Free Write -The Photograph

 

Our Free Write this week was different at least geographically. We were each in a different country and one of us was on a different continent. Julia gave us the prompt Monday night. We are still bound by the 10-minute limit, no editing. The prompt is: “As she did so, the photograph she had tucked into the back of the book started to slip out” from Brenda Joyce’s novel House of Dream pg.73

D-L's Free Write

Jana kept telling herself downsizing was a good idea. As a widow and empty nester, she didn't need the four bedrooms, much less the den, living room and a kitchen that could house the 7th army.

She's found a lovely little two-bedroom condo across town, but besides the $ price she needed to get rid of 40 years of accumulated crap as she had begun to call everything.

The last things to sort were her books, which were the hardest things to part with. Both she and her husband had been avid readers, often leaving books for the other to read.

On one of the top shelves, out of reach so she had to use a chair to pull her old college textbooks along with her yearbook.

A photograph slipped out and flutted to the floor. She picked it up.

My God, it was James, the boy-man she'd dated their last two years at uni. He was dressed in his air force uniform. Despite all her begging, he had still enlisted. 

Their major disagreement had been Vietnam. She had alternated her classes with anti-war demonstrations. He told her as a good American he had to serve his country.

"Cannon fodder," she'd said.

"Fight them there instead of here," he'd said.

"Propaganda," she'd said.

If they weren't in tune on most other things, Vietnam would have driven them apart.

She saw him for the last time when he'd finished his training and was on leave before he was deployed to Vietnam.

"Come back to me," she called as he walked thru the doors at the airport.

He turned. "I promise." 

It was a promise he couldn't keep.

Somewhere was the missing-in-action bracelet she'd worn for five years. She wondered where it had gone.

She went on with her life and forgotten that photo which she'd stuck in the yearbook.

 Rick's Free Write

She had objected when he wanted to take the photo.

She had tried to cover up but he was faster than she, and she heard the Polaroid click and whirr before she had fully crossed her arms.

Emily was enraged, and chased Chaz around the bedroom, her trying to snatch the little square celluloid away from him, him blocking her with his body, laughing at her frustration.

She grabbed at him, scratched at his arm, and started sobbing.

Finally, after she threatened to break up with him, Eric handed over the image. He was still chortling.

She looked at it, initially in disgust, but then sort of admiring herself. She did have a nice body. She could understand why her 3-month boyfriend would want to take a photo. And she was at least wearing nice panties, so it wasn’t ‘hard-core’ porn.

After the tears had dried and she left his apartment, waiting for the bus she bent over to remove a stone from her sneakers. As she did so, the photograph she had tucked into the back of the book started to slip out.

Emily caught it and jammed it back between the pages.

She was still going to break up with Chaz.

She wondered if he had taken any other photos... while she was asleep.

Julia's Free Write

Oh the memories.

The face on that photo, hidden away for so many years, brought back memories of her childhood, memories of playing in the sun, laughter, and love.

But it also brought back the less stellar memories of being held responsible as “the oldest” for whatever he did that wasn’t exactly to the pleasure of her mother. That, in turn of course, reminded her of all the responsibilities piled upon her frail shoulders: at least that is how she perceived it then. Now she realizes that she was indeed a responsible person, something that has been very beneficial throughout her lifetime.

She wonders how it got into that particular book, who placed it there?

Where is the subject now? It has been many years since she “left the family” and moved away, not really from any quarrels, but simply a wish to live her own life as she wished without any of those sometimes all-too-binding ties.

She is glad though that she found it today. She will find a frame, make a cake and tomorrow celebrate what would have been her little brothers 70^th birthday. First her sister then her brother, both younger, both having been taken by cancer too early.

Julia has written and taken photos all her life and loves syncing up with friends.  Her blog can be found: https://viewsfromeverywhere.blogspot.com/ 

Rick is an aviation journalist and publisher of www.aviationvoices. com

 

D-L has had 17 fiction and non fiction books published. Check out her website at: https://dlnelsonwriter.com

 

 

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What if...?

 

What if all the students protesting the treatment of Gaza, were protesting Hamas and October 7th?

Would the college management protect them?

Growing up, I thought Israel could do no wrong. Then I met a Palestinian woman and I heard another side. After moving to Geneva, I met many Palestinians and listened to their stories.

My opinions changed and I did enough research to get some balance.

I am not anti-Jew. I've had Jewish bosses. I won't use the cliché even my best friends are (fill in the group), but I have never decided if I liked or disliked someone based on their religion. Their behaviour, yes, their religion, no.

I was engaged to a Jewish man for a period of time. It wasn't because of his religion that we didn't marry. We were unsuited in other ways. I was thrilled for him after we broke up when he met a woman more suited to what each of us wanted which had nothing to do with religion.

I think back to the Vietnam protests. If you change the signs, it is the same. Kids wanting something fairer, college administrations and often parents disagreeing with the kids.

Much later Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense at the time of Vietnam wrote a book which revealed the kids had been right.

