True story

Troops 123’s Annual Popcorn Fundraiser: A True Story

Troops 123’s Annual Popcorn Fundraiser: A True Story

Jo Caddy

I’d like to thank Margaret Koger of the US for her true story submission “Troop 123’s Annual Popcorn Fundraiser”, a sentimental tale about the joys of grandparent duties.

Margaret is a retired school media specialist with a writing habit living in Boise, Idaho. She says she writes in hopes of adding small strands of connective tissue to our shared web of life. Most of her recent publications include poetry and short stories published locally and online. One of her favourites can be found at https://www.idahomagazine.com/contests/fiction-writing-winners/christmas-in-central-cove-2015-first-place-adult-division/.

Margaret tells us “My memoir recounts the days I spent helping my grandson earn money for his Boy Scout activities and for the troop he belonged to–actually Troop 123. Of all that I did for my grandson as he went through the teen years, this was the best. I stood in the background watching him walk door-to-door for his fundraiser–how he presented his invitation to buy and how people reacted. Truly a Grand Mum experience and an honor to write about.”

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Troop 123

Troop 123’s Annual Popcorn Fundraiser

When I arrive at my grandson’s home, Ramsey enters the living room dressed in his uniform: tan shirt, red tie, Boy Scouts of America (BSA) tie clasp, green khaki shorts, and a worn, billed cap with its official logo. ‘Ah’ I think ‘shorts’. It’s October, the poplar leaves are turning color and there is an abundance of crisp air circulating at ground level. Never mind, I have my coat, hat, and gloves and I’m ready to walk with him as he rings doorbells and makes his pitch, trying to raise enough money to pay for next summer’s scouting activities.

He positions himself in front of each door, his sales placard front, and center, his legs spread a bit as if the opening of the door could blow him away. “Hi, I’m Ramsey and I’m here for our annual Troop 123 fundraiser. This year we have our one pound white cheddar, our …

In the short ride to Cobbler’s Creek where we’ve sold popcorn for the last four years, I have a chance to talk with the eighth-grader. I tell him the stories of his infant times when I took care of him while his mother worked. He’s fifteen now,  six foot two, recumbent where he’s seated in my little Subaru like a willowy sapling bent down and ready to spring up when released. I turn the radio on and we discuss music, the “Okay” radio station because it plays everything. “Really I like 80’s and 90’s music.”

I’m sure I’ll recognize and enjoy some of the popular songs from these two “long ago” decades so I say, “Yes,” even though I’ve become a classical music fan, mostly listening to CDs from the late 19th and the early 20th Century.

“So much of the new rap is nothing but a joke.” he adds.

I think of one reason he loves music so much. Band is his favorite subject where he specializes in percussion: drums, xylophone, cymbals, and so on. His junior high music teacher leads an after school jazz band where he gets a couple of extra hours of rhythm twice a week. “Why you love music so much?” I ask. “Well, when you were a baby, I played a symphony for you every day. Every day the same symphony, written by a Scottish musician named Bantok, celebrating the Hebrides Islands off the northeast coast of Scotland. I’d hold you to my chest and we’d dance around the living room. It helps with brain development so I gave it a try.”

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A song by Sam Cook comes on the radio: “She was only sixteen, only sixteen/ I loved her so/ But she was too young to fall in love/ And I was too young to know.”

“I heard this song in Portugal last month,” I say. “You used to love it!”

“I still like it, it’s just not one of my favorites now,” he answers.

Other days we talk more about school, his friends, my activities, and his family—even about my teenage years—revealing how the angst of being a teenager continues with many of the same challenges in discovering one’s identity. After ten or fifteen minutes of driving, we arrive and park. It’s time.

With Ramsey, even selling popcorn is rhythmic. Beyond the ring of the doorbell, the wait, more waiting, the sometimes appearance of a person, managing the door, the screen door, the dog, and the all-important pitch. For a couple of hours in the evening, after the workers arrive home and settle in and even during dinnertime, people will answer the door and buy popcorn although we get plenty of unanswered doorbells and “not interested” responses.

Others don’t want popcorn, but they donate cash, anywhere from a couple of bucks to $10 or even $20. One evening as we looped back from a culdesac a woman came out of a house where no one answered the doorbell. In bare feet, she crossed the street to hand Ramsey a $20 bill. “We don’t want the sweets, but I wanted to help you guys out,” she said.

