheat a little here and say rounding out my top five would be the soundtrack to "The Greatest Showman", composed by the incredibly talented duo of Joseph Trapanese and John Debney. The soundtrack is stirring, dynamic and fits the film like a seamless glove. There are so many great moments in the film that are supported perfectly by the original songs. The scene with Efron and Zendaya's trapeze routine to "Rewrite the Stars" is stunning in every way. The performance of "This is Me" by Keala Settle and the cast is a powerful anthem of pride and ferocity in the face of oppression. It is the song we can all relate to, it is a song that finds triumph in being different, in being oneself. I could go on...there are so many others. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwYRqbUn7zg That's the best I could do with only five entries, and even then I had to cheat a bit on the last one  |
| "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" Day 1752 October 3, 2018 Prompt: "The true painter strives to paint what can only be seen through his world." Andre Malraux Do you think this applies to writers and words as well as painters? Write anything you want about this. I had wanted to tackle today's prompts over lunch but I was greeted by a headline, which in turn, inspired a blog of a wholly different variety which took a surprising amount of time to get out...this one had to do my rage justice. I'm feel like I'm still suffering the aftershocks as I am trying to write this one. These days I rarely have the time to blog outside the prompts but when I do, it is usually because something has hurt or enraged me or otherwise affected me deeply enough to wake the muse. It is an important issue however, one that so many (far too many) women are dealing with in our world today. That blog can be found here: http://mdmaurice.blogspot.com/2018/10/what-she-remembers.html And fair warning, it contains adult themes and language that may trigger some women. Now back to the true painter... I believe some of the best writers write about things they know intimately. Their knowledge and authority gives their work an authenticity that is engaging for readers. As much as some writers are gifted and dedicated researchers, one can never learn about something enough to surpass actually living it. That being said, then there are wonderful writers who craft from imagination and fantasy. Roald Dahl crafted an eccentric madman in Willy Wonka that fascinated millions of readers. His descriptions of the chocolate river running through the factory or the inventive ways he dispatched the troublesome brats lent themselves to vivid images and left an indelible mark. In much the same way, Wonderland became a real place for me as a child, a marvelous up-side-down land where flamingos made excellent crochet mallets and a Red Queen ran amuck. Some writers strive to "paint" more than what can be seen and to do so with words is a fine craft indeed. "Blogging Circle of Friends " DAY 2145 October 3, 2018 Write a poem or story about your favorite autumn activity. Apple picking, pumpkin picking, carving, baking, going on foliage tours... you tell us. I seem to be writing an awful lot about autumn these days. I can't complain because I wake with delight on these frosty Fall mornings and look forward to the weekends full of seasonal traditions and activities. By far one of my most favorite things to do is go apple picking at a local orchard. It sits on top of a small hill and once the leaves chance, the views are really lovely. You ride the wagon to the designated self-picking areas and load up on a variety of apples. Of course the real treat are the apple cider donuts we get after. They are crispy on the outside, delicate and moist inside. They are sweet and leave a tasty residue of sugared cinnamon on your lips after consuming one. I love the piles of gourds and pumpkins and the tables of colorful mums set in rows. It is a near perfect seasonal destination. |
| 30-Day Blogging Challenge Oct. 3 Prompt: Do you speak a second language? If so, what inspired you to learn it? If not, what language are you interested in learning? Once upon a time I pursued Spanish, in part because I was involved with someone for whom Spanish was a first language. I had visions of conversing in his native tongue, raising bi-lingual children and exploring Mexico independently on my own. Time and reality soured the relationship and any of those bi-product dreams. I still loved the language, the ease of it, the way it rolled off my tongue. I did use it in real world applications and began to understand that, as a second language, Spanish was one of the more important ones to know for the practical purposes of living in a world where Spanish speakers were one of the most rapidly expanding demographic. I can understand a surprising amount of Spanish despite not using or studying it in decades, even more if I'm reading it. Today I am married to someone who speaks Turkish. It is much more difficult to master and even harder to use in an everyday applicable ways. I wish I had the time to devote to fluency. I wish I knew enough to be more than a clueless eavesdropper on my husband's conversations with friends and family. It is a language that sounds far more foreign than Spanish or French. It is hard to find familiarity which is intimidating for me. Perhaps one day I will have the time to devote to learning, at least a conversation version of my husband's native tongue. In the very least, I'd like to see my daughter develop the interest in learning, if nothing else, to be able to talk with her Grandmother on face time. I think it would be something that would deepen their already strong bond even more. |
