And She Lived Happily Ever After

This week's Red Writing Hood prompt from The Red Dress Club asked you to spread a little joy.

You were to write a piece where you or your character overcame a challenge and, even if it's just for a moment, has a happy ending.

Hoping the tank was on the right, she steered the tin can rental up alongside the pump, found the latch to unlock the cover, climbed out and filled it like a pro -- with neither dirt nor gas staining her hands.   (After all, she’d been born and raised in New Jersey where self-serve gas didn’t exist.  But, after nearly five years in LA and a few before that in New Hampshire, she’d learned a thing or two about pumping gas.  Too bad she hadn't also learned to listen to her gut...until now.) With the tank full, she set out again, following the signs to “Returns,” where she easily guided the car into an empty spot.  After returning the key, she made her way to the terminal, checked her bag--which could have doubled as a steamer trunk--and proceeded to the gate.

This was her second trip down the 405 to LAX this week.  A few days earlier, her neighbor, Carole, had followed her to the port where she’d dropped her car so it could make the trip back east on a car carrier. Carole then ferried her to the airport, where she’d picked up the rental she’d just now dropped off.  In the intervening days, she’d been busy -- packing and shipping to her parents’ house everything that wasn’t headed for storage.  Yesterday, the movers had come, removing the furniture and boxes--only those without a “Do Not Pack” sign affixed to them--headed for the self-storage locker her mother had rented just last weekend.  She’d tied up a few loose ends at the office and said her goodbyes (yes, even to him) before spending her last night in LA at another Carol’s, this one her friend and colleague, who, as luck would have it, lived near the airport.

With plenty of time to spare at the still empty gate, she watched through the huge glass wall as golf cart drivers swerved around each other, delivering wayward bags to jets at other gates.  At the closest one, workers atop a platform crane loaded meals and supplies onto a parked plane. Taking it all in, she was well aware of the absence of the elephant that recently had departed her being.  A newfound lightness filled her to the core.

An older woman, nodding and smiling, sat down next to her.

“Are you traveling for business or pleasure?” the woman inquired.

She hesitated a moment before answering, “Neither....  I’m leaving my husband.”  With the words hanging in the air, she was stunned.  Where were her filters?

“Is this a good thing for you?” the woman asked, unshaken.

“Oh yes,” she said, empowered by what she’d already accomplished and elated by the new freedoms she knew lay ahead.

R

Red Writing Hood is the writing meme of The Red Dress Club.  The finished piece should be no more than 600 words of either fiction or non-fiction.  Thanks for reading...and feel free to offer thoughts, ideas and/or constructive criticism.  I appreciate hearing what you have to say.

A Line in the Sand

This week's prompt focused on character development. We asked you to tell us what your character - or you -wants. It's a way to get to know your character or yourself better.

They’d each drawn a line in the sand.  Between the lines was a very deep chasm.  For the first time that she could remember, they couldn’t even agree to disagree.

They’d been invited to honor her mother’s memory.  The part that believed in human rights, civil rights and equal rights.  The part that was ahead of her time.  The part that was, according to one friend, “exceptional.”

He believed in these things too, but resisted the invitation.  In this instance, he believed these things conflicted with his daughter’s best interests.

She didn't see it his way. She longed to honor her mother’s memory.

He didn't see it her way. He longed to protect his daughter.

They’d each drawn a line in the sand.  Between the lines was a very deep chasm.

R

Red Writing Hood is the writing meme of The Red Dress Club.  The finished piece should be no more than 600 words of either fiction or non-fiction.  Thanks for reading...and feel free to offer thoughts, ideas and/or constructive criticism.  I appreciate hearing what you have to say.

Was She Wrong?

This week's Red Writing Hood prompt:  

Write a short piece - 600 words max - that begins with the words, "This was absolutely the last time" and ends with "She was wrong."
 
Have fun with it. Think outside the box. Don't go with the obvious.  Happy writing!

This was absolutely the last time she’d repeat the conversation, which only stirred up negative, angry thoughts.  And yet, as much as she wanted to, she just couldn’t stop.  It didn’t seem to matter that so many others had been so gracious and generous with their care and concern -- checking in, reaching out, and helping her, in big ways and small, to hold it all together during what Queen Elizabeth surely would call an annus horribilis.  

Still, she looked for any excuse to repeat it -- as if each repetition could somehow erase a little piece of the spot where a red hot poker had seared it into her memory.

“I know she didn’t mean anything by it,” she told Meredith, as they sat catching up over coffee after way too many months without a girls’ weekend together.  “I even understand that she thought she was being supportive and funny, but Oh! My! God!  I’m in the midst of making impossibly tough choices about my body, my health and my life, and all she can tell me is that ‘it’s time to lop those puppies off??’  Really?!?” 

*   *   *

So, was she wrong to keep repeating the story, perpetuating the hurt, the anger and the disbelief she felt when she first heard the quip?  Wrong to fail to let it go, unable to exhale it forever in one deep cleansing breath?  Wrong to judge someone else’s personal best?  Wrong to let another’s seeming lack of empathy overshadow countless blessings from others?  Yes, yes, yes and yes.  On all counts.  She was wrong.

R

Red Writing Hood is the writing meme of  The Red Dress Club.  The finished piece should be no more than 600 words of either fiction or non-fiction.  Thanks for reading...and feel free to offer thoughts, ideas and/or constructive criticism.  I appreciate hearing what you have to say.

Sloth?

Earlier this evening, a friend tagged me in her Facebook post:

Bad news, Jewesses (Rachel Shapiro, Eliza Merwin, JBlogger, JanetheWriter, Gail Brown, Nancy Silverman) -- it's another one of those nasty 7 sins.

From my perspective, this is indeed bad news.  Needless to say, I’m Jewish (yes, some people refer to us as Jewesses) and as my grandmother might say, “Nu?....  Who knows from these seven deadly sins?”

Certainly not I.  In fact, I only managed to make my way through the “gluttony” prompt thanks to my medical insurance provider.  But sloth?  To me, it's synonymous with Sid from Disney’s Ice Age--nothing more and nothing less.

So, like any good researcher, I Googled “sloth,” and Wikipedia provided me with these basics, among others:

• Sloths are arboreal residents of the rainforests of Central and South America.
• Names for the animals used by tribes in Ecuador include Ritto, Rit and Ridette, mostly forms of the word "sleep", "eat" and "dirty" from Tagaeri tribe of Huaorani.
• As much as two-thirds of a well-fed sloth's body-weight consists of the contents of its stomach, and the digestive process can take a month or more to complete.
• Sloths move only when necessary and even then very slowly: they have about a quarter as much muscle tissue as other animals of similar weight. They can move at a marginally higher speed if they are in immediate danger from a predator,…but they burn large amounts of energy doing so.

As far as sloth as sin, I’m with my grandmother…who knows from this?  Perhaps if it wasn’t so late and I wasn’t so tired, I’d Google that facet of the word, too, but not tonight, my friends, not tonight. 

In the meantime, go ahead, call me a sloth.

R

Red Writing Hood is the writing meme of The Red Dress Club.  The finished piece should be no more than 600 words of either fiction or non-fiction.  Thanks for reading...and feel free to offer thoughts, ideas and/or constructive criticism.  I appreciate hearing what you have to say.