Older people like to draw Ramsey out. “How long have you been in scouts?” “What does the money you raise go for?” “My husband was in scouts and both my boys.” One remarkable young man says, “I see the order form hasn’t changed since I was selling!”

“You again!” one woman exclaims. Each year she’s reported on the health of her husband, a former Eagle Scout and WWII Medal of Honor winner. Last fall she thought they’d have to move because he couldn’t climb the stairs. Then, last summer he died—and she still doesn’t know how much she’ll receive in benefits—she’ll have to pass on buying this time. “You may have read about it in the paper. He was ninety-two,” she says. “It was time. I’m ready too, I’m eighty-eight, and I’m tired.”

“So sorry,” we reply. “So sorry.”

This year, for the first time, several people have insisted we both come inside, “You too,” they say as they wave for me to come in. For some, it’s a change that quiets the dog, for others, it’s about hospitality. “I won’t bite,” says the owner of Jana’s Haircutting Store. Another woman is watching Ken Burns Viet Nam program on public television. “It’s so awful,” she cries. “We didn’t know and those protesters did!”

“Did you say when the delivery will be?” an older buyer asks. “Just before Thanksgiving,” Ramsey assures her.

“That’s such a long time from now! We’ll forget we ordered the popcorn,” she exclaims.

“Well, we have to have a lot of time to sell,” Ramsey replies.

And I know he’s thinking of all the streets we walk, up and down, offering the caramel corn and yogurt pretzels that many people are wary of—giving up sugar, not eating corn, bad for our health—and how they often buy anyway. Who can resist a six-foot-two beanpole with short hair and a face reddened by the chill holding such luscious illustrations of popcorn?

“I’ll be using whatever I buy as gifts,” one buyer says and she orders large bags so she won’t be tempted to open them for her own use. It was as we left her house that Ramsey said, “Sell now, sneeze later. I just found out I’m allergic to cats!”

Since seventy-three percent of the sales apply to camping fees, troop activities, and funding for the national organization, each sale is really a donation. But I know the sugary temptations increase the buyer’s desire to help. Ramsey and his brother Riley have sold enough popcorn in the past to completely fund their camp excursions, as well as adding to troop funds, which earns them praise for being role models to younger scouts.

But I think the contact with people in their homes and the push of learning to talk with strangers has been the most invaluable part of the activity for the boys. As cute little guys, when they rang the doorbell, lots of people were charmed into buying. Now it often takes a man answering the door. He may have a hard time saying no to the gangly eighth-grader who prompts memories of his own youth when growing up was so hard to do.

Selling popcorn door to door wasn’t anything I ever expected to be a part of; however, as I stand on the sidewalk holding the order sheet and pen at the ready, I’m eager to smile and wave to whoever opens the door—yes, he has an adult with him and she’s glad to be here.

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A Mother’s Rites: A Short Story

Jo Caddy

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).

His website is https://www.stevecarr960.com / or you can find him on Facebook or Twitter @carrsteven960

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.

A Mother's Rites

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A Mother’s Rites

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.

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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.

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Thanks

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With this ebook you will learn to approach your days in another way, reducing stress and getting results through prioritizing, leveraging and focus!

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After The Fire: A True Story

After The Fire: A True Story

Jo Caddy

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.

Photo Credit: Frederick Medina on Unsplash

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. 

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After the fire

After The Fire

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. 

Going Short book coverGoing Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction

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

Thank you 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

Accomplish more IN a fraction of the time

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!

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The Seamstress: A Micro Story

The Seamstress: A Micro Story

Jo Caddy

We’d like to thank Mary Howley for her submission “The Seamstress”, a true story about her mother Doris, who passed away in December last year at 91 years of age. Mary tells us “She died believing that she had lived a very ordinary life.”

Mary saw things very differently. Whilst she saw her Mother’s main achievements as being a loving wife to her husband Frank and a devoted mother to her four children, it’s what she taught her children that was her true legacy. “I wrote this story as an ode to her extraordinary talent as a seamstress, having established a successful small business, instilling in all of her children that believing in yourself will bring you success and happiness.”

Mary herself is a mother of three children. “I have juggled being a mum with many varied careers. In my downtime, I have written fiction and non-fiction stories and have had a few of them published in lifestyle magazines.” She has recently written a crime fiction novel which she hopes to get published and will be graduating from an Associate Degree in Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT University in Melbourne at the end of this year.

You can read more of Mary’s work on her newly launched site maryhowley.com

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.

