I’d like to thank Jennifer Blanke of the US for her micro story submission ‘The Beauty of Hands’. A touching true story about the symbiotic relationship between hands and the life we lead.
Jennifer Blanke has a BS in Elementary Education and is a mother, teacher, and writer in St. Louis, Missouri. She is currently working on her Master of Fine Arts in Writing degree at Lindenwood University and is an editorial assistant for The Lindenwood Review.
This will be her first published piece, so it’s an honour to have it on my little blog!
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My dying grandmother’s delicate hands lay in mine, her fingers curled in the fetal position, like a chipmunk nestled snugly, taking cover from the frigid night.
I’ve never liked my hands. They’re not elegant, or feminine, or what any girl would wish her hands to be. Palming a basketball wasn’t that amazing when it didn’t transfer to the agile footwork needed to keep me off the bench. I’ve squeezed my big-boned hand through a bracelet, only to panic when I couldn’t remove it. As I comforted my grandmother in her final hours, I glanced down at my large, clunky, masculine hands holding her dainty ones. Visible veins tiring of pumping blood showed through her gossamer skin. My eyes traced the vessels that had carried ninety-six years of life and I was transported to the davenport in the front room of the two-story on Locust Avenue.
We sat side-by-side at the metal tray tables eating snacks from little bowls, each with a deck of cards in hand, playing solitaire. We worked crosswords and word searches for hours while watching a marathon of game shows. Puzzles were next and I smiled as her hand passed me the final piece to complete the beautiful countryside landscape. Her hands gave.
Descending the cellar stairs together to get cans from storage, she’d walk ahead of me, her hand smothering mine to the railing, while saying, Now, Jenny, hold on. As if I could let go under her grip. She’d reach for the dusty pull string of the single bulb and leave a gray streak as her fingers gently brushed her black trousers. As the light cast a ghostly glow on the dirt floor, I’d run up the stairs, leaving her to defend herself against the shadow monsters. Her hands protected.
When Morris the cat appeared on her back porch, she filled the Cool Whip container with water and the Country Crock with kibble every morning and night. When he brought friends, her hands coaxed them closer with food in one palm and stroked soft fur with the other. She made a blanket bed for Morris and the females. I think she was hoping for a litter so she would always have a feline friend. Her hands cared.
When her epileptic son passed away long before his time and hers, the hands that spent a lifetime preparing food, folding clothes, cleaning house, and providing companionship, knew not what to do. Every moment of every day was spent taking care of his needs. Her family was her life and she would have to find something to fill her days. Her hands loved.
When Alzheimer’s consumed my granddad’s body and she could no longer take care of him, her hands signed the forms admitting him into the assisted care facility. She visited daily, bringing him the paper and his favorite candy. She remained by his side until he passed even after he forgot the voices of his children, the faces of his grandkids, and her name. Her hands grieved.
The static hum of the fluorescent lights and the scent of antiseptic and death assailed my senses pulling me away from the flow of memories. The wrinkled hands that I held mirrored an entire lifetime. Her gracious hands saw the best and the worst and they were ready to finally rest. I blinked away the stream of tears and saw my hands reflected in hers. They looked so lovely in her light. My gentle hands stroked my tiny newborn’s brow as she nursed. They carried my strong-willed toddler to the time-out chair. My hands stirred cumin into my family’s favorite chili. They held my love’s hands, tucked safely in his strength. I saw my own devoted hands paying the bills, handing over the car keys, comforting my disappointed daughter, and welcoming my oldest home after a difficult first year of college.
Giving, protecting, caring, loving, grieving. It was then that I saw: my hands were just like hers.
Thank you for reading this blog, if you’d like to submit a story for consideration to be published, please visit our submissions page.
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I’d like to thank Adele Evershed for her micro-story submission ‘All the Better to Save You’, a touching and emotionally raw story based on true events.
Adele tells us that she is a native of Wales transplanted to Connecticut, and is teacher and mother of four. When her daughter left for college she was left with her three soccer mad sons and husband and so she started to dabble with storytelling as a way to maintain her sanity. Adele has had work or will be having work published in ‘Reflex Fiction’, ‘Everyday Fiction’, ‘FlashFiction Journal’ and ‘Three Drops from a Cauldron’. She was a recent semi-finalist in the London Independent Story Prize Competition for her story about the challenges of aging.
*TRIGGER WARNING: This story mentions miscarriage.
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She sat on the too small chair and pressed her knees into the dough of her stomach. With her acrylic nails she chipped away at the dry drops of red paint like fallen petals strewn over the tabletop. The kids had been copying an amaryllis; it’s long lines and limited palette made it perfect for a three year old to attempt. The paintings hung gaily above her head in direct contradiction to her mood.
