Abortion/choice

 A Flash Fiction Story about Choice.

 "See you next weekend, love ya," Marcy's daughter disconnected. She checked in every few days, short calls, catch-ups on their lives.

The November wind blew leaves against the window. The sweater she was wearing wouldn't be warm enough. She went to her closet and pulled out her warmest, an Irish knit.

She thought of the November 51 years before. Her ex had left her for another woman. 

Her girl friend had parked outside the Roxbury triple decker. Inside Marcy climbed onto the newspaper covered table.

"Ready?" the man with the beer breath asked. "It will hurt."

It did. Her best friend waited outside in case Marcy would hemorrhage. She didn't.

More than once she wished she'd asked boy or girl.

More than once she wondered if she could have handled two babies under two alone.

Not well.

More than once she regretted having to chose career over daughter.

More than once she regretted having to chose daughter over career.

Still she never regretted the nights when she was exhausted having read her daughter one more story, or built one more tower from blocks.

She never regretted their cuddles and games.

She never regretted having to say no, although the yeses outnumbered the nos by far.

She never regretted their one-week summer holidays in a borrowed Maine cabin.  

She felt nothing but pride in her daughter's degree, her decision to be a stay-at-home mom for her two children, Macy's granddaughter and grandson.

She was proud when her daughter introduced her as her mom and friend, always adding, they were friends now that she was grown.

Would she do it again?

Yes.

The mixed feelings were okay.

She searched for her keys. Put on her puff coat, hat and gloves and picked up her sign and headed for the demonstration..

Patrimony

 

It's no secret I love Edinburgh and for that matter every place in Scotland that I've ever visited. In Scotland, it is impossible to think you're any place else. All those tartan rugs in pubs along with haggis on the menu says, "This is Scotland."

On the Royal Mile and other streets in Edinburgh there is a plethora of pipers all dressed in proper kilts and accessories. We were amused to see one who even had a machine that takes credit and debit cards along with his donation hat.  

Talk to Scotsmen or women and they are proud of their heritage. 

I do not have a drop of Scottish blood just a love of its history started when I was a child reading about Mary Queen of Scots. Imagine my excitement when I stood on the spot where she was crowned as a baby, saw a piece of the dress she wore when beheaded and a lock of her hair.

Likewise, I love my village in Southern France or Catalonia North. When I first found the village in the 1980s I spoke no French. Now my locals tell me it is time I learn Catalan. That will not happen, although Rick delighted one of the old Catalan mamies, by saying bonjour in Catalan. She knew the conversation would go no further in her mother tongue.

Even before the village became a tourist and retirement area for people from all over France and Europe, Catalan culture stayed even more so during the times it was forbidden. Native costumes were worn on special occasions and the traditional dance, the Sardan was danced at the drop of a whiny pipe. People in native costume go Easter Caroling, There are native dishes of roasted vegetables and local cheeses.

 

Switzerland has its traditions too, such as bringing the cows down from pasture for the winter. The cows are decorated for the occasion. The locals wear their regional costumes. There's an onion festival in Bern called the Zibelemärit going back to the 15th century.

Small towns also have their traditions. In the Vals de Travers where I moved from Boston, I came home from work on my first day to see the many fountains decorated, really decorated. One even looked like a giant cake with soap suds surrounding it to mimic whipped cream. Another had the cantons of the country laid out in paper wrapped sugar cubes printed with cantonal flags. My landlord explained they did that every year to celebrate the village joining the country almost a hundred years before.

 As a child, I envied the Italians with their "gravy" and Irish kids who knew step dancing long before Michael Flatley ever put on a tap dancing shoe. I didn't realize that my Saturday night baked beans cooked in my great grandmother's pot was also an example of my New England  patrimony. In fact, I didn't know the word patrimony.

I love the collective traditions of the past that a community of a family can celebrate, a coming together of a collective history be it mine or of a place I've moved or am passing through. I'm even more blessed that I've been able to enjoy those of other places as well as my own.