| Admittedly I woke up in a bit of bad mood this morning. The day seemed it would be another rain-soaked drizzlier like so many others before it. I was already fighting fatigue and a blooming foulness when I signed on to yahoo news and saw the headline about our President mocking Christine Blasey Ford. In some ways perhaps I was already primed to have a bad reaction, I’m not sure. Normally I avoid clinking on political links that seem overtly sensationalized but, perhaps because I had myself been so recently triggered by Ms Ford’s testimony, I went ahead and did it this morning. https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-mocks-christine-blasey-ford-mississippi-rally-0... The US political machine, and Trump supporters near and dear to me, often try to convince me that the liberal media loves to malign and misquote him. I have to tell you that the unfavorable opinions I have come to hold about our President are not due to watching a biased news channel or listening to democratic senators take him to task over policies and principles. No, my opinions are formed exclusively and concretely by the words I hear coming from his own mouth. They are formed by his personal actions, by his arrogance, and by this, a seemingly default knee jerk reaction to rally his base and choose his own political agenda and fragile ego over common decency and respect. I understand that he is supporting his nominee. I will even allow that he feels an attack on his nomination is perceived as yet another attack on him and his administration by the Democrats and their political agenda. I will also concede that politics are always at play especially in the high stakes arena of the Supreme Court appointees. However, what kind of human being doesn’t watch Ms. Ford’s compelling testimony and not acknowledge that indeed, something traumatic happened to her? What kind of person sits through her account, unmoved? What kind of father, son, brother, husband…ignores her obvious discomfort and distress at recalling the details on an event that had so clear and profound effect on her life? What kind of leader ignores the pain of woman’s assault and questions her credibility to garner cheers on a public podium for political gain? There are many details Ms. Ford does not remember, this is true statement. It is the details she does recall though that tear and wound. She can remember some details with disturbing clarity – the hand over her mouth, the feeling of being over powered, the laughter. These are the details she can never forget. These are the memories that haunt her, lie in wait for her in the dark. These are the details that had to be dealt with professional help and dedication. These are the details that rise up in therapy like unwelcome intruders. These are the details she had to work hard to move past, to move on. This is how it is with sexual assault. We might not remember exact dates, we may be foggy on the timeline but we won’t ever forget some things. Some details will come back over and over again, even when we have never tried harder to pretend something didn’t happen. Some memories can always reside with us, buried long ago with our shame and our fear, only to be unwittingly triggered by the testimony of others. I could not tell you the date of my assault, even the day of the week. I’m also a little foggy on the events leading up to it. I might have had certainly had a drink myself. To this day, I’m not 100% sure how the situation so quickly morphed outside my control. However, I can tell you what I remember with startling, visceral clarity. I can tell you how the fear started. It was a slow burn in my gut that blossomed into a panic that rattled against my rib cage when I realized he was stronger than me and I could not get out from under him. I can tell you how he tasted of stale cigarettes and popcorn and the way my fingers got tangled in his blonde curls as I struggled against his advances. I can recall the way he turned into a stranger, his body taunt and unyielding, driven by one need. I remember the way I disappeared under him, became a non-person with no voice and no power of objection. He failed to hear or see me as anything other than a vessel to pour his rage and grief into. I remember the abrupt release, the dismissal and the almost immediate snoring that ripped through the room as I scrambled for my clothes. I can remember the pain of it, a brutal rawness