Lorna tipped her head forward so her long wavy hair could act like a curtain as a squall of tears engulfed her. It didn’t seem fair having to spend her days coddling other people’s children when she seemed unable to have any of her own. She had spent the weekend before last with her legs pressed together, reaching towards heaven in a gross approximation of prayer to try and keep hold of the life inside her. It hadn’t worked and when she got to the hospital she was told her pregnancy had been a blighted ovum. It almost sounded like poetry. This time she had got to eleven weeks before she miscarried and so she had been starting to feel tendrils of hope that this was the one. Now those had been yanked up by the root.
Lorna uncurled from the chair and went to wash her face at the too small sink. Moving around her classroom she always felt like a giant, in the outside world. Being only five foot she was more like Thumbelina. Lorna had always loved fairy tales and it was this desire to linger passed childhood in the stories of the Brothers Grimm that drew her into teaching in the first place. As she looked in the tiny mirror, her face was distorted and she felt like one of the coffee-filter snowflakes that were stuck to the window. She was made up of all that was not there. The diamond or triangular holes-babies she never held or even named, the white paper remnants-the scraps of herself left behind after each disappointment.
Lorna caught up her hair and twisted it into a tight bun on top of her head; she liked the way it added inches to her height. She practiced her yoga breathing, in through the nose, out through the mouth and for good measure threw in the mantra from the last class she had gone to, “I change my thoughts; I change my world!”
As she peeled off the glitter-heavy snowflakes and posted them into cubbies she imagined herself keeping the next baby. She would hide him under the arch of her eyebrow and nurse his heart with her own. She would fix him to the roots of her hair and let it grow until it touched the ground, she would weave him into the lifeline on her hands and fill her mouth with his name. And she thought, “Because this is my fairy-tale we will both live happily ever after!”
Thank you for reading this blog, if you’d like to submit a story for consideration to be published, please visit our submissions page.
If you’d like to keep up to date with all the latest stories, news, promos (including writing competitions and giveaways) plus receive a FREE Ebook, sign up to our mailing list here or fill in the form below.
I would like to thank Alice Horibe of the US for her ‘true’ micro story submission “Waving Goodbye”, a sweet tale of memories and nostalgia.
Alice is a mother of three grown sons and she has one grandson. She tells us “when I was a young, I recall wishing for the wisdom of my older peers. I realize now that wisdom is simply paying attention to the world around you over many years. I appreciate the opportunity to share these observations, and find great joy in writing them down.”
I was never a fan of scary rides, yet I looked forward to my summertime visits to Elitch Gardens. This was not your average amusement park. Founded in the 1890’s they prided themselves on the beauty of their flowers as much as the variety of games and rides. Nobu and I went every summer from the time we were dating through the 1990’s when it was torn down.
We would follow the same route through the park, admiring the giant hanging baskets, the aroma mingling with the smell of popping corn, the taste of warm, pink cotton candy and the sounds of happy squealing ebbing and flowing as the rides went up and down. Even the most remote corner pulsated with fun.
What had always been a pleasant excursion took on a new dimension when our son Neil was three. That was the year we discovered Kiddie Land. It was largely hidden from the rest of the park, encircled by large trees. But once within there were so many colorful, child-sized activities to keep their young audience busy!
Neil rode the airplanes first, hoping to snag the red one, pulling the lever that controlled the gentle sloping of his craft. Next came the race cars, always the orange one.
I liked the boats. Neil would dutifully give the attendant his two tickets and bound off, leaping in the sea craft, grasping the steering wheel in one hand, the cord to the bell in the other.
The ride would start it’s slow, predetermined route and Neil and I would wave like mad to each other, him clanging the bell and me saying, “Goodbye, see you soon.”
The boat would dip behind the thick bushes and my son would disappear. I’d quickly shift left, waiting to catch that first glimpse of him as he came back, our eyes locking at the same moment. He’d start clanging with renewed vigor, both of us waving, “Hello! Hello!”
Neil and I did this every summer until he was old enough to go on the regular rides with his dad. By then, Evan was three and I would stay in Kiddie Land, meeting up with the others for lunch and games.
Once–just once–I became distracted by the mom standing next to me and didn’t wave “Hello” as Evan rounded the bend. His shoulders slumped as he stopped ringing the bell. He looked so sad. I made up for it by hopping a bit from one foot to the other the next time he completed the circle, calling loudly, “Hello Evan. Hello!”
Soon enough it was Evan’s time to go off with Nobu and Neil while I went with Andrew to that secluded corner. I was content.
One year when Andrew got in the boat I couldn’t help but notice his knees were folded up near his chin and he had to scooch to fit in the seat.
I knew that this was to be my last time in Kiddie Land.
The thick canopy of foliage barely masked the oppressive August heat, the humidity mixing with the already thick air as it rose in visible waves from the concrete to the sky. The world took on the appearance of a mirage. I had left my drink on a park bench and I could feel the creeping effects of dehydration.
The ride started and I began my ritual of “Goodbye, see you soon,” trying to ignore my light-headedness. The children started to move.
