Baby Steps

Continuation of a walk 

through life seems obvious. 

After all each child is 

born to do just that. 

How we teach our children 

to walk is important. 

And when we have grown 

past our adolescent years and try 

to balance our tentative adult steps, 

we will want to fly like the geese in the fall, 

or race like a thoroughbred to ‘get there’ 

with spirits indestructible and brave.

And so we are and can continue to be throughout 

our lives no matter the heaving and buckling of the road

as long as we remember the baby steps of our youth.

“Perhaps it was not a destination I sought but merely a continuation.”

~ Ocean Vuong,  On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

Heart Beats

A reflex reaches my smile

When I see a baby smile

or hear a baby’s gurgle

When I see a baby’s yawn

When soft fingers touch mine

or tiny toes peek from a wrap, 

my heart beats with joy.

“Sometimes the littlest things take up the most room in your heart.”

~ Winnie the Pooh

A Newborn

Despite turmoil around the globe, 

A new baby is a window on Mother Earth

“Every child begins the world again.”

~ Henry David Thoreau

Author's note:  Violet Grace

                         Grand-niece born February 15, 2024

 

Only a Baby's Cry

Grandpa Jason - two years ago

Dad Jonathan - two years ago

A baby’s cry and cuddle

softens rough edges ~

Dad’s forget themselves 

in the love of a child 

even if only for a moment ~

being a strong adult melts into joy.

                                                                                                                         

Great great grandad Marshal

“What you teach your children, 

   you also teach their children.

            ~ Unknown

                               

A Quick Detour

Intimidated by a business call

I had to make about……

SC-R-E-E-C-H!

Yesterday was more fun

and tonight I’m still exhausted.

Forget intimidation!                                      

A family Zoom gender reveal party

from my from brother in Florida

bouncing from Poland to the U.K.

to Canada….It’s a girl!

An awesome 10 K walk with 

my walking buddy started out

against the wild prairie wind

masked against the dust in the air

cooked a roast that didn’t have

the taste I expected from a roast beef ~

very odd tasting gravy so tonight 

it’s thin slices for sandwiches and a beef stew.

and then there was a fuse blown

shutting out my lights, fridge and TV

along with a plugged kitchen sink drain ~

one phone call to maintenance got it fixed.

“Sometimes it takes a wrong turn to get you to the right place.”

~ Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass

Chapter One, Episode 147 - Promise - Situationally Theirs

Review, Revision, Edit and Update

Revision to show, rather than tell, was my main task for this episode. It began with the very first paragraph. For someone falling asleep, the sentences were too 'sentence-y'. I don't know about you, but when I'm falling asleep thoughts come in fragments.

Another part of revision is rearranging sentences to improve the flow of the narrative. These sort of revisions were throughout this episode, including some wording changes.

A pleasant scene that needed, and was given, a lot of upgrading, I do believe I improved its readability.

Promise

The pillow was soft. The blankets warm. Emelina sank into the comfort of her sister’s bed, but sleep didn’t come easily. Awakened at three a.m.......a distress call from Jeremy.....arriving at Hartley General........a million questions .......someone had asked for her......Jeremy didn't have answers....didn't  see Mrs. Tyler.....only more questions.......thirty years crumpled and tossed away. Emmie cried, dozed fitfully, daylight squeezed through tightly pulled curtains......she was sixteen again.

~~~~~

The big window was smudged with fingers prints. Parents and grandparents that came to get just a glimpse of their newborn family member, touched the glass as though they could transmit their joy to the right baby. Emelina, in her fuzzy pink housecoat and fuzzy pink slippers, went everyday to see the baby. She was the third baby in the third row of bassinets. One of the nurses had pointed the swathed and tiny baby out to her. The name on the bassinet was Baby Eliot. Every day, Emelina would whisper, “I’ll find you someday.” But one day, when she looked for her little girl, she was no longer there. “Miss Eliot?” A nurse was at her shoulder. “The doctor wants to see you. He says you’re ready to go home.” Emelina looked at her without seeing her. “But my baby? She’s not there.”

~~~~~

Her eyes still closed, Emelina could hear someone moving around in another room. It didn’t feel like her own bed. She opened her eyes. The room, in semi darkness, was unfamiliar. She still had her clothes on. “Emmie? It’s Dez. Can I come in?” The bedroom door cracked open. Emmie remembered driving somewhere with Dez. A phone call from Jeremy? The hospital waiting room?  “Come in Dez. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know why I’m here. What time is it?” Dez pushed the door open with her foot, two cups of coffee in her hands. “It’s five o’clock in the evening, Em. You’ve been sleeping all day. Talking in your sleep a lot, but at least you slept. Here. Have some coffee. Are you hungry?”