Watching the Watcher

 

 

My husband and I have different tastes in movies and TV shows. Saying that, after a day of writing, seeing friends, and other chores and pleasures, we love sitting on the couch with Sherlock, perhaps with ice cream or popcorn and watching something.

I suspect part of the difference in taste is hormonal making me more in tune with chick flicks and him with guy flicks.

For example, I'm bored silly with chase scenes that go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and... My thought is get to the bloody story.

He caught me watching a Hallmark Christmas movie. I swear there is one on every day in France from October to Christmas. Admittedly, I watch one a year. I suspect there is a manual for Christmas movie screenwriters that at minute 29, for example, the couple to be will have their first misunderstandin .(we know the ending before it starts).-

On the other hand, I binge watched Suits. I love movies with a lot of characters that are given depth. I love in-depth stories. I loved Louis. I loved the character Donna and from time to time quote her saying, "I am the Donna."

All is not lost as we try and find common ground. Grace and Frankie, Seinfeld work for us. I can watch any golf themed movie, because of his love of them and I like to see him happy. Documentaries, history bio-movies. We both enjoyed Borgen, about a woman Danish prime minister. We never did find the final season of The Americans, a disappointment to both of us.

We like mysteries, although I lean to the period ones like Father Brown, but Agatha Christie in all its forms works for the two of us. Midsomer Murders work for both of us, which we watch in Geneva and in bed. The only problem is I usually fall asleep between the first and second murder and he fills me in on who else died and who was the killer.

Neither of us is right or wrong, but have different tastes with some overlapping.  Overlapping can lead to popcorn, ice cream and a three-way couch cuddle with our dog.

He brought up an excellent point after episode two of Watcher. He said there wasn't a really likeable character in the program. As a writer, this made me stop, think and rethink of all the books I've read and enjoyed and those that I've read and haven't enjoyed or stopped before I finished. A likeable character is as necessary as is conflict. 

Once again in my marriage, I've discovered something that I might not have had I stayed single. This is a good thing, a very good thing.

Women in my life

I wrote this poem over thirty years ago. Now I'm putting my published and prize wining short stories and poems in an anthology. As I entered it, I realized that only Llara and Susan are still alive. There is both a sadness that I can't telephone or email the others or message them, get on a plane and hug them, drink tea and share what we've been doing, yet in a strange way they are still part of me many decades later.

WOMEN IN MY LIFE

Llara

My daughter is thirty. I tell people

we’ve had twenty-eight wonderful years.

Five and thirteen are best forgotten.

She was always independent,

insisting

on holding her own bottle.

Insisting

on making her own decisions

which were almost always right

And certainly, as good as mine.

I am neat

needing things in neurotic order.

She marks her territory

scattering her possession

wherever she goes.

She is good at math and

can put furniture together.

I am good at words and

can put furniture together

but wrong

so she fixes it.

We lived in a small flat for nine months,

agreeing that our relationship

was more important than neat or messy,

making a lie of the saying two women

can’t get along under the same roof.

 

Susan

She knows if I’m well

by the way I walk through a room.

Maybe

Because we’ve walked in each other’s souls.

She saved my daughter’s life

and thus saved mine.

When we had a rough patch,

I thought that was reading my journal,

so I wrote in green ink,

“Susan, I know you’re reading this.”

In blue ink, the next day, I found

“No, I’m not, just keep writing.”

A problem with old friends

is they don’t let you fool yourself.

It works both ways.

Each year we go on retreat.

One year in Argelès-sur mer,

the next in Ocean Grove.

We walk on the beach,

eat fresh corn

lick ice cream cones,

listen to music,

rent movies, read to each other,

play Scrabble,

talk about men,

my writing, her teaching,

women’s studies, politics,

history and art.

Freed from chores

it is a renewal of all

that is good in our lives.

 

Mardy

A boy with beautiful blue

eyes dated Mardy and me at the same time.

At sixteen we decided

we liked each other better than him.

Tied by the telephone cord for hours

we told our dreams.

 When I was getting divorced,

Mardy held the glue pot

as I pieced myself together.