Suddenly, I saw Neil at three waving goodbye, then Evan and now Andrew, the illusion of being left behind so real I clutched the back of the park bench, tears and sweat leaving my cheeks chapped.
Today they are all grown up, the illusion a reality. I have waved goodbye at schools and airports, first apartments and visits home for the holidays.
Even now, as they drive off with their own families, I keep waving long after they’ve disappeared just in case they turn around to see if I’m still watching.
Thank you for reading this blog, if you’d like to submit a story for consideration to be published, please visit our submissions page.
If you’d like to keep up to date with all the latest stories, news, promos (including writing competitions and giveaways) plus receive a FREE Ebook, sign up to our mailing list here or fill in the form below.
Get your FREE Ebook
The pace and intensity of our lives, both at work and at home, leave many of us feeling like a person riding a frantically galloping horse. Our day-to-day incessant busyness — too much to do and not enough time.
With this ebook you will learn to approach your days in another way, reducing stress and getting results through prioritizing, leveraging and focus!
I’m very honoured to present this short story, from a writer who has had many writings published in many reputable places. I’d like to thank Steve Carr for his submission “A Mother’s Rites”, a touching short story based on true events, about a Mother’s journey of love and remembrance. Originally published in Wagon Magazine in 2017.
Steve Carr, from Richmond, Virginia, has had over 400 short stories published internationally in print and in online magazines, literary journals, reviews and anthologies, since June, 2016. He has had seven collections of his short stories published, including Sand,Rain, Heat, The Tales of Talker Knock , 50 Short Stories: The Very Best of Steve Carr, LGBTQ: 33 Stories, and The Theory of Existence: 50 Short Stories.
His paranormal/horror novel Redbird was released in November, 2019. His plays have been produced in several states in the U.S. and last but definitely not least, he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, twice. He has also written a guide book to getting your short stories published (see it at the end of this post).
This page contains an affiliate link which may earn me a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you click through and make a purchase. Affiliate links are how I keep this page running, thank you.
Thursday before the last weekend in August, hot wind perfumed with the drying golden grass that covers most of the roadside mounds of heated earth, blows in through the open windows. The rush of wind fills the car’s interior. Harriet’s normal speed on this stretch of interstate headed east, and she knows it well, having traveled it often throughout the years. Dying quick deaths, bugs splatter on the windshield leaving blotches and streaks. His face stuck out of the back window, long ears dancing about his head, tongue extended lapping in the scents of summer decay, Lucky wags his tail, a satisfied partner to the viewing of the open countryside being passed at seventy miles per hour.
At the turnoff to Wasta the car is slowed and here Harriet turns and decreases the car’s speed to forty miles per hour and then decreases it even more as she enters the small town. Wasta has changed very little over the years. A few ramshackle buildings line what could be called the downtown area. At fifteen miles per hour she cruises through Wasta and continues out of this throwback to dreams that never happened of becoming a traveler’s stop, usurped by the clever marketing of ice water offered in nearby Wall.
Outside of Wasta a few houses stand along the road she takes, it being an unlikely and almost desolate environment in which to encourage homesteading. It leads to the dried muddy banks of the Cheyenne River where dead trees submerged each spring in the yearly floods remain rotting in place.
Here, she puts her foot on the brake pedal and the car comes to a stop alongside a rusty barbed wire fence, a boundary marker for some land owner protecting his wasteland from – what? Harriet gets out of the car and then lets Lucky out. The dog runs off toward the river, his barks muted by the silence that hangs over this place like a death shroud. Harriet steps over some fallen fence wire and treads across the gray cracked earth, headed toward the river.
No grass or weed or wildflower grows along the river bank, only varying hues of dried red mud provide color. The river is barely a stream that moves slowly on its way to wherever it is destined to end. The water is brackish and unappealing, only tempting to Lucky who bounces over it and through it with abundant energy. On the opposite bank a lone cow, head bent and moving slowly, makes its way upriver. Lucky seems unimpressed with it and continues his frolic to and fro across the Cheyenne.
Harriet’s son, Jeffrey, thought this place magical, the name Cheyenne bringing to mind the days when the Sioux Indians roamed these parts in search of the great herds of buffalo, a place where movies were made to recall the glorified struggles between land seeking settlers and the noble Indian. Here he had searched the ground for arrowheads, never finding one but always hopeful. Lucky was his companion, sticking near him awaiting a friendly pat on the head or encouragement to join him and run along the muddy river until both were coated with thick globs of wet soil.
Inhaling, the air here was dense with the almost fetid odor of lifelessness, that and the drying cow pies that dotted the ground like drying black pimples. Harriet too is entranced by this place. She had happened on it quite by accident one summer when Jeffrey was very young and inspired by him being enamored with its other-worldly quality, they had returned every year at the same time, finding nothing changed, nothing new except an occasional fallen tree or the carcass of a dead cow. While all else seemed altered by time, this small stretch along the Cheyenne River never did.