Going Short book coverGoing Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction by Nancy Stohlman

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Photo credits:  J Williams & Pina Messina on Unsplash

The Seamstress

The seamstress sits in her scarlet velour armchair, notepad on her lap, her attention focussed on the potential bride sitting opposite to her. With a pencil in her hand, her nimble fingers sketch the dream gown, onto her dog-eared notepad, with rapid dexterity. Tape measure in hand, she measures, calculates, and records the amount of fabric needed. 

Weeks later, a shapeless piece of white fabric lies on the kitchen table, like a patient waiting for the scalpel. Black vinyl records spin on the turntable; Dean Martin sings a jaunty Volare and Cilla Black blares You’re My World. And so, the operation begins. Dressmaker scissors in her right hand, while her left-hand holds the fabric flat on the kitchen table, sewing pins threaded into her apron, her waves of black hair tied away from her face, the seamstress begins performing her magic. 

After a day at school, I sit cross-legged under the table, watching scraps of material cascade to the floor. My small starfish-like hands scavenge for the scraps on the floor – pinning the ghostly remnants into dresses for my Barbie doll. Inhaling the smells of the various textiles; my senses are heightened. Some fabrics have a sharp and nauseating chemical odour while others have gentle hints of lavender and mothballs. 

As I chat to her about my day at school, the seamstress halts her craft, listening to me with tenderness in her eyes. Eventually, she asks for quiet — she needs to concentrate in order to conduct her symphony of artistry. Swathes of fabric that resemble jigsaw pieces, will be sewn into a much-loved wedding gown. With one foot on the pedal of her black Singer sewing machine, the contraption whirrs, breathing life into the drapery. The needle threads into the stiff netting of tulle, the web-like threads of lace, the sheen of satin, and the sheerness of chiffon. Pieces of cloth are fashioned into wonderous garments. 

When the fabric is finally constructed into a wedding gown, sequins and buttons sewn, the prospective brides are summoned for their final fitting as their wedding day draws near. Giddy with excitement they walk on clouds, carrying the wedding gown that signifies a bold move into a new chapter in their lives. After their wedding and honeymoon, the brides return, to bring the seamstress bonbonniere of sugar-coated almonds and to show her photos of their special day. 

The neighbours are in awe of this woman who migrated to this country from Malta in her early twenties. Boarding a passenger ship on her own, with her Singer sewing machine and a Grandmother clock that chimed every hour, she came to Australia with not a word of English – only pockets of hope and a heart of burning ambition.

That was long ago – the seamstress has grown old. The brilliant mind that breathed life into fabrics, wanders from one branch of thought to another, her rambling words make no sense. Her thin hair is snow-white, her eyes have dimmed, and her fingers are bent like tree roots – the same fingers that decades ago were straight and strong, deftly sewing perfect stitches into hems and seams.

  In a hospital room, I watch her taking her last laboured breaths, steepling her fingers with my fingers. My tears flow, and yet I smile — remembering a time way back when brides treaded the path to our door – a time when my mother was hailed as the amazing seamstress. 

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Oranges and Lemons by Paula F. Andrews

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

Accomplish more IN a fraction of the time

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!

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A Place: A Micro-Story

Jo Caddy

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Thanks to Fiona M. Jones for her latest submission “A Place’. A charming micro-story about the adventures children find in ordinary places.

Fiona M. Jones is a regular contributor to Mum Life Stories, some of her titles include ‘Mud‘ & ‘Tiny Green Apples‘. She is a part-time teacher, a parent, and a spare-time writer, with work recently published by Folded Word, Buckshot Magazine and Silver Pen.

She is also one of the judges for our Micro-Fiction Competition.

She lives with her husband and 2 sons (aged 15 & 17) in Fife, Scotland, where she works, writes & ministers. You can read more about Fiona here, in her Mum Life Success Story.

You can also follow Fiona on Twitter or Linkedin
Photo Credit: Raghu Nayyar on Unsplash

This page contains affiliate links which may earn me a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. Affiliate links are how I keep this blog running, thank you.

