I quite enjoy going through my old posts. They have all come from my heart in whatever form they take. I think maybe the stories are my favourite. That being said some of my stories have really needed a lot of editing and just plain fixing! I am most grateful to all of my readers for actually reading them! This story, fortunately, required little of that fixing. Most stories can be fixed. Paintings can be painted over. Memories? Well, not so easily no matter how hard we may try. My belief is that memories are really the residue of the relationships in our lives and all the people that we have shared time with, whether moments, distance or decades. As I was reading this little story, I was reminded of that very thing. At Christmas time, coming together with each other, there is much reminiscing around dining room tables, in living rooms or on skating rinks welcoming our family and friends from memory. Some may be in other parts of the world, others may have gone from this earth. There will be new faces and new generations along our way. My great-granddaughter, only five months old is the newest in my life and the lives of my family. More generations will ebb and flow each day in our lives. It may only take 'an old guitar' to prime memory's pump. This little story is my imagined ‘painting’.
Sunshine, Sand and Snowflakes - 2nd Edition
It was an old guitar propped up against a rock. Sun had dried the wood, thin strips of blue paint peeling away. Only one string remained strung. The others broken and curled. Sand had drifted up against the base of the once beautiful instrument. Petra could almost picture a cowboy sitting on the rock and strumming quietly as he watched over his herd.
Petra had been out riding at the far end of her father’s ranch. At this far end, the cliffs allowed her to look over the desert. The only plants that survived were tough grasses and scattered mesquite. Cattle seldom came this far to graze but if one of the herd was lost this was an area that was searched. To a newcomer to this land, it would look as though the guitar had been here for a very long time, but the dry winds and hot sun of the desert quickly dried and weathered all that they touched. It was difficult to tell how long it had really been there. Or why.
Petra dismounted, letting the reins of her pinto, John, trail in the sand. Cautious of rattlesnakes, Petra decided to not go far from John. Taking her sketch book and pencils from John’s saddle bags, and her bottle of water, she settled against the only tree throwing its thin shade. While John grazed on the sparse grasses, Petra sketched a picture of the guitar, the rock and the shimmering expanse of red desert in the distance. On that day, the wind had been calm, desert sand lying still in the heat.
Thirty-five years later, Petra looked wistfully at the finished painting of the old guitar that hung over the mantle. So strange. She had come so far in her life. In this northern city far from the desert, where everything was convenient and beautiful, her life was still a good life. Interesting, busy but so very different. Cars instead of horses. Drifts of snowflakes sparkling in the brilliant sunshine. Each stage of her life had been full of hope. It was always the hope that moved her forward. Hope and the strength she gained from each experience. This Christmas, as the others, she was grateful for all those people she had met along the way.
The doorbell rang, reining in her wandering thoughts. Her family had arrived for turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Laughing their hellos, they stamped the snow from their boots. They would make their own paintings of their lives to cherish. They would be cautious and they would be brave. Petra smiled and opened her arms to her grandchildren and welcomed them into her home.
“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but
I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
~ Douglas Adams,
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
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