Lucky responds to her whistle, rushing to her side, his fur matted with mud, his eyes bright and if it is possible for a dog, full of joy. She leads him back to the car and there she opens a large thermos of cold water and douses him with it and rubs the mud and grime off of him. He is cleaner but not entirely free of the evidence of the excursion. She opens the back door and he leaps onto the seat. She takes her place behind the wheel, starts the car and turns back toward Wasta and back to the interstate.
Fifteen minutes later she pulls into Wall, stops at the corner convenience store and fills her gas tank, refills the thermos from a faucet extending out from a wall outside the store, then heads into town. Cars line the main street, parked at angles on each side of a median strip. Storefronts on each side of the street, most built or remodeled to look like a nineteenth century western town, are crowded with tourists gaping in the windows at shelves upon shelves of western and frontier souvenirs.
Harriet pulls off on a side street, finds a shady spot to park the car, rolls down the window to give Lucky some air in the late afternoon heat, and fills his water dish and sits it on the floor in the back. He knows the routine and doesn’t complain other than to look longingly at Harriet as she closes the door and heads toward Wall Drug Store.
Glaringly commercial, overstocked with cheap trinkets, it is room upon room attached to make a good-sized mall of useless paraphernalia for a town of less than 900 people, and crowded it has come a long way since its inception as a simple place for people to stop and get a free glass of ice water. She knows her way to the cafeteria and without stopping to look at Indian headdresses or plastic colt 45s as Harriet might have done had Jeffrey been along, she goes straight to the counter and in quick fashion given the length of the line that was ahead of her, orders a buffalo burger and fries and a diet Coke. She takes her tray with her order number on a small placard placed on it and goes into the large dining room. Surrounded by dark paneled walls covered with original works of western art, she takes a seat at a long table in the center of the cafeteria, in between a hodgepodge of men, women and children noisily living up the experience of being in this amusement park that has no rides other than a horse that requires a quarter to make it buck for a minute or two while a child sits on it.
The food arrives quickly, delivered by one of the students from a nearby college hired for the summer to supplement the workforce that Wall and the surrounding area was lacking. Of three places in this journey, this was Jeffrey’s second favorite, owing to its stacks of useless junk and lack of shame in providing nothing authentic other than the paintings on the wall, which he had studied as carefully as possible, reveling in those that were of mountain men, stallions on their hind legs, Indians on snowy plains and ragged buffalo in raging stampedes. Harriet eats only half of the burger and few of the fries, wrapping them in a napkin to be carried to Lucky. She stops at the counter again and buys two of Wall’s cake donuts, considered by Jeffrey to be the best donuts in the world, bar none. She leaves the drugstore through a different door than the one she came in by and makes her way down the street to a very wagging-tailed dog pleased with his treat which he devours almost as soon as it is offered to him.
At the end of the street and before leaving Wall is the only local grocery store, a small mom and pop place with five aisles that provides the basics for the locals and anything that someone who intends to camp at the nearby Badlands National Park would need. Harriet buys coal for a grill, two bags of ice and a variety of smaller items and some Slim Jims for Lucky. She leaves the store carrying two bags, one with the ice, the other with the remaining items. At the car she opens the trunk and moves aside the folded up tent, a shovel, and a small cardboard box with the top neatly taped closed and lifted out the ice chest and places it on the ground. In goes the ice, several bottles of orange juice, a pack of hot dogs and a package of bologna. She repacks the trunk and sets off again, leaving Wall.
From Wall to the entrance of the Badlands National Park it is only a few miles, and the famous rock formations begin a few miles beyond the turnoff past the entrance, the right handed turnoff that Harriet takes after buying a pass to allow her to camp until Sunday. Small gray clouds of dirt and gravel kick up behind her as she drives slowly past a broad stretch of prairie on the right and a ridge overlooking a deep valley with rolling hills of rock and stretches of barren land and yellow prairie grass to the right. Even before arriving at it, the wooden signs with silver lettering directs her toward the prairie dog town straight ahead. Cars are parked on each side of the road, with people milling about with cameras pointed at the prairie dogs who stand at alert on their hind legs atop their mounds a hundred feet from the edge of the road, or they dash in and out of the hundred or so holes that beneath constitute their habitats. Harriet drives by the parked cars and the prairie dogs very slowly, swallowing hard against the rush of emotion that is overtaking her. Beyond there she picks up speed and takes the turns and stretches of straight flat unfinished road all the way to the campgrounds barely noticing how little anything has changed, after all it had only been a year since the last time she and Jeffrey had been there.