“I’m starved, Dez.” Accepting the steaming hot coffee gratefully, Emelina took a careful sip. “Mmmmm, this coffee tastes good, thank you. I must look a mess. Sleeping in my clothes?” Emmie pulled the scrunchy out of her hair, tangled with stray strands and bunched up crookedly. Dez looked serious and worried about her big sister. “I managed to get your shoes and jacket off before you sent me away. Here, let me help you up.” After another sip of coffee, Emmie put it on the bedside table, standing stiffly. “Dez, I need a shower before I can think straight. Can I borrow some clean clothes from you?” 

~~~~~

While Emmie showered, Dez put quiet, slow jazz on to cut the silence of her apartment while she made soup and sandwiches for both of them. She set a bowl of fresh fruit on the table, lowered the heat under the soup and went into the living room. Thumbing through an outdated magazine while she waited, she was about to check on her sister, when the bathroom door opened. Dez called to her. “I’ve left you some clothes on the bed, Em. Supper’s ready. Just soup and sandwiches.” Dez put the magazine down and looked out her patio doors at the darkening evening. There was little wind to stir the branches below. Dez felt calmness surround her.

~~~~~

While they ate, there was no discussion of the trip to the hospital or the discoveries they had made there. “Soup’s good, Dez.”  Dez nodded. “It’s just regular tomato soup.” The slow jazz provided the evening with a gentle rhythm. “I called Digby and let him know you're in here with me. Do you want to stay tonight or should I drive you home?” Emmie finished her sandwich and last spoonful of soup. “I think I’d like to stay - if it’s all right - for a few days. Be close to the hospital.” Those were her sister's first words giving any indication that there was more thought about, than spoken. 

Emelina was no longer 16. Carrie was grown and had another life. What kind of life Emelina didn’t know. It didn’t matter. In her dreams, she remembered her promise. Awake, she remembered her dream. If Emelina and her daughter could have talked, she could have answered all her questions. That was not possible for now. Emelina knew it would take time, but she was willing to do what was necessary.

“I couldn’t keep you but I never left you either.”

~ Niharika Sah, Closure

Chapter One, Episode 135 - Blank Pages - Situationally Theirs

Review, Revision, Edit and Update

I was tempted to not touch anything for this Episode. Reading and reviewing it carefully more than once, I did find a misplaced comma and an unnecessary word. There were other minor changes but more than once I said out loud to myself: "Don't fiddle!" When does any artist or writer know when to stop finding things to fix? I handled this episode very carefully. 

Blank Pages

When any relationship is put on hold for years, picking up where you left off is all that can be done. The intervening years are like the blank pages missed in a journal. It’s a gap that can’t be explained to anyone. The only things that can be explained are the superficial relating of events. Anything too painful is left out, ignored and hopefully lost in time. That evening, at the end of supper, Dez had told Emmie her dark, painful secret. One she had even kept from herself. But that terrible day, the tragic death of her dearest friend, stayed on, like faded wallpaper in her mind. 

~~~~~

Dez and Emmie were restless, needing to shake off the tension that crowded around them. Clearing up the dishes, tidying the living room, straightening the curtains….they were running out of things to keep them busy. Dez asked “Do you know when Martha and Digby will be back?” Emmie replied without thought “I think this week. Have you seen Matt lately?” Dez said “No. He said he’d call me sometime this week. Have you heard from Jeremy?” Emmie hesitated then said “He’s on night shifts so I won’t hear from him til next week.”  There was a long pause. Emmie started to say something then stopped. She plumped up the pillows on the sofa for the fourth time in the previous hour. She picked one up and held it to her. “Dez. I have to tell you something.” She placed the pillow just so on the sofa. “But we have to go for a walk. Out to the orchard where there’s no one around.” She went to the front hall closet for her jacket. “Hold on, Emmie. Wait a minute. You can’t just say something like that and then say we have to go for a walk.” She grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair she had dropped it on. “I have to put my shoes on, Emmie. You go ahead and I’ll catch up.” Emmie stopped, in quiet voice she said “No, that’s ok. I’ll wait.”

~~~~~

On their way past the garden, the sisters waved at Samuel. He was just locking up the tool shed. He waved back and headed home. “Ok, Em, what is it you want to tell me?”

