The Beauty of Hands: A Micro Story

The Beauty of Hands: A Micro Story

 I’d like to thank Jennifer Blanke of the US for her micro story submission ‘The Beauty of Hands’. A touching true story about the symbiotic relationship between hands and the life we lead.

Jennifer Blanke has a BS in Elementary Education and is a mother, teacher, and writer in St. Louis, Missouri. She is currently working on her Master of Fine Arts in Writing degree at Lindenwood University and is an editorial assistant for The Lindenwood Review.

This will be her first published piece, so it’s an honour to have it on my little blog!

This page contains affiliate links which may earn me a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you click through and make a purchase. Affiliate links are how I keep this blog running, thank you!


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The Beauty of Hands

           My dying grandmother’s delicate hands lay in mine, her fingers curled in the fetal position, like a chipmunk nestled snugly, taking cover from the frigid night.

            I’ve never liked my hands. They’re not elegant, or feminine, or what any girl would wish her hands to be. Palming a basketball wasn’t that amazing when it didn’t transfer to the agile footwork needed to keep me off the bench. I’ve squeezed my big-boned hand through a bracelet, only to panic when I couldn’t remove it. As I comforted my grandmother in her final hours, I glanced down at my large, clunky, masculine hands holding her dainty ones. Visible veins tiring of pumping blood showed through her gossamer skin. My eyes traced the vessels that had carried ninety-six years of life and I was transported to the davenport in the front room of the two-story on Locust Avenue.

            We sat side-by-side at the metal tray tables eating snacks from little bowls, each with a deck of cards in hand, playing solitaire. We worked crosswords and word searches for hours while watching a marathon of game shows. Puzzles were next and I smiled as her hand passed me the final piece to complete the beautiful countryside landscape. Her hands gave.

            Descending the cellar stairs together to get cans from storage, she’d walk ahead of me, her hand smothering mine to the railing, while saying, Now, Jenny, hold on. As if I could let go under her grip. She’d reach for the dusty pull string of the single bulb and leave a gray streak as her fingers gently brushed her black trousers. As the light cast a ghostly glow on the dirt floor, I’d run up the stairs, leaving her to defend herself against the shadow monsters. Her hands protected.

            When Morris the cat appeared on her back porch, she filled the Cool Whip container with water and the Country Crock with kibble every morning and night. When he brought friends, her hands coaxed them closer with food in one palm and stroked soft fur with the other. She made a blanket bed for Morris and the females. I think she was hoping for a litter so she would always have a feline friend. Her hands cared.

            When her epileptic son passed away long before his time and hers, the hands that spent a lifetime preparing food, folding clothes, cleaning house, and providing companionship, knew not what to do. Every moment of every day was spent taking care of his needs. Her family was her life and she would have to find something to fill her days. Her hands loved.

            When Alzheimer’s consumed my granddad’s body and she could no longer take care of him, her hands signed the forms admitting him into the assisted care facility. She visited daily, bringing him the paper and his favorite candy. She remained by his side until he passed even after he forgot the voices of his children, the faces of his grandkids, and her name. Her hands grieved.

            The static hum of the fluorescent lights and the scent of antiseptic and death assailed my senses pulling me away from the flow of memories. The wrinkled hands that I held mirrored an entire lifetime. Her gracious hands saw the best and the worst and they were ready to finally rest.     I blinked away the stream of tears and saw my hands reflected in hers. They looked so lovely in her light. My gentle hands stroked my tiny newborn’s brow as she nursed. They carried my strong-willed toddler to the time-out chair. My hands stirred cumin into my family’s favorite chili. They held my love’s hands, tucked safely in his strength. I saw my own devoted hands paying the bills, handing over the car keys, comforting my disappointed daughter, and welcoming my oldest home after a difficult first year of college.

            Giving, protecting, caring, loving, grieving. It was then that I saw: my hands were just like hers.



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With this ebook you will learn to approach your days in another way, reducing stress and getting results through prioritizing, leveraging and focus!

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All the Better to Save You: A Micro Story

All the Better to Save You: A Micro Story

I’d like to thank Adele Evershed for her micro-story submission ‘All the Better to Save You’, a touching and emotionally raw story based on true events.

Adele tells us that she is a native of Wales transplanted to Connecticut, and is teacher and mother of four. When her daughter left for college she was left with her three soccer mad sons and husband and so she started to dabble with storytelling as a way to maintain her sanity. Adele has had work or will be having work published in ‘Reflex Fiction’, ‘Everyday Fiction’, ‘FlashFiction Journal’ and ‘Three Drops from a Cauldron’. She was a recent semi-finalist in the London Independent Story Prize Competition for her story about the challenges of aging.

*TRIGGER WARNING: This story mentions miscarriage.


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All the Better to Save You

She sat on the too small chair and pressed her knees into the dough of her stomach. With her acrylic nails she chipped away at the dry drops of red paint like fallen petals strewn over the tabletop. The kids had been copying an amaryllis; it’s long lines and limited palette made it perfect for a three year old to attempt. The paintings hung gaily above her head in direct contradiction to her mood.

Lorna tipped her head forward so her long wavy hair could act like a curtain as a squall of tears engulfed her. It didn’t seem fair having to spend her days coddling other people’s children when she seemed unable to have any of her own. She had spent the weekend before last with her legs pressed together, reaching towards heaven in a gross approximation of prayer to try and keep hold of the life inside her. It hadn’t worked and when she got to the hospital she was told her pregnancy had been a blighted ovum. It almost sounded like poetry. This time she had got to eleven weeks before she miscarried and so she had been starting to feel tendrils of hope that this was the one. Now those had been yanked up by the root.