An oval-shaped space the size of several football fields bordered on one side by a wall of rock and a stretch of land cut through by a dry creek bed on the other, the campground is busy but not crowded. Harriet pulls into the closest available spot nearest an old dead tree that Jeffrey had cut his initials into, and parks the car. Keeping Lucky in the back seat, barking to be set free at last, she unpacks the trunk, sets up the tent and lays out the sleeping bags as well as the ice chest inside it. When set up she hooks Lucky’s leash to his collar and lets him out of the car and walks toward the creek bed, stopping to let him survey the myriad of scents and to relieve himself. Harriet is tired now, and she sits on a ledge of rock and watches small birds, terns or swifts, she wasn’t sure which, circling overhead, occasionally dipping down to the creek bed and scooping up something much too small to be seen by her. In the distance she hears the one bird sound she knew at some deeper level, the call of a meadowlark, his short melodic warble echoing from some nearby stretch of grass and down the creek all the way to her heart.
Saturday morning, Lucky is curled in a ball by her side and breathing heavily, Harriet awakes and sees the moving shadow on the side of the tent. She undoes the zipper on the sleeping bag and crawls to the tent door and unzips it and sticks her head out. Five feet away a large, mangy buffalo is nibbling at a small tuft of grass as its dozen or so companions do the same not much further away. Lucky is now up, attempting to push his way past her. She quickly zips up the tent door and sits back down on the sleeping bag, quietly opening the ice chest and taking out a bottle of juice and twisting off the cap and relishing the coolness of it as she drinks. Buffalo are unpredictable and dangerous, so she makes as little noise as possible, opening a package of Slim Jims from their noisy plastic wrapping with great care then feeding it to Lucky. Exactly when she falls asleep again she later does not recall, but it was near noon when she awakes in the hot tent with Lucky jumping about eager to take care of business. The buffalo are gone.
Throughout the day she takes brief walks to the creek bed, mainly to give Lucky exercise, but mainly stays near the tent sitting on an Indian blanket she had purchased at a small store in Scenic years ago, and reading Willa Cather’s “Oh, Pioneer.” She snacks on bologna sandwiches and fig Newton’s. The campers around her are cordial without being intrusive and tend to their own activities without pressing her to join them, which is exactly how she wants it to be. As evening approaches with purple skies and silvery clouds fading away in the darkness, she builds a small fire in the grill that had been built by the park service, basically a pit dug in the ground surrounded by a small circular wall of iron and topped with a grill of metal bars blackened by the fires that had been built beneath it. When darkness sets in she places two hot dogs on the grill and listens to the grease crackle as it falls into the fire. She opens a can of Lucky’s favorite dog food for him and they eat together, seated next to one another on the Indian blanket. While others in the campground are still awake, she crawls into her tent with Lucky and pulling him to her, settles into the sleeping bag and falls sound asleep.
Harriet is awake even before the Sunday morning sun rises over the campground. She lies in the sleeping bag rubbing Lucky’s ear much to his apparent delight and listening to the distant sounds of a coyote, and the nearer sounds of birds in the nearby trees giving song to the beginning of day. As light begins to creep across the tent, she hooks Lucky to his leash and takes him down to the creek bed and unhooks it, letting him run about free for nearly an hour before calling him to her side and walking him back to the campsite. Other campers are preparing to leave, with tents being taken down and folded and stacked onto car tops or in car trunks. Some weekend holdouts like her are taking it slower, fixing a final breakfast of eggs and bacon prepared in cast iron skillets placed on the grill, or heading off for a final walk down the ravines or up to the hilltop hoping for one last sighting of buffalo. “This is it,” she says to Lucky, realizing that she had barely spoken more than those three words all weekend.
She opens the trunk of the car and takes out the shovel, then goes to the tree that had Jeffrey’s initials and at its base she begins to dig a small hole. Once she makes her way down about two feet she stops digging and sits the shovel aside. Lucky is tied to the car and is whining and straining at his leash. She pets his head and then takes the small box out of the trunk of the car and carefully peels the tape from the two flaps at its top. She lifts out a bundle, and carefully removes the bubble wrap and cotton and throws the wrapping items into the trunk. In her hands she holds a bright blue earthen jar decorated with a variety of images; footballs, cowboys, spaceships, and one of Lucky. She retrieves the two donuts from the car, then walks over to the hole and removes the lid from the jar and pours ashes from the jar into the hole. Once the jar is emptied she places the donuts on top of the ashes then replaces the dirt in the hole and pats it down. She thinks that maybe she should say a few words, but none came to mind. This is not a time for words.
A Guidebook
With his list of accomplishments, Steve Carr is one of the most qualified people on the planet to give other writers practical advice on the ins and outs of getting a short story published. His guidebook ‘Getting Your Short Stories Published’ reveals his organizing system and his methodology for approaching publishers, and is full of top tips to get your work in print. It’s a must-have for any aspiring short story writer.
You can find in on Amazon or click the book cover below.
Thanks
Thank you for reading this blog, if you’d like to submit a story for consideration to be published, please visit our submissions page.
If you’d like to keep up to date with all the latest stories, news, promos (including writing competitions and giveaways) plus receive a FREE Ebook, sign up to our mailing list here or fill in the form below.