When we walked in the woods behind

her folks’ Maine cabin. We tasted wild

blackberries as she spoke

of nightmares.

And now that we are happy

she tells me we are not just

foul-weather friends.

 

Norma

My father fell in love with my stepmom

when they were both married to other people.

She swirled across the dance floor in a

white gown embroidered with violets

and into his arms.

They never had his children or her children.

“We have “our children,” she always said in

a tone that let everyone know

there was no alternative.

When she visits,

we play cards.

she wipes me out,

no dainty widow lady, she.

We go to restaurants,

share memories of my Dad

And build new ones of our own.

 

Lillian

They met I secretarial school,

Lillian and my mother,

agreed on nothing for sixty years,

stayed friends and fought

over every issue.

At eighty Lillian

picketed the British consulate,

marched for pro-choice,

and told of a man in an

Irish pub. He raved about her hair,

suggesting they sleep together.

“Did you?” I asked.

She shook her head.

”I was wearing a wig.

I didn’t want him to know.”

“And if you weren’t?”

She just smiled.

 

Dar

No one, least of all me, knows why I

called my grandmother Dar, but soon

the world followed, even her friends

from childhood. She never minded being

renamed in her fifties.

When she baked a cake, she used

all the batter but gave me the spoon to lick

read me The Bobbsey Twins, and made

mud pies that looked good enough to eat.

A high school drop out

she prodded me through algebra,

tested my Latin verbs,

knew more history than

The substitute teacher.

 

Despite her thick glasses

she told me I was beautiful.

She was a New England Yankee.

Right was right.

Wrong was wrong.

When she had eye surgery,

she didn’t tell the doctor

the anesthesia hasn’t worked,

thinking it should hurt.

And when she lost two children

She bore that hurt too…

And when I lost her,

I wore my pain

as she would have wanted me to.

 

Dar saw five wars,

Lillian only four.

Norma was a wave on WWII

while Mardy, Susan and I

can touch names on a

long black wall in D.C.

Names of boys we played with

who will play no more.

Llara?

She knows war as a media even

as men with mikes talk on CNN.

These women’s lives span

the inventions of electricity to email.

Dar abandoned her horse and buggy,

was called THE woman with Ford,

while the rest of us jump on

Planes to change continents at whim.

No Stantons,

Steinems,

Sangers,

Or Curies

In this group.

They march by history

Not create it.

No one will write books,

Sing songs,

Make movies,

nor sculpt statues for public place

Honoring their lives.

They honor themselves.

 

 

 

 

Witches and Halloween

 

One cannot grow up close to Salem, MA without knowing about the Salem witch trials.  

Lately there have been moves by governments to exonerate the witches that were drowned, beheaded, or burned to death.

Massachusetts did it for Elizabeth Johnson, although she was not executed. A group of middle school children fought for her exoneration, a great exercise in fighting the system.

Anna Goldi who was beheaded in 1782 in Switzerland was exonerated by the Swiss government in 2007. It did not restore her head to her body.

The Scottish Government is working on the exoneration of 2500 witches of the 4000 accused. They were killed by strangulation or burning or both. Scotland holds the record for number of witches found and killed.

 At first  I thought why bother. They will not be resurrected, but then in rethinking it strikes me that there is a similar ignorance today on a range of topics, especially when it comes to some religions be it Muslims or some far-right evangelical Christians, or Jews or or or... Ignorance becomes the motivating factor in injustice.

Granted there are not church-supported manuals such as the Witches Hammer (Malleus Maleficarum) that are being used today.

And there was King James VI's Deamonolgie written in 1597 which said witch hunting was fine. 

The majority of witches were women, usually women who didn't fit the society mold of what a woman should be. Their witchdom accusations came from an accuser's testimony: sometimes it was a person who would benefit from the witch's death. Crimes could include turning butter rancid or alleged dancing with Satan. 

Somehow the group belief in witches is no different from all the people who fell for the lie that the 2020 American election was stolen. 

