Home from the war the hard way

       Going around to the side of the house, he looked up toward the light coming from Number Five.

      She was there, silhouetted, leaning against the window, traced in silver from starlight. 
      To his eternal shame, his body reacted to the vision of her, wanting to take her in his arms and hold her, smell her hair, feel the softness of her body against his.
      Christ!
      How much torture could one man take?
      He went inside. Flicked on one light. Pulled down the shade, remembering her intriguing silhouette and his reaction to it. He swallowed hard.
      To add to his torture, he opened the closet door in the big bedroom he had claimed for himself.  In the back, where he’d shoved it, stood his duffel bag.  Someone had delivered it from the Army hospital to here, the only address he had been able to give anyone, back when his aunt and uncle were still alive. He guessed they didn’t know what to do with it, either, but had put it away to be safe.
       For when he came back.
       He’d never looked to see what was inside, but now he did. Anything to take his mind off…things.  It stunk.  A mixed odor of body and seawater and whisky and military. GIs all over the world recognized that stink, especially if it had been some time since it had last been encountered.   Canvas.    
        Musty canvas.
        Ah, hell, he hoped there wasn’t mold inside.
        He reached in and pulled out his kit, tossed it onto the bed. Some rolled up socks…pungent as all hell. Somebody must have gathered up his stuff and shoved it all into the duffel without caring what happened to the stuff. He probably would have done the same.
       Until he pulled out his uniform.
       Good Christ Almighty.
       Wrinkled enough to get him demoted, stiff, not as vividly colored as he remembered, but then, he had taken a head wound. Someone, however, had added new ribbons, including the Purple Heart.
Lee debated what to do with the stuff.
        “I ought to throw this shit away,” he growled.
        But in the end of the debate with himself, he couldn’t. Instead, he hung up the uniform jacket, tried to smooth out the wrinkles but gave up.
       Some day, when the world is straightened out and all this shit is a bad memory, I might need to wear it in a parade.

                                                                  #

Continuity

In My Fair Lady, the great movie with Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn, when they come home from the party where he has successfully passed her off in society as a lady...some kind of Hungarian princess to be exact, he asks for the jewelry she is wearing to be given back as "it is rented". She assumes he thinks she will steal it unless it is put away in the safe, so she throws a hissy fit, removes the jewelry and hands it over, but she has a small ring on her finger that she doesn't want to take off because "you gave it to me, you bought it for me" somewhere. She's in love with Higgins. But she's also pissed off and throws it at him. It lands in the firebox, which fortunately is not lit.

After he leaves her to stew, she rushes over to retrieve the ring. It is all she will have of him because the experiment is over and she is to leave. She got what she wanted...she can speak like a lady and can work in a flower shop, not sitting on the curb in Covent Garden selling flowers by the stem.

My gripe is...it would have been so much more significant if somewhere in their travels together, the filmmaker had shown the purchase of that ring.
It comes out of nowhere and the significance is lost, at least on me.

Onward. Yesterday on the Hallmark Channel was a movie about a woman who inherits her sister's five Amish kids and how they don't adjust to living in the modern English world. Well, it turns out some of them do, but there has to be the drama. Their aunt leaves them back in Amishland because that is what they so desire. She drives off, in tears, because she had grown to like them, even if they didn't much like her, but she was their mother's sister. Moving along, she is driving away and they realize they were shits and had hidden a letter from their mother to the aunt/sister in which she asked that she take the children. The eldest didn't give it to the aunt because she was a selfish prig, Amish or no. She was at least that bit human.
I'm getting to the point.

They ride in a buggy after the woman in the Suburban with the license plate reading "write4u" (she was a journalist) and after several missed opportunities, they catch up with her. I kept thinking the poor old horse ( named Dobbin) was gonna die, but it didn't. Anyway, they stop her from leaving, give her the letter to read; they ask her to STAY and there is a group hug. So she's gonna stay in Amishland with them. Last scene has her sitting at a table lit by kerosene lamps, working on her laptop.

When is she going to recharge it?????

Continuity, folks!
Make sure when you're writing something, anything, that it flows and is logical and that you don't mention something in the end that you have not alluded to in the beginning, especially if it is going to be very important later on!

That ring should have been at least mentioned earlier in the movie. We would have known how much it meant to her. Digging in the ashes showed how very much she cared, and how very much she was hurt.

I missed mention of that letter in the Amish story...I may have dropped off, and I must assume, since it was a made for TV movie, that since the letter was so important, it had been made apparent.
Okay, this isn't really continuity, but, for heaven's sake...where is this woman going to charge her computer in Amishland?  No way. Do something. Don't bother showing it! Have her call in from a phone booth or at least show her in the Lancaster PA Starbucks doing her writing.

Yes, I am in a bad mood. Over the weekend I had my empathy drained from me and it's going to take a while to get it back. I need a recharge of good feelings. But I can plug myself in readily here in my torn apart house.

Once more...house construction. Will it ever end?