Get your FREE Ebook
The pace and intensity of our lives, both at work and at home, leave many of us feeling like a person riding a frantically galloping horse. Our day-to-day incessant busyness — too much to do and not enough time.
With this ebook you will learn to approach your days in another way, reducing stress and getting results through prioritizing, leveraging and focus!
We’d like to thank Claire Taylor of the US for her short story submission “After The Fire”, a dramatic true story about a traumatic childhood event which shaped her feelings and perspective’s into Motherhood.
Claire Taylor is a mother, writer, and Licensed Massage Therapist. Her poetry and short fiction has appeared or is upcoming in Yellow Arrow Journal, The Loch Raven Review, Capsule Stories, American Writer’s Review, and Canary Literary Journal. Her writing about motherhood and depression has appeared on Scary Mommy. She is the creator of Little Thoughts, a monthly newsletter of original stories and poetry for children. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland (United States), and can be found online at clairemtaylor.com and you can follow Claire on Twitter @ClaireM_Taylor and Instagram @todayweread.
This page contains affiliate links which may earn me a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you click on them and make a purchase. Affiliate links are how I keep this blog running, thank you.
I was seven years old when my mother nearly burned down our house. My brother, sister and I were watching TV in the den while Mom was getting dinner ready. She poured oil into a heavy cast iron pan and set the pan on an open flame to heat. We were going to have french fries. The phone rang and I went into my dad’s study to pick up the call.
“Mom!” I shouted to her from the opposite end of the den. “Phone!” I set the receiver down on the desk and went back to my spot on the couch.
“Who is it?” Mom asked as she came out of the kitchen and made her way toward the phone.
“Aunt Denise.”
“Oh,” she said, and gently closed the study door behind her.
I can picture her sitting back against the cracked vinyl of my dad’s office chair, her feet up on his desk, distracted, at ease. I remember the sound of her laughter rising over the din of the television. I remember the flash of orange reflected in the TV screen. The brief moment that felt like slow motion minutes as my brother and I turned toward the kitchen, confusion melting into understanding and morphing into panic. I remember the fear in my brother’s voice as he shouted, “fire!” and that same fear on my mother’s face as she threw open the study door and paused for a split second before racing across the den and into the kitchen. She pulled a container of salt down from the cabinet and poured it over the tower of flames. They raged on. She frantically looked around the kitchen, her head on a swivel searching for aid and coming up empty. She caught sight of us in the kitchen doorway–three little wide-eyed faces–and without hesitation, grabbed the handle of the pan and carried it out of the kitchen and through the living room. She pulled open the front door, letting in a breeze that blew the flames back over her hands, and flung the burning pan into the air. It landed facedown in the middle of the yard with a thud, suffocating the flames and charring the grass.
The front door remained open as my mother stood at the kitchen sink, shoulders hunched as she ran cool water over the blistering backs of her hands. My sister, so young then, had disappeared into our bedroom in search of a stuffed animal. She wasn’t with my brother and me when my dad came home from work to find a pan sitting in the yard, the front door ajar, his wife somewhere unseen, and two of his three children racing toward him yelling, “She’s burned! She’s burned!” He thought we meant my sister until she came toddling into the living room with a teddy bear tucked beneath her arm, until he turned the corner into the kitchen and saw my mother leaning against the side of the sink, her eyes swollen from tears. I remember the way he wrapped his body around hers, pulled her into his chest, his embrace. The way their foreheads pressed together, radiating warmth.
That fire was the source of my insomnia. For years I’d lie in bed thinking I smelled something burning, or wake in the middle of the night from dreams in which my room had been set ablaze, the house slowly turning to ash and disappearing all around me as I sat trapped in my bed, powerless to stop the flames. I was constantly afraid that everything would catch fire. I turned the ceiling fan off at night despite the insufferable heat and humidity of Texas summers because I was certain the whirring sound meant it would spark and the whole house would burn to the ground. Well into my thirties, I still turn to my husband whenever an appliance makes a funny noise, or a lamp flickers when the air conditioner flips on and I ask “do you think it will catch fire?” It has taken him a decade to calmly reply “no” without first giving me a puzzled look.
I blame my mother for these anxieties, for my need to get out of bed each night and double-check that I turned off the stove. How irresponsible does a person need to be to leave a pan of hot oil sitting unattended on a gas range? What kind of mother forgets about the safety of her children? Forgets that she was in the middle of making their dinner?
I have a box of old photos in my living room that my son likes to look through. He pulls it from the shelf with his tiny thick hands and dumps the photos into a pile on the floor. There are pictures of my siblings and me dressed up and sitting in front of a Christmas tree. One of my brother, towheaded and round-cheeked, awkwardly holding a wrinkly, swaddled newborn me. There are school portraits, family vacation photos, and way too many images of my sister and me wearing hideous dresses or high-waisted floral patterned shorts. But my son’s favorite photograph is one from my mother’s 35th birthday. She’s sitting at a kitchen table, a cake in front of her with those number candles, 3 and 5, lit up in the middle of it. She’s smiling brightly despite the fact that three small children are climbing and hanging all over her, each of us scrambling forward to blow out the candles.