Emmie filled her lungs with the cool early evening air, then let it out slowly. “Dez, you shared your dark secret with me. It must have been horrible for you the day your friend died. It may be too soon to tell you my secret, but I need to share it with you. You’ve been right. Michael’s death was very hard on me, but there’s a part of it that no one else knows about.” Dez slowed her walk. “This sounds serious, Em. What could be worse than losing the love of your life?” Emelina stopped and turned to face Dez. “Losing the father of your child - the child that neither of us ever knew.” Dez was stunned. “What? When?”

“Let’s keep walking. I was sixteen and Michael was eighteen. We both had other plans for our lives. Getting married and raising a family didn’t fit with them. We were both going off to separate universities. Michael right away. I had to finish high school before going to a completely different university. We didn’t really think our relationship was anything more than a high school fling.” She hesitated. “Remember what mom would tell us… “It only takes one time, girls.”  Well, she was absolutely correct. By the time I knew I was pregnant, Michael and I had broken up. He was gone to University in Alberta and already had a girlfriend. The only person I could tell was mom.”

Dez wished they were somewhere that she could sit down - a tree stump, a rock, anything. Emmie was a mother!? That made her an aunt! “But Emmie, how could I not have known. We shared the same room the whole time we were kids. Why didn’t mom tell me?”  Emmie put her arm around Dez. “Because I told her not to tell you. I had tried to call Michael, but he never returned my calls. She was the only one I could trust. And besides that, you and I were fighting about some stupid thing.” Dez laughed. “We were always fighting about some stupid thing. I don’t think we really liked each other when we were teenagers. Did dad know?” Emmie stopped and looked up in her apple trees. In the dusk, she could see apples but couldn’t tell if they were ripe to pick. “I’m sure he knew, but mom promised me that she wouldn't tell anyone else, but she can't have kept it from dad.” Dez's curiosity was almost overwhelming. “So what happened? Did you want to keep the baby?” Emmie looked almost horrified. “Of course not. I was only sixteen. And like I said I had plans that didn’t include a baby. Michael didn’t know and would never have to know.” Dez interrupted “But I never even saw a......what do they call it now......a bump? You were so skinny, I had to have noticed something.” 

Emmie pushed on. “Dez, don’t you remember? I went away for six months on a ‘student exchange’ that fall before school started. Really all I did was go to mom’s hometown on the mainland to Aunt Leila's. I went to school there and had my baby. She was adopted before she was even born, but I did get a chance to see her and hold her. Oh, Dez if I could have changed my mind right then I would have. She was so precious. Soft and beautiful.” A tear escaped from Emmie’s eye. She wiped it away with the back of her hand. 

“But where does Michael come into all of this?” Dez could barely contain herself. Emmie smiled at this next frame of memory.“Two years later, I graduated from high school. Michael was home for a couple of weeks and called me up. I acted very annoyed with him. ‘How dare you call me when you have a girlfriend in another city.’ But I was so, so glad to hear his voice. He came to the prom with me. He was so handsome….more handsome than ever. I don’t know if I even thought about our baby that weekend. We were apart again for another two years while he finished his degree. I had stayed on the Island for university. One evening, mid semester, he came and found me in my dorm and proposed! I’m not going to fill in all the gaps, only to say that our teenage fling had matured. I never did find the right time to tell him about our daughter. And then he was gone. That's the part of my grief that I could never share with anyone. Now she will be about 27 years old. Where is she now? Do I look for her? When you and I started talking about what our legacy would be, I started thinking of her again.”  Emmie had gone through a roller coaster of emotions telling Dez her story, filling in the blank pages from her memory. Dez and Emmie had finally found each other.

“Love each other dearly always. There is scarcely anything 

else in the world but that: to love one another.”

~ Victor Hugo

Baptized in Milk

A soft, sweet and milky burp slid into the black of my sweater and spilled onto the fresh clean of a baby onesie.

Baby and great-grandmother shoulders baptized in baby sweetness and love.

Now that's progress!

“A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.”

~ Mark Twain

As Though I'm Biased

Rylie Rose’Marie 

A tiny new face so full of expression

Wide open smiles, soft shy smiles or faintly furrowed brow

Open mouth looking as though stories and words will be pouring out

A tiny new body so full of energy

Soft pillowed feet kicking and pushing as though practicing to run and play

Wee hands reaching into the air as though expressions of all those stories and words that have yet to form.

Sleeping soundly, with fluttering almost asleep eyes or wide awake

This precious child ~ grown so quickly in her brief six weeks and five days ~ will grow in stature and personality ~ a joy to hold in my heart.

[Great]-“Grandmothers hold their grandchildren 

in a special place in their heart.”

~ Catherine Pulsifer

[Great] - added by this Great Grandmother Susan