I nursed for days after and the numbing fear that something inside me had been tore beyond repair. I don’t remember the walk back to my own room, only that I felt wrapped in a heavy blanket of shame with the hot whispers and his excited keening playing in my head and my burning ears like an obscene soundtrack. I remember the self-loathing and the shame, the guilt I placed on my own shoulders for being naïve and foolish. I remember wanting to forget everything. I had never wanted anything to disappear more than those minutes of my life. The reality of assault that President Trump doesn’t seem to understand is that the details you fail to recall do not erase those you can. The fact that you can’t remember dates or times, or the minutes leading up to an event, do not render that event untrue, they do not disqualify the experience as having happened. I don’t know if Mr. Kavanaugh is the one who assaulted Ms. Ford, but she seems to 100% believe he was. I can tell you first hand, the decades don’t erase the face of an assailant. I can tell you, someone absolutely hurt that woman. I don’t need her to tell me how she got to that place to know someone assaulted her there or that she was alone and she was afraid. I don’t need the time or the date to know that someone robbed her that summer of something she can never get back. My heart breaks for the details she can never forget and there is nothing political about a victim’s pain…ever. |
Blog City DAY 1751--October 2, 2018 Prompt: “Sometimes it is good to fly close to the flame, see and experience the heat, but then fly away again, to survive, to be wiser in the art of heat.”Robert Black What does “to fly close to the flame” remind you of? I used to have a friend who was an adrenaline junkie. He loved to live life close to the edge, a little to close to the flame. He would tell you it was because life was short, that you had to take chances to really experience life. He lived fast and hard. To his credit, he was a guy that was larger than life. He filled up a room with his sense of adventure and his mere physical presence. It would often make me question my more conservative choices made in my own journey of life...was I leaving something on the table? Was I playing it too safe and missing out on something? What I hadn't realized at the time that while he was chasing adventures, he was also running from his own demons. Those demons eventually caught up with him and he was lost too soon. Blogging Circle of Friends DAY 2144: October 2, 2018 Prompt: What is the best thing about October? October is a month ripe with lovely things from pumpkin patches and hayrides to harvest festivals and full moons. By far the best thing October offers are those chilly autumn nights when the sky is that mysterious shade of purple and the bonfires crackle and spark sending the embers up into the heavens. They are the kind of evenings that invite you to sit around, wrapped in oversized sweatshirts sipping goblets of red wine or hard cider, laughing with friends. Those the the nights that feel full of promise, the harbingers for the holiday season to come. Halloween would be a close second - a magical night when you can be something creepy, sexy, scary....whatever inspires you, for a few brief hours. It is a wonderful month, one of my most favorites here in my corner of the world. |
| 30-Day Blogging Challenge October 2 Prompt: We all have ‘pet-peeves’. Write about some of yours! As I am multi-tasking through my morning, I think I may have picked up a few more "pet-peeves" courtesy of some of my coworkers.  In my line of work it is very important to have an electronic record of what I do. There are many moving parts and I wear a lot of different hats. I am also a type A so if I delegate something, I like to be absolutely sure it will be done. I pride myself on crafting very clear and responsive emails, especially when I am explaining something or giving instructions. I absolutely loathe it when I take the time and the care to do that and the person decides to call me and proceeds to ask all the questions I've just painstakingly answered in electronic ink. Either they have skimmed the email or just ignored it all together or lack the patience to give it the attention it warrants....in any case, it makes me crazy. There is one co-worker in particular who regularly makes a habit of this and her aloof apology after the fact makes me want to throw my stapler at her. I should have more patience but the amount of time my job demands, I simply can't tolerate the level at which this constantly happens to me. I have a family member who is also very "judge-y". She is someone whom I am constantly on edge with. She is quick to pass judgement, even on strangers, for their decisions, opinions and actions. It is difficult to deal with her because she will always be the first one to complain about anything. Rarely in life is anything executed perfectly. A person can't please everyone all the time, but she is the kind of person one can never please - any of the time sadly. Lastly, and this is closely tied to the current state of the country....people who try to convert you with their posts, politics, their religions, talking heads that are not interested in a debate or intelligent back and forth conversation of mutual respect. There are a lot of those people on social media. It is often very discouraging, especially for someone like me who takes care to keep my own politics and personal beliefs close to the vest out of respect for others. I'm sure there are more but those, at the moment, seem to be the top three! |