The first time he held up that photo, it occurred to me that I was only a little older than my son when that picture was taken, and only a little younger now than my mother was on that birthday. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to be 35 with three children under the age of six, overwhelmed as I was by the demands of caring for just one toddler-aged child. I looked at the photo, at my little sister not yet a year old in the image, and flashed back to a day when my son was around nine months old and increasingly daring in his efforts to cruise around our living room from one piece of furniture to the next. He was holding on to the side of our sofa and reaching out to grab the coffee table. He’ll never make it, I thought and I moved toward him to help him navigate the gap, but at the last second, I stopped myself. How will he trust himself if I’m constantly stepping in to make things easier, I reasoned. How will he learn his limits if I never let him test them? So I held back and I watched him reach out for the table. Watched him let go of the sofa. Watched him fall forward and bash his chin against the edge of the coffee table. Blood filled his mouth instantaneously, muffling his howls of pain.
I couldn’t get the bleeding to stop and I couldn’t think clearly. I tried to push him to my breast to comfort him by nursing, but he pulled away and screamed even louder. Should I call an ambulance? Rush him to the emergency room? Was he going to die? It was just a bump on the chin, but I didn’t know what could kill a nine-month-old. Everything, I assumed. I felt panicked and desperate. I called my husband to have him call the pediatrician, and then I called my parents. My dad answered the phone, and though he is calm and comforting in a crisis, I remember thinking how much I wished my mom had been home.
As I drove to the pediatrician’s office, my son still crying and bleeding in his car seat, I pictured my mother on the day I fell on the playground in preschool. I was climbing up the side of a big metal fire truck and slipped on the rung of a ladder, whacking my chin against the metal. It split open, requiring stitches. I waited in the office of the church building for her to come pick me up and bring me to the hospital, and I can still recall the heartbreaking relief I felt as she walked through the door.
I pictured my mother kneeling on the bathroom floor, gently applying bandaids to scraped knees. My mother pulling the sheet back to let me crawl into bed beside her after a bad dream. The sound of her voice saying, “oh honey.” The weight of her hand smoothing over my hair. My mother holding a bag of ice to my swollen cheek as I sat on the edge of a hospital bed waiting for x-rays. My mother wiping tears away from the tip of my nose. My mother carrying a pan of fire out of the kitchen, not right through the den, just a few steps to the backyard, but through the living room, the long way out of the house, away from the area where her children were waiting, and out the front door, holding tight even as the flames blew back, scalding the thin tissue of her hands. My mother, overworked and overtired, enjoying a brief adult conversation, a moment of respite in a long day of parenting young children. My mother making a simple mistake, a forgivable error. My mother staying calm and clear in a moment of danger, knowing better than to throw water on a grease fire. My mother not nearly burning our house down, but heroically saving the house from catching on fire, sacrificing her own safety to protect her children.
My hands trembled as I gripped the steering wheel and glanced back at my son’s angry red face and bloody lips. I pictured my mother’s hands, mottled and scarred in the spots where the fire had burned her. I pictured them reaching out, gently cupping my cheeks, and I knew everything would be okay.
Thanks
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The pace and intensity of our lives, both at work and at home, leave many of us feeling like a person riding a frantically galloping horse. Our day-to-day incessant busyness — too much to do and not enough time.
With this ebook you will learn to approach your days in another way, reducing stress and getting results through prioritizing, leveraging and focus!
We’d like to thank Alex Grey of the UK for her touching short story “Knitting for Leo”.
After a lifetime of writing technical non-fiction, Alex Grey is fulfilling her dream of writing poems and stories that engage the reader’s emotions. Her ingredients for contentment are narrowboating, greyhounds, singing and chocolate – it’s a sweet life. Her poems and short stories have been published by a number of ezines including Siren’s Call, Raconteur and Toasted Cheese. One of her comic poems is also available via a worldwide network of public fiction dispensers managed by publisher Short Edition. Alex is not a mum, but she works in healthcare and this story comes from her compassion for the women who have shared their lives with her over the years.
Note: this story mentions still birth and is a work of fiction and not based on any identifiable individual.
This page contains affiliate links which may earn me a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you click through and make a purchase. Affiliate links are how I keep this blog running, thank you.
Back then, knitting was a necessity, not some artisan craft like it is today. She would get patterns from Women’s magazines and cheap wool from the market. She knitted my clothes – sweaters, cardigans, even skirts. I was the eldest. As soon as I could hold a pair of needles, I was knitting booties for my baby brother and sister.
