Halloween Etiquette
Can you even use the word etiquette in conjunction with Halloween? After all, it’s the holiday where youngsters threaten to harm you or your property if you fail to give them candy. What sort of proper behavior is involved with that? None. I had my first West Virginia Halloween experience a couple weeks ago. Lots of cute costumes showed up at my door and most of the kids were polite and well-mannered. “Thank you,” was their common refrain after the expected “Trick or Treat.” But there was that one boy, probably aged fourteen or fifteen, who was sick and had no business being out. I could hear his hacking cough while he was still a block away from my house. He approached my seat on the front porch, coughing directly into my face, and rather than opening...
Fleas
Fleas. They’re the bane of existence for our pets, but somehow, I have a soft spot in my heart for them. I never saw a flea circus, though there are still some in existence today. The first recorded one was in London in 1820, and the novelty spread to the United States. Fleas were harnessed by thin wires around their necks and made to pull tiny carts or rotate Ferris wheels. Of course, their movements were challenging to see because of their size. That’s when a microscope or magnifying glass came in handy. A microscope is what I used when I visited the West Virginia State Museum as a small child. At that time, the museum was in the basement of the state capitol building and nothing delighted me more than seeing dressed fleas through a microscope. Emmiline and...
Feels Like Home
I’m adrift in time. My new West Virginia house and neighborhood hail from the era of my childhood dwelling in North Carolina. During early morning walks, I am daily struck by the split-levels and landscapes reminiscent of the ones my dad worked so hard to maintain. I remember the huge pecan trees on that property and my efforts upon returning from school each day to collect fallen nuts before squirrels got them. I enjoyed that yard and that house, a safe and happy place. One of the streets I currently walk down is newer, with large, more expensive homes. The street is also wider than mine, which is so narrow, two vehicles can barely pass each other without trading paint. Despite it providing more space for walkers (why can’t they build sidewalks?), I feel no...
Confound You, Murphy
The past month has been the adventure of a lifetime—one which I hope never to repeat. A move always brings on challenges and stress, things best avoided anywhere near the age of seventy. But when you’ve made the decision to live close to one of your children and have already made one cross-country move to achieve that end, you live with the consequences. Silly me. Murphy’s Law states that if anything can go wrong, it will. I’ve never seen that so fully displayed as I have this past month. I moved from Tennessee to Montana four years ago with no problem—even carrying a cat and litter box along for the ride. Since we no longer have a cat, I expected the move from Montana to West Virginia to be a piece of cake. Plus, I was going back east, back to the Appalachian...
The Screening
The Screening has just been posted on pulsevoices.org. Here’s the link: https://pulsevoices.org/stories/the-screening
Seeing the Sparkle Through Tears
This story has just been published in Turning Ten and Other Stories of Life. Here’s a link, if you’d like to buy a copy: Turning Ten
Beethoven by Thanksgiving
After seventy-one years of using my right arm, it was hard to suddenly be impaired. The doctor called it a torn rotator cuff, this ripping of a tendon from my arm bone. All I knew was that I felt a lot of pain which I tried to limit by not using my arm. That would be my dominant arm, the one bearing the brunt of every pound I lift, the one I depend on to write a note, drive a car, and lift a hot casserole from the oven. So, I had the surgery, the surgeon sewing that tendon back in place. (Who knew you could use needle and thread on a bone?) I’m thankful for the nerve block that lasted the first one and a half days because even with it, the pain was fierce. The ice machine helped, though...
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