| "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" DAY 1750--October 1, 2018 Prompt: On October 1, 959, Edgar I, the Peaceful, became the king of all England. What do you think about the title of Peaceful, and in which ways are you peaceful? The title of "Peaceful" evokes images of a cloud-born deity that floats above the chaos, the picture of serenity. I feel like my mind is in constant motion, whirling and bouncing with agitation and anxiety. I feel as if I am rarely, truly at peace. I have to work hard to remember the last time I felt myself in a peaceful state. The dogs typically wake me up in those dim hours before sunrise. I have a few moments to myself before the bustle of the day takes over and I have to go upstairs and pry my daughter from the bed, into her school uniform and out the door. In those rare moments, I sometimes take pause to look out over our new backyard. This one particular moment, I looked out to find a family of deer standing just inside the tree line at the back of our property. They just stared me with their dark doe eyes, flicking their white tails while my dog keened and whined at them from the window. They looked peaceful, I felt at peace watching them. After a few minutes, they bounded off into the woods. The closest I come to a sustained feeling of peace would be on our annual vacation to Truro and Provincetown. It is a three hour ride and the closer I get to the national seashore, I can feel the peace start to roll in with each deep breathe of the briny air. Looking out over the sea forest landscape of outer cape, brings me a serenity I don't get anywhere else. If there is a place I am most peaceful, it is there, standing dwarfed by the dunes at the edge of the land, looking out at the wide, blue Atlantic before me. Blogging Circle of Friends DAY 2143: October 1, 2018 Prompt: October 1 is the International Day for the Elderly, which was designated by the United Nations General Assembly in 1990. Use this international holiday to inspire your blog post. Oma sat, clutching her coffee cup and feeling grateful for marginal relief the hot tea inside was giving her arthritic fingers. The backyard was a bustle of activity this afternoon and she was enjoying watching all the drama play out. The little black bird was flitting between three of the colorful gourd nests hanging at the rear of her fish pond. He had managed to establish a female in each, and he frantically buzzed between his little mistresses as they tended their eggs. He raced from one to the next, delivering twigs and bits of straw to his budding families. Oma clicked her tongue, "well sir, you have been very busy..." she admonished playfully. She stood up, the brittle muscles in her thighs protesting, to get a better look at her tabby cat. He had strolled into the yard and was now slowly stalking something in grass to the right of her pond. Oma thought of the bunny rabbit she'd seen earlier that morning. Dismayed by the thought of her hunter capturing a baby bunny, she tapped on the glass with one gnarled finger. The cat looked up sharply in her direction. She waggled the finger at him, adding a stern shake of her head for good measure. The cat took the hint and took off in search of less offensive prey. Oma was feeling tired. She was about to leave her window seat when a doe stepped from the tree line at the back of her yard. The graceful animal stepped warily, her lithe body weaving around the young trees, making her way to the pond for a drink. She stared, her large brown eyes making contact with Oma's before she bent her long neck and drank. Oma marveled at her quiet beauty and at her grace and agility when moments later, she bounded away from the pond and back across the yard. It had been many years since she could move with such speed. She had been a dancer once. Oma had been able to clear half the stage with leaps and spins that would have rivaled that of even a young doe. Oma had been a prima ballerina who had toe-danced herself into the hearts of many audiences decades upon decades ago. She smiled with the memories of shiny costumes and an orchestra pit full of musicians. Smiling serenely, Oma set her cup down and reached for the handles of her walker. With once last glance over the yard, she slowly made her back to her sitting room where her rocker and her medications sat waiting for her. It was early afternoon, still time for the visitors she hoped. If not, she'd make her way back to the window eventually. |
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