There is the Wicca religion, a modern pagan religion. Scholars of religion categorize it as both a new religious movement and as part of the occultist stream of Western esotericism. Developed in England during the first half of the 20th century, it was introduced to the public in 1954. There is an estimate that it is practiced by a few hundred thousand. 

There are still places on earth where not following strict beliefs of a religion can cause arrest and even death. 

Meanwhile children may look for a witch costume to celebrate Halloween with no fear of arrest or death. They have little concept of the history of witches and the danger it represented even with the promise of exoneration centuries in the future.

 

I love Stories

 

I've always loved stories, from Old  Grandfather Frog talking to Sammy Jay and Jimmy the Skunk to Beverly Gray, the five children who spent the Summer at Buckhorn and lots more.

My mother was a great story teller while I had my bath. She read bedtime stories to me too. Sometimes we did double stories, where one of us would start, the other would pick it up and then we would alternate. We had a series where I was a philanthropic snake and she was the person who find people for me to help.

I was also a great reader and I made up stories in my head. I wrote stories as well.

As an adult I still love stories, fiction, non fiction. I will listen to strangers' stories with whatever emotion is called for. The same with friends, relatives and acquaintances. 

I love movies with good people stories. 

Hallmark's Christmas movies are now appearing on many French and Swiss channels. A day doesn't go by where you can't find one. I watch maybe one or two a year because it is the same story with different faces. I can almost predict the plot twists. I wonder if the screen writers have a manual that says at moment 24 introduce a problem and at moment 32 ... you get the idea.

I want to know why a character does this or that.

I want to check out the environment a character is in.

I was so lucky this year to be able to spend two days at the Edinburgh Storytelling Festival. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=edinburgh+storytelling+festival&atb=v338-1&ia=web I could have happily been there the entire month but the four events we went to were wonderful.

My favorites were the Hearth Nights, with four storytellers in front of a rug with a fake fire to their left.  Stories could be personal, mythical, magical or embody the soul of Scotland.  

The hearth reminded me of my childhood with a story log when we would tell stories until a log became embers.

I have no idea why stories are so important to me. 

Maybe because other people's lives enrich my own, not that my life is lacking. There is still only so much anyone can do in one lifetime. Other lives feed my greediness for more than I can consume.

Maybe because as a writer I'm always looking for a new story to write, although if I lived to be a 1,000, I couldn't write everything that has tiptoed through my head.  

Trump's Syllogism

People who try to over throw a government should be in prison.

Trump tried to overthrow the government.

Trump should be in prison.

Aberlady Graveyard

 

We were at the Duck hotel in Aberlady, Scotland. 

Rick was playing golf.

Although it was still windy, the sun was shining. It was leaf kicking weather. I decide to explore.

Graveyards  have always fascinated me. Graveyards are affiliated with a church. Cemeteries are not religiously connected. The older the graveyard, the more interesting.

Many of the gravestones were so old, whatever information about its tenants had long been blown away by the wind.

 Others seemed to be of mixed colored stone. I've long forgotten my geology from seventh grade.

There were a number of table like stones with a skull and bones. No information about the occupants below.

 

This was the only elaborately carved stone. I assume that the family who ordered it had more money than those that selected a flat piece of rock.

I walked to the rear of the graveyard through the shadow of the church. In the distance I could see the sea.

Graveyards have often provided names of my characters in different novels. I found local names in Insel Poel and in Argelès for Murder on Insel Poel and Murder in Argelès. The Aberlady graveyard was not helpful. One name that stuck out was Elsbeth who died in the 1800s, more because I had met an Elsbeth years ago and she was the only one. I am not planning on setting a novel in this part of Scotland in the 1800s.

Test for Congress

 

When I listen to some of the people in Congress, I shudder at their ignorance. As a friend once said, ignorance can be corrected, stupidity is forever.

And then I look at some of the candidates such as Hershel Walker. He is certainly ignorant. I can't imagine him making decisions for the entire country with his vote.

I wonder how many already in Congress and the candidates could pass the test given to candidates for American citizenship? I wonder how many citizens could pass it. It is not difficult if you are a responsible citizen.