I got married in 1969, when you could buy wool in every colour that you could imagine. I was eighteen, but I already knew how to keep a house. Calum worked long hours, keen to get on in his career and be a good provider. I had a part-time job in our local greengrocers. In the evenings, we’d sit by the fire in our terraced house. It was before we had a television, so we’d talk about the future, about the children that we’d have. I’d knit and he’d do the crossword in the newspaper. I knitted tank tops for him to wear to work – he had a different one for every day of the month. Years later he admitted that he got teased by the other juniors. But my Calum was a hard worker, and the teasing stopped when he kept getting promoted.
Calum was already a manager by the time I fell pregnant. Lucky that he had enough tank tops, because as soon as I started to show I stopped knitting for him. I bought some new wool, all soft pastel yellow and lilac, and started knitting for the baby. My friends said it was bad luck to knit for the baby too soon, but I wanted to be ready.
I thought I must be carrying a boy, a footballer judging by the kicking. Calum was very modern, he liked to lie by my side with his hand on my bump, feeling every movement. The basket I kept in the new nursery soon filled with clothes – judging by the size of the bump he was going to be a whopper. I started getting nervous about giving birth, but the midwife said I was young and had nothing to worry about.
The kicking stopped when I was 37 weeks.
I remember that night – I slept for 8 hours, my longest sleep since I fell pregnant. I woke up all rested and, for a minute, everything seemed fine, but my bump did not wake up with me. I begged for my baby to start kicking again, but he was still. The hospital induced the birth, I had to go through it, but they knew it was all for nothing. I caught a glimpse of him before they wrapped him in a towel and swept him away. He looked so perfect, like he was sleeping. I wanted to hold him, but they said it was better for me not to see him, to move on quickly, a strong young girl like me could try again soon enough, these things happened.
There was no death certificate because he had never lived. Yet in our hearts, he was always Leo, due in August, our fierce little lion who almost made it.
We carried our grief out of the hospital door and swaddled it with our hopes in the little basket of baby clothes I’d knitted. I burned them all.
Of course, we tried again and within the year we had a beautiful baby girl; two years later, our son was born. I stopped knitting. Honestly, who has time to knit with two young children and a husband working all hours?
Late at night, though, I’d hear Calum sobbing quietly beside me and knew he’d never got over losing Leo, just as I’d never got over the feeling that my knitting had cursed our firstborn. There was no emery board that could remove the festering hangnail of our hidden grief.
Calum lived long enough to walk his daughter down the aisle and to stand shoulder to shoulder with his son when he was wed. When our first grandchild was born, I realised that I had not seen Calum smile like that since the day that I first fell pregnant and our future had sparkled with undimmed hope.
I brooded on it after Calum’s funeral, how his poor heart had flexed with grief and joy, like the metal fatigue in those planes that crashed, destroyed by a hidden stress.
It was then I decided to tell my children about Leo. They didn’t know, you see, because we didn’t talk about these things back then. They were…surprising. They cried, but with relief, they said they had always felt that there was something, someone, missing. We had Leo’s name carved onto Calum’s headstone and I started to knit again.
I live with my daughter now. I have a lovely apartment with plenty of space for my comfy recliner chair. I have everything I need, a TV, my knitting needles and a pile of wool given to me by kind donors. It’s all colours and textures, but that doesn’t matter. Once I picked up the needles again, my fingers remembered the old patterns, so I can sit here watching my favourite shows while I make babygro’s, bootees and cute berets to keep the babies’ heads warm.
My daughter knocks on my door.
“Mum, the driver’s here.”
“That’s fine love, I’ve got a load ready for him.”
I hand her a neatly wrapped box, the label says “Knitting for Leo” along with a charity registration number. This batch is going to our local hospital, but I send parcels to maternity units all over the country. You see, Leo’s charity got quite big once my daughter mentioned it on the internet. We must have over a hundred volunteer knitters now, each with their own sad tale to tell.
I knit tiny clothes that would fit a doll, or a baby born too soon and too still. I finish each little outfit with a ribbon and put it in the basket by my side. I imagine how parents will take these tiny clothes and dress their stillborn babies. They will hold their precious bodies, take photographs. In that moment, the quiet infants will become part of their families forever.
I raise a cup of tea to the dead who never lived.
You never lived, but you were loved. Rest easy my son.
Thanks
Thanks for reading this blog. You can read more stories HERE and if you’d like to submit a story for consideration to be published, please visit our submissions page.
If you’d like to keep up to date with all the latest stories, news, promos (including writing competitions and giveaways) plus receive a FREE Ebook, sign up to our mailing list here or fill in the form below.
Get your FREE Ebook
The pace and intensity of our lives, both at work and at home, leave many of us feeling like a person riding a frantically galloping horse. Our day-to-day incessant busyness — too much to do and not enough time.
With this ebook you will learn to approach your days in another way, reducing stress and getting results through prioritizing, leveraging and focus!
Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction 