The kids are right this time.

I do not negate that the Jewish people have been treated horribly over the centuries. The Holocaust made the many pogorams look minor. Prejudical treatment of any minority by the majority is always wrong.

But it was also wrong to take land from one people to give to another because it was their ancestral home.

Here's another what if...? Anyone who believes that, would be more than willing to give all American land back to the Indians. Surely moving to another country or living in reservations with limited rights and abilities to live a normal life, would be fine. After all it was the Indians' home first.

There is no way to condone the October 7th Hamas attack but just putting the number of deaths of both sides and the destruction does not balance. 

I do not believe that Netanyahu wants a settlement. He has announced more illegal settlements, more land thefts.

I am ashamed that my birth country is supplying the weapons that are killing so many women and children. 

I am tired of hearing that Israel has a right to defend itself. So do the Palestinians and every human and country on the planet, but doing it with mass murder, mass destruction is not a right.

Years ago, I was a strict parent. I let me daughter know there was a code of behaviour and she better not get in trouble in school UNLESS she was defending a principle. 

If my kid was in one the tents, I'd be tempted to join them. I would be proud that they are standing up for what is right just as kids stood up for what was right in Vietnam instead of swallowing the lies and propaganda being fed. 

May the protests all over the world continue until the leaders stop this war.

Vignette 2: The housemaid Stuttgart

Our hotel room overlooked the Stuttgart gardens and the Neues Schloss. Having lived and loved the city where when I was a new bride eons ago, I wasn't about to let my second husband come to a conference there alone.

Although I was itching to get out and explore many of the places I loved, never mind a good German lunch with hot potato salad, I was editing a financial newsletter that I had to finish and send it before I could go out.

A knock at the door.

"Komm Herin." My German had been reduced to shopping German with very simple sentences and that had a lilt of the regional Schwäbicsh and a mix of the Bostonian.

The housemaid apologised and said she'd come back. Her accent had Anglo overtones.

"Sprechen Sie Englisch?" I asked.

"I'm a Brit," she said.

My writer's curiousity went into high gear. It resulted in a great conversation, after I requested if I could ask some questions. 

She said yes, and we changed the bed together. 

She had moved there because her son, who was on the high spectrum of the autistic level, had been bullied at his comprehensive school in London. For some reason, which she didn't totally understand, on a vacation, he had fallen in love with Stuttgart. 

She moved countries for him.

In his new school he wasn't bullied and he seemed to absorb the language, "Faster than I have," she said.

In London she had been a social worker, but she didn't have the credentials to work in her field in Germany. Housekeeping in a hotel was work she could find. "It pays the bills," she said.

She also explained, she had an interview with a non-profit that thought her background and her knowledge of British agencies would make them a good match. She was still waiting for the contract.

I would have loved to talk to her more, but she had other beds to make.

Walking through the gardens to Kögnistrasse, I thought how brave she was. I thought of the power of motherhood to protect children. 

I never learned her name, and I never found out if she received the contract or how her son was doing as he went through his teens into young manhood. 

Note: This is the second vignette for people I've met by chance and our lives have touched for a short time. They become part of my memories. Visit my website at https://dlnelsonswriter.com 

The Washing Shed

 

They are doing construction work on the washing shed. It is located next to the river which often is dry.

When I was first in Argelès a few decades ago, I was intrigued to see women using the large sinks inside to wash their clothes. They could use the clothes lines outside, although most of them took their clothes home to hang on lines outside their windows. Sometimes it felt as I was walking down the narrow streets under a canopy.

Even as recently as the pre-covid 20s, I would see women there. It was definitely older women, whom I called mamies (not to their faces), grandmothers who I would enjoy chatting with when we met on the street or the shops.

These same women would often put their chairs on the street outside their front doors and chat, sometimes watching grandchildren, sometimes mending or knitting, sometimes shelling peas or snapping beans for lunch. They also had a village bench where they would gather. 

The men, dubbed The Senators, had another bench.

One by one these women have disappeared. I watched as their energy was reduced, started using canes, although they still could carry their laundry from home to shed. Originally, they used wicker baskets but over the years these were replaced with the big plastic bags from the grocery store.

I wrote a poem a few years back that captured the moment.  In a way it is sad that tradition of the washing shed will disappear, but the daughters of the women, even those raised in the village now are working women and have washing machines and sometimes even dryers.

THE WASHING SHED

The washing shed cooks in the sun.

Women stand by soapstone sinks

scrubbing stains from clothes

as their grandmothers did.

The smell of bleach and soap

mingles with sweat.

They brush hair from their eyes.

Children play underfoot

                  as the river flows by.

 

They talk of Pierre beating Marie,

Sophie’s new job in Toulouse, Michel

cheating on Chantal, fresh garden

basil, the price of apricots.

Some own washing machines

white and shiny in lonely kitchens.

Better to carry baskets and powders

to the shed where gossip steals time

                as the river flows by.