I wonder, for example how many people know America has fought in 107 wars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States Maybe if the alleged leaders are to vote for war, they should know what wars have already been fought and why.

It won't happen, the test for the leaders of the United States, but it should. In reality, every American should have to pass that test just to be a responsible citizen.

High tea, Low pee

 

"You have to have high tea at Greywalls when you're in Edinburgh," my friend Catherine told me almost every time I headed to that fantastic city. Greywalls is located in the nearby town of Muirfield. I have great faith in Catherine's recommendations.

We had spent a week in Inverness where Rick played in the World Hickory Open Championship. This morning we headed toward Edinburgh for the Story Festival before heading home next Friday.

Rick made reservations for us to have high tea at Greywalls based on Catherine's recommendation. We thought we had built in enough time to drive from Inverness. WRONG!!!

The GPS lied about a left that left us in traffic jam on a country road where progress was marked by inches for miles and miles. 

The first hour or so wasn't that bad until my bladder started to fill and fill and fill and fill. Eventually we were back on a major road with an estimate that we would reach Greywalls close to our reservation time. However my physical needs shuddered at Rick's estimates of 34, 24, 15 minutes. As much as I love Scotland, their major roads lack rest stop with toilets. We are spoiled by those in France where rest stops are frequent and vary from those with restaurants and gas stations to those where there is cultural information, wifi, exercise alternatives, etc. along with toilets.

Scotland does have laybys, which are more like a slight pullover. No toilets. I wonder now how huge Scottish bladders are or how strong are the muscles to be able to close the door to unwanted urinary activity.

Finally free of the traffic jam, Rick was giving me the miles and times left to travel. I knew I wouldn't make it.

"Go into a layby," I said.

"Are you sure?"

"YES!"

We were the only car. I took of my coat. By opening the passenger and back doors, I had enough privacy when I squatted that no passing car would see me.

Relieved, we traveled on, drove through a small village, saw the white caps on the sea. We arrived one minute before our reservation time.

The Greywalls hotel built in 1902 was fantastic. A young man led us into a living room with a fire. A table had been set in front of a comfortable sofa.

We ordered the tea, which included finger sandwiches, natural and fruit scones, jam, clotted cream and pastries.

I think the tea was even better because of the delicate flower-decorated cups.

It brought back memories of another tea in Malta, where my good friend and I had gone to keep a promise we made to ourselves when an especially sad and difficult would be over. That promise had helped on days we juggled problems.

And there were all the teas on Wigglesworth Street that I shared with my housemates at the end of the day. They weren't as elaborate but there was the special teapots we used that often conveyed unspoken messages of the type of day it had been. 

Not able to finish everything, the young man, who had added fuel to the fireplace, offered to box the leftovers, which we accepted.

Leaving the hotel, we looked back. There was a rainbow, a colorful silent applause to a perfect high tea.

Irving's book The Last Chairlift

 

John Irving's new book The Last Chairlift took seven years to write. It's called a ghost story and a love story covering decades. He said in an interview it may be his last novel.

Although I've never met him, I've always felt a connection to Irving. We share an age. We've both lived in Exeter, New Hampshire. We are both writers although his success has exceeded mine too many times over to count.

I did my masters thesis at Glamorgan University in Wales concentrating on repeated symbolism in his early work. Bears, wrestling, Vienna, short people or people physically different, etc. 

We didn't have all that much more in common. I never wrestled, bears are bears, I'm short but not abnormally so. When Irving lived in Vienna did he eat the finger sandwiches, little sandwiches, served at Trzesniewski's like I have? I hope so.

I always have a hard time getting into his books. I start and stop, start and stop. Then something clicks. I can't put the book down. I will read in the bathroom, in bed, on the bus, train, plane until I finish. How he brings it together is wonderful.

Both of us were born in 1942 which means our writing lives and our lives in general are limited to how much more we can write. Time is not on our side no matter how many ideas we may have.

Irving's website https://john-irving.com/the-last-chairlift-by-john-irving/ and mine www.dlnelsonwriter.com