Good morning, Wretched Refuse!

I woke up this morning with that poem about the Statue of Liberty going through my brain. For some unknown reason, I have memorized the first stanza...probably because it was a song or I did it for the heck of it. But it goes something like this:

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free,
The wretched refuse of the teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless tempest toss'd to me!
I lift my lamp beside the Golden Door.

This is what Emma Lazarus thought of the onslaught of refugees and immigrants who showed up in America. I don't know much about her, but as I thought about her words, I kind of got angry.

I have absolutely no Native American ancestors. All my people came to America from some other teeming shore. They were tired and poor and I assume since they came here in steerage, they did some huddling.
But I draw the line at them being considered wretched refuse.

They were uneducated, but hard-working folks who learned English and lived the American Dream. They didn't accept any sort of hand-outs; they paid for what they had. They did not keep one foot in the old country while reaping the benefits of this new land. They weren't wretched nor were they garbage.

Ms. Lazarus, Gosh, I hope you weren't sitting in some posh apartment in NYC penning this! I hope you didn't scold your maid if she was a tick late getting you your toast and eggs.

But I am being unfair. I gotta look her up. She may have been a welfare worker or a church lady who helped immigrants assimilate into the US. BRB

Okay, I looked her up. She was born in NYC as I guessed, of Sephardic Jewish parents, so that may have qualified her as in the know. She did work with immigrants, wrote poems about them, championed various causes to uplift the poor and died of cancer.
I apologize, Ms. Lazarus, for thinking you hated my grandparents.

But I still don't care for the wretched refuse bit.
Oh, unless you're writing about the earlier immigrants called the colonists.
Now, considering the religious refugees and the prisoners shipped over here to the new world to chop down trees to make their own homes, to learn from and fight off Native Americans upon whose sacred land they encroached...hey, let's not forget these folks!
Remember when Castro unloaded the mental defectives and prisoners on US?
Various kings and governments from Europe did that long before Fidel.

Most of the ordinary people who came from England, say, had their crimes branded onto their hands.  Now those might be considered wretched and possibly dangerous.
Or were they?

I'm glad my ancestors, those teeming masses, got here. It must have been a hard trip and what was waiting for them was no picnic. No streets lined with gold. No free land, but a land of the free.
That's what my ancestors, my assorted relatives wanted!

Thank you for coming here, for facing all those trials and tribulations!
Thank you, homeless tempest toss'd!

You did the right thing.
But I'm glad none of you could read the English words at the base of Liberty Enlightening the World.
Best not go there.

Thanks for everything.

Thank yous

On a game show this morning, in honor of October being Breast Cancer awareness month, all the women in the audience were breast cancer survivors or those who supported them through their trials. I know how hard it is to be there for someone fighting cancer, so I was hoping everybody would win something. But when the women were given the opportunity to salute people on TV for the whole viewing audience to see, they thanked their doctors and nurses and therapists and family and their supporters. Made me think.

There are some people I need to thank for lots of things.

First, I have a little story. Back in 1987, with Elyse born and me pregnant with a month or more to go, I started bleeding.  Having lost three babies already, I called my doctor and all he could say was "Call 911" over and over in a panic. Well, we didn't have 911 yet and my husband was somewhere doing a side job. All I remembered was part of the customer's last name and that the street had some kind of water in it.
I called 411 and got a live person after awhile. I have no idea what her name is, but she performed a small miracle. I told her the circumstances. I told her the town and the partial surname I remembered, and the fact that the street had some kind of water in the name.
God bless her to this day.
She found a phone number. The street was Running Brook or something like that, the town was right.
I thanked her profusely and called the number. I got the answering machine, but luckily, the message got through out loud, my husband heard it and, though half an hour or more away, he started home.

But there's more.
I was getting very shaky. I had my 14 month old running around, I feared I was going to miscarry, so I called my mother who said she was on her way and I called my neighbor across the street, Laurie Hazen. By this time, I was about crazy because the bleeding didn't stop.  Laurie had her toddler at home, but her husband was home, so she dropped everything and came over the calm me down.
Completely selfless, she came to help me when I really needed it.
I don't know if I ever truly got to thank her, so here it is now.
Thanks Laurie.

Mom came, took Elyse home with her. She had a nursery set up in her house, so all was good there. Husband came home...must have broken every speed limit...but he was there for us. We got to the hospital. Baby was coming.
Oh, did I mention it was a few days before Christmas???

The doctors tried to keep the baby from being born. We had loads of tests, were her lungs developed enough? Amniocentesis. No amniotic fluid left to test! This kid was done cooking!

Karyn was born Christmas Eve.
She was perfect, except her fingerprints weren't quite in there. They eventually showed up.

So...here is my thank you. I wish that operator could know how much she did for our family. I know my neighbor will read this and laugh, but it deserved to be written.
There are other people in my life who also deserve my gratitude, but that will have to come another day.

It is never too late to say "Thank you."

