It's been a while since I have visited the diaries. Most of any writing lately has been to make lists. It rained most of the day today. It was a cold and gray day. I found a word prompt over on AARP. So I gave it a fling. Really strange the places you end up from a line of words. So I guess I will put what I came up with here. The #2 piece for the same set of words is very dark, so fair warning for anybody who might read. I also had to go out today and hunt for the cat food bowls. The raccoons have taken to running off into the woods with them. They are missing again. I'll let DH do the tracking tomorrow since he waited until the sun went down to feed the cats. Yes we feed ferals. We also trap and have a working arrangement with a SpayNeuter Clinic for shots and neutering, a nice package for $60 as long as we bring them in in the trap. I guess they don't want to be doing pets for that price. Over the past year, we've trapped a dozen, one a month. Once we trapped a cat that had already been done. Actually took it into the vet, but they found the tattoo they leave behind so we were able to just bring it back home. I think we've got them all. There have been no kittens since last spring and those poor things were killed by a dog who periodically gets loose. The the other day I did see a great monstrosity of a cat, gray with a bobbed tail. He had a collar, so I guess he belongs to someone, just came here to dine. Anyway, just stuff and nonsense...
Directions: Use the words below to write a short story, poem or essay. They can be used as written or in any other form (‘ing, ‘ly, ‘ed, ‘un, or hyphenated with another word).
Quilt
cedar
hope
train
ice cycle
possibilities
teacher
Bonus word: restless
#1 - A beginning - I am surprised how this unfolded. I had not planned to be where I am with a puzzler. I have to figure out who took Ryan and why. Were her parents killed accidentally or murdered, or is there something else? What does the family know, if anything. How about the investigator, what does he know? -- just a few of the many questions I am left with from this 8-word prompt.
A Past
Her parents were dead. She had no memory of them. She was two when ”it” happened. The “it” is a dark place in her mind. She had been kidnapped at the time of her parents’ death according to the investigator hired by Gran. Now twenty-two she is in Purcellville, Virginia, living with a grandmother she did not know existed until three weeks ago. When Ryan thought about any of it too much, she slipped into a deep melancholia. Gran thought it best to go slow, to let things work out in a paced fashion.
Today was a good day. Ryan hummed as she descended the stairs with the quilt in her arms. She stopped short when she saw her grandmother at the bottom of the stairs. Their relationship was still new. This woman whose face reflected her own, whose hair was the color of muted fire was her grandmother. It felt odd to say it even when said just in her own mind.
“Is this what you wanted Gran? she asked.”
“ Yes darlin’.”
But before her grandmother could say anything more Ryan asked, “was this sewn by hand?”
“Indeed. It was sewn by the hands of your great-great-great-great Grandmother.”
Gran sat herself down on the steps and Ryan sat down on the step beside her.
“Her name was Rioghnach (r ee - OH - n uh). Ryan was her family name. You carry the name of her clan as your given name.”
“The quilt is so beautiful, intricate, and apparently terribly old, quipped Ryan.”
They both stroked the surface of the quilt gently, almost as if to sensorily take in its past through the skin of their hands. Gran smiled.
“An heirloom, yes. Rioghnach brought the quilt with her to Minnesota. She is the family’s only mail-order bride.
“Mail-order Bride!” said an incredulous Ryan.
Gran smiled, “Is is really any different than the eHarmony.com of today. You see, Rioghnach lived in Roanoke, Virginia. Much of the male population on the East Coast was married, lost to the war, or had migrated West lured by the promise of gold. She was a teacher, but she had no property and little in the way of prospects. Her brothers were the heirs. What land and wealth there was in the family would be theirs. Rioghnach was in her early-to-mid-twenties and quickly losing her marriage marketability. She wanted children, a family, her family. When she saw the add for brides in her church bulletin, she wrote in her journal that for the first time in a long while she felt her life again had new possibilities.
“But she was around my age. I’d hate to think I would have to make the decision to marry someone I did not know, mused Ryan.”
“That was the way it was in the late 1860s . We really have come a long way, baby,” said Gran smiling.
“So who was the lucky man, Ryan queried?”
“Let’s go upstairs to the attic and I’ll show you, said Gran.’’
Ryan bounded up the stairs carrying the quilt with Gran following along behind her. Once in the attic, Gran opened Rioghnach’s hope chest. She moved things around and pulled from its caverns the picture of Viktor Fister (Red) and Rioghnach Ryan taken on their wedding day.
“Wow, no wonder. We never stood a chance did we? Red and Rusty!,” Ryan quipped, as she fingered her own red tresses.