Going Short book coverGoing Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction by Nancy Stohlman

A PLACE

“Mummy, we’ve seen a place and we have to go there,” they tell me in that tone of unanswerable firmness which I know they’ve copied from me but still I can’t resist.
A “place” is never an amusement park or a restaurant or any crowded area. It is over hills or under trees, in among rocks through mud beside water. We’re going on a bear hunt, we’re setting out on an Expotition, we’re traversing Middle Earth; and, come what may, we’re not coming back with clean clothes or dry socks.
This particular place is a narrow deep-forested valley below the A92 to Kirkcaldy. Embanked dual carriageway turns briefly to bridge and back again in the blink of an eye, but children’s eyes don’t blink much, and they’ve made their decision.
I parked, awkwardly, in a layby, and we went there.
We followed overgrowing paths among damp greenery and welly-sucking puddles. We found a wooden bridge across the stream, and we walked under the massive concrete struts of the traffic-roaring road. We scrambled up dust and small scree to a half-hidden ledge of ground that made a perfect lookout point, and we defended with imaginary fire-power. And we discovered a fallen tree clutching odd pieces of brickwork, in its newly-bared roots as though it had accidentally swallowed a wall half a century ago.
And I laundered once more the clothes and cleaned the mud off boots, hoping that nothing in life will ever wash away the patterns of early habit—that trees and sky and running water will always remain the backdrop in my children’s minds, giving them peace when life gets turbulent.

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Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook by David Galef

If you’d like to submit a story of your own, please visit our submissions page, or enjoy reading more of our Flash Fiction HERE.

If you’re a writer, why not enter our Micro-Fiction Writing Competition?

Micro Fiction writing competition

Thanks

Thank you for reading this blog. If you would like to keep up to date with all our latest news, stories and promos (including giveaways and writing competitions), please sign up to our mailing list HERE, or fill in the form below. You’ll also receive a FREE Ebook exclusive to our email subscribers.

Get your FREE Ebook

Accomplish more IN a fraction of the time

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!

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Written In Gold – A Micro Story

Jo Caddy

Written in Gold - pinterest cover

We’d like to thank Susi J Smith of Scotland for her micro story ‘Written in Gold’, based on true events. A relatable tale about the value of motherhood.

Susi J Smith is a frustrated writer, and mother of one. She lives in Scotland and longs for a writing room of her own. Susi has previously been published in 101Words.org, Zeroflash, and McStorrytellers. For more information, check out her website:https://mairi187.wixsite.com/susi-j-smith or Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SusiJSmith/

Susi is also a member of a local writing group; West Lothian Writers.

If you’d like to submit a story to be considered for publishing, please visit our submissions page.

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, thanks. 

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Brevity – A Flash Fiction Handbook by David Galef

WRITTEN IN GOLD

A blank page sits ready and waiting on my laptop while I run back and forth from the kitchen, answering your demands for ‘Peter butter’, ‘Poco cops’, and ‘I-beana’; anything for five minutes peace. But no. The cereal makes you thirsty, your drink stains the rug, and don’t even ask me where you’ve managed to hide the peanut butter. Thank goodness your father isn’t allergic to nuts. Oh wait, he is!

I can dust, do the washing, load the dishwasher, weed the garden, but I can’t sit. I’m not allowed to sit. As soon as my bum hits that couch you snatch my pen and run away laughing. You scribble over my pristine, cherished, and favourite notebooks. You need your ‘packpack’ put on your ‘backback’ then and there because you’re going to the shops for more ‘weeties’.

You absorb my time and creativity and demand it as your own. I take you to soft play; help you find friends, but you’re back every two minutes asking why I’m not ankle-deep in the ball pit like that other mum. Does she have a book to write? Or deadlines that pass without a word hitting the page?

On the calendar, I mark off the days until you start school, the days until I can become more than just ‘Mummy’, ‘the wife of that guy whose clothes are never ironed’, and ‘that part-time employee with the uncombed hair’.

Then, out of nowhere, you give me a card. Handmade. Your name scribbled inside in yellow felt tip. It’s got two extra ‘a’s and a ‘2’ I don’t remember giving it, but it’s there, clear to a mother’s eye. The first proper word you’ve written. And I realize, it’s better than anything I will ever write. The best thing I could ever create sits staring at me from the rug, your eyes the colour of mine, your energy boundless, and all you want is my time, my love, and my whole being.

It’s worth every second I have just to see you grow.



 

Thanks

Thanks for reading this blog. If you’d like to keep up to date with all our latest stories, news and promos (including giveaways and writing competitions) please sign up to our email list HERE or fill in the form below. You’ll also receive a FREE Ebook, exclusive to our email subscribers.

If your a writer, don’t forget to enter our writing competition to win cash prizes and publication.

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Get your FREE Ebook

Accomplish more IN a fraction of the time

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!

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