One little thing

Something went through my brain this morning...a scene from my past...and I was determined to write about it as soon as I could. Here. It was a little moment of a memory, but it was interesting as I hadn't thought about it in years.

But, of course, I forgot what it was.

I've been searching my brain, trying to remember, but it is gone until the next mental hiccup (I usually write "hiccough" but this time I didn't) when it comes up again.

Now, there's the pity.
At the time I thought about this event, I realized that it would make good blog. That it would enrich the reader and make me happy for posterity, as I do sincerely hope this blog never goes away...not like LiveJournal which is dead to me.
And I wanted, no, needed to share.

But alas, it is gone.

I don't know whether to blame chemo brain or descending dementia. I hope it isn't dementia as I wouldn't really like to burden my loved ones with that. I remember all sorts of stuff from lots of times before the cancer...but afterwards...sometimes I actually go blank.

Words are the worst. If I am near someone who knows me well, they usually can supply those pesky missed words that were in my head one second and the next, vanished...poof! Just like that.
I hate to be speaking and have that blank come and people look at me and wonder what the hell is preventing me from saying it...but it is gone. My grey matter blackboard is wiped clean.

It is very frustrating.

Though, yesterday, Karyn and I gave a talk to some lovely mystery writers. I didn't miss a step or a word. Everything came out smoothly. What was I talking about? Paranormal stuff, stuff I've known since before college...and that is a long time ago. But it was clear. I didn't miss a word. I even made some jokes that made sense.

So why am I forgetting so much stuff?
Herb told me today that last year he made leek and potato soup. I hope he did and I hope I liked it. I don't remember it at all.

My biggest fear is that this is really serious and I am on the verge of forgetting all the great and fabulous things in my life and only remembering those things that keep me awake at night, wondering why the hell I did what I did when I did it.
Or not remembering anything at all.

Gimme an ah-hah moment, please

From The Mermaid Arms

Sometimes two crabs would be feeding at the same time and both would come up together and continue to fight in the bucket. Scrabbling and scratching against the metal.  Gurgling and smelling like salt water and seaweed and…wet crabs. The girls happily pulled in crab after crab, going through all the bait quickly.  

When the bucket was full, Lee stood, rubbed his leg and stretched out the stiffness.  “This ought to please your mama and Posey,” he declared.  “Let’s pack up and go back.”

Sally got up and twisted a few times while Lulu looked over at the bucket once more and announced, “Yes, mama will be pleased.”

“You’re terrific crabbers! Wish we could take a picture of your catch. I bet your daddy would like to see how well you did today.”

The little one shot him a look he didn’t understand, though he never really could read her expressions.  Lulu’s chin lowered to her chest.

“Our Daddy was lost at sea. He’s in heaven with Jesus now.”

Lee had no words.  His voice choked in his throat and he closed his eyes at his stupidity. 

Can a person be gruntled if they can be disgruntled?

We were on vacation last week.
We were down the Jersey shore, one of my very best favorite places to be. It is there I got the idea for the Mermaid Arms story and I worked on it several times previously while there...we were in the same rental house we've used three previous times. It's a nice enough place, but it is showing its age and very little has been done to keep it up.

Anyway, I worked on the story that is being pieced together as I have mentioned about a million times before...following the timeline I wrote two years ago and tried to adhere to when the daughters helped me put all the pieces into one big file. Well, as I was reading, I came to two pieces of an event but could not find the first piece...the set up for the situation.
I searched, using those little helpful hints in  WORD like search and find.
Couldn't find it.
SHIT
It actually kept me up, trying to figure out where this part was. I had the file on the laptop, but it was missing the first bit, also. I checked and rechecked the hard copy I always carry with me and came to realize if it wasn't there, it had to be somewhere because I remember writing it!
Where was it?

Ah hah! Elyse had put all these little bits and pieces into a sort of junk pile that I had not sent to the laptop.

The minute I got home, I came upstairs, turned on the old machine and searched the junk pile.
I found it easily enough...the fourth segment attached to something completely out of sync...something I just kept writing on without thinking of putting it where it belonged.
STUPID MOVE on my part for sure.

But I have to say this now. I think there is something pushing me to stay away from this story. After the sickness and the resulting  broken legs and all that problem with them and not being able to get around easily, and all the other BS I've survived (infectious disease, breast incident, teeth, sleep test) I still have it in the back of my head that if I finish this story, I will die.

You know the story about the Winchester mansion. The builder's father made the famous rifles that were used to kill Native Americans, slaughter them, really, and used in the Civil War and to kill off the bison. She was told to build this huge house but never to finish it. The architects had to build in stairs that went nowhere, rooms with no floors, all sorts of traps to capture the spirits of the dead who were surely haunting her. If the house was ever finished, she feared she would die because the ghosts were sure to get her.

I kinda feel that way about this story.
It is rather frightening.
I've faced death far too many times to give up the fight, so this story may never ever be done.

Too bad. It's at least 3/4 of the way done.

I'm being silly, I know.