They poked around in the chest. There were pictures, baby clothes, birth and death records, mementos of all sorts. And there were journals -- personal journals, garden journals, house journals. -- so many. In them, the lives of the Fisters were recorded. It was a past Ryan could touch.
Gran went on with the family history. She told of Red’s emigration from the Netherlands, how he wanted more from life and was willing to risk all to have his grab at the gold ring. He went to the mine fields where he was successful in securing enough gold to buy property in Minnesota. He built his house, plowed his fields. He had his dream, but he was lonely. Women were as scarce in the West as men were in the East. He wanted a family. Through his church he wrote letters stating what he had to offer and that he desired very much a wife to share his good fortune. He wanted a family. One of his letters found its way to the small Methodist congregation in Roanoke. Rioghnach and several others wrote him and exchanged pictures. Soon he was only writing Rioghnach. Their courtship was carried out through the mail for a little over a year. Red proposed to Rioghnach who said yes. She traveled to Minnesota by train, and they were married almost as soon as she stepped away from the rails. Over the years eight children followed, four boys and four girls. Rioghnach and Red were inseparable. They were married just shy of sixty years when Red was killed after being thrown from his horse. Rioghnach followed him three years later. She was just too lonely without him.
Ryan blinked the wetness from her eyes. The emotion that brought on the tears felt new, different. Gran sensed she was overwhelmed. Gran carefully returned the family treasures to the cedar chest.
“We have time sweetie. Don’t worry we’ll get there. For now how about a cup of hot chocolate and some of those shortbread cookies?”
“Yes, that sounds soooo good.”
As they left the attic, Gran pointed to another cedar chest.
“That one was your mother’s. When you’re ready it’s there for you,” said Gran.
“Yes, I’d like that. Funny, all of this time I thought I had no one, that I was nobody,” Ryan whispered.
Gran smiled gently and patted Ryan’s hand and was only able to get out the words -- “I am so glad we found you, you were never a nobody child,” -- before Ryan hugged her fiercely.
“When you’re ready, you’ll meet the aunts, uncles, cousins -- you are not alone Ryan,” Gran said.
The chocolate and cookies finished, she washed up the cups and plates, and Ryan kissed Gran on the cheek.
“I‘m feeling restless. I think I’ll go to Barnes & Noble. I want to journal, and I want to start today. I don’t like feeling lost. I think journaling will help me find my way.”
Gran just nodded as Ryan put on her coat. As she descended the front porch steps, her trailing hand freed the railing of its newly formed ice cycles . The icy rain was turning to snow. Her thoughts strayed to a farm in Minnesota, to a family of which she was a part. She was happy.
Again the words are:
Quilt
cedar
hope
train
ice cycle
possibilities
teacher
Bonus word: restless
#2 -- A piece for integration into something else. Dark.
A Dark Heart
Hope is like a train. No track impediments, the ride is smooth; but, a defect, a bad switch -- derailment-- catastrophe ensues. His death the impediment -- no them -- the catastrophe. She can hear the echo from the gaping maw of the so called well intentioned, their utterances of -- “a better place, God’s will, a life lesson, we just never know, time heals, just hang on.” Chattering, chattering away, self serving -- the voices -- discordant. Her mind a silent scream, “how do they not know what I know?” The dead do not speak. They do not tell tales of shiny lights and welcoming arms, or of a better place. The dead do not assume the role of teacher simply by failure to draw in breath. The dead do not comfort. They leave black holes waiting to devour what comes near. Time is not capable of healing the heart rent to pieces, the chunks skewered on the ice cycle-shaped dagger of grief; and God, what of God - where is he, under what rock can he be found. Is he behind the curtain and like “The Great Oz” just a sham?
The water rolled in and out, alternately a roar then a whisper. She sat wrapped in a quilt, but it could not warm her. Into the horizon , her stare vacant, her emotions blended into an emulsion until there was no distinction between pleasure or pain. There was just numbness. It flowed like spilled glue and hardened trapping her in the nowhere. Her possibilities whittled into useless scraps, she keened; her sorrow broadcast to the waves. In that moment came the whisper. She would not wait for memories to be set adrift by the scent of cedar in some future year of reminiscence of what never was to be. She stood. The quilt puddled at her feet. She stepped, one step, followed by another until each footfall took her first into the alka-seltzer fizz, then deeper, then deeper still, until the sound of the sea’s throwing itself on the shore was behind her. It’s salty mouth closing in a rush over her, restless, unrelenting, hungry, swallowing whatever it might find.