Lorna uncurled from the chair and went to wash her face at the too small sink. Moving around her classroom she always felt like a giant, in the outside world. Being only five foot she was more like Thumbelina. Lorna had always loved fairy tales and it was this desire to linger passed childhood in the stories of the Brothers Grimm that drew her into teaching in the first place. As she looked in the tiny mirror, her face was distorted and she felt like one of the coffee-filter snowflakes that were stuck to the window. She was made up of all that was not there. The diamond or triangular holes-babies she never held or even named, the white paper remnants-the scraps of herself left behind after each disappointment.

Lorna caught up her hair and twisted it into a tight bun on top of her head; she liked the way it added inches to her height. She practiced her yoga breathing, in through the nose, out through the mouth and for good measure threw in the mantra from the last class she had gone to, “I change my thoughts; I change my world!”

As she peeled off the glitter-heavy snowflakes and posted them into cubbies she imagined herself keeping the next baby. She would hide him under the arch of her eyebrow and nurse his heart with her own. She would fix him to the roots of her hair and let it grow until it touched the ground, she would weave him into the lifeline on her hands and fill her mouth with his name. And she thought, “Because this is my fairy-tale we will both live happily ever after!”

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Thanks

Thank you for reading this blog, if you’d like to submit a story for consideration to be published, please visit our submissions page.

If you’d like to keep up to date with all the latest stories, news, promos (including writing competitions and giveaways) plus receive a FREE Ebook, sign up to our mailing list here or fill in the form below.


Get your FREE Ebook

Accomplish more IN a fraction of the time

The pace and intensity of our lives, both at work and at home, leave many of us feeling like a person riding a frantically galloping horse. Our day-to-day incessant busyness — too much to do and not enough time.

With this ebook you will learn to approach your days in another way, reducing stress and getting results through prioritizing, leveraging and focus!

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Troops 123’s Annual Popcorn Fundraiser: A True Story

Troops 123’s Annual Popcorn Fundraiser: A True Story

I’d like to thank Margaret Koger of the US for her true story submission “Troop 123’s Annual Popcorn Fundraiser”, a sentimental tale about the joys of grandparent duties.

Margaret is a retired school media specialist with a writing habit living in Boise, Idaho. She says she writes in hopes of adding small strands of connective tissue to our shared web of life. Most of her recent publications include poetry and short stories published locally and online. One of her favourites can be found at https://www.idahomagazine.com/contests/fiction-writing-winners/christmas-in-central-cove-2015-first-place-adult-division/.

Margaret tells us “My memoir recounts the days I spent helping my grandson earn money for his Boy Scout activities and for the troop he belonged to–actually Troop 123. Of all that I did for my grandson as he went through the teen years, this was the best. I stood in the background watching him walk door-to-door for his fundraiser–how he presented his invitation to buy and how people reacted. Truly a Grand Mum experience and an honor to write about.”

This page contains affiliate links which may earn me a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you click through and make a purchase. Affiliate links help me keep this page running, thank you!

Photo Credit: Sophie Dale on Unsplash


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Troop 123

Troop 123’s Annual Popcorn Fundraiser

When I arrive at my grandson’s home, Ramsey enters the living room dressed in his uniform: tan shirt, red tie, Boy Scouts of America (BSA) tie clasp, green khaki shorts, and a worn, billed cap with its official logo. ‘Ah’ I think ‘shorts’. It’s October, the poplar leaves are turning color and there is an abundance of crisp air circulating at ground level. Never mind, I have my coat, hat, and gloves and I’m ready to walk with him as he rings doorbells and makes his pitch, trying to raise enough money to pay for next summer’s scouting activities.

He positions himself in front of each door, his sales placard front, and center, his legs spread a bit as if the opening of the door could blow him away. “Hi, I’m Ramsey and I’m here for our annual Troop 123 fundraiser. This year we have our one pound white cheddar, our …

In the short ride to Cobbler’s Creek where we’ve sold popcorn for the last four years, I have a chance to talk with the eighth-grader. I tell him the stories of his infant times when I took care of him while his mother worked. He’s fifteen now,  six foot two, recumbent where he’s seated in my little Subaru like a willowy sapling bent down and ready to spring up when released. I turn the radio on and we discuss music, the “Okay” radio station because it plays everything. “Really I like 80’s and 90’s music.”

I’m sure I’ll recognize and enjoy some of the popular songs from these two “long ago” decades so I say, “Yes,” even though I’ve become a classical music fan, mostly listening to CDs from the late 19th and the early 20th Century.

“So much of the new rap is nothing but a joke.” he adds.

I think of one reason he loves music so much. Band is his favorite subject where he specializes in percussion: drums, xylophone, cymbals, and so on. His junior high music teacher leads an after school jazz band where he gets a couple of extra hours of rhythm twice a week. “Why you love music so much?” I ask. “Well, when you were a baby, I played a symphony for you every day. Every day the same symphony, written by a Scottish musician named Bantok, celebrating the Hebrides Islands off the northeast coast of Scotland. I’d hold you to my chest and we’d dance around the living room. It helps with brain development so I gave it a try.”


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A song by Sam Cook comes on the radio: “She was only sixteen, only sixteen/ I loved her so/ But she was too young to fall in love/ And I was too young to know.”

“I heard this song in Portugal last month,” I say. “You used to love it!”

“I still like it, it’s just not one of my favorites now,” he answers.

Other days we talk more about school, his friends, my activities, and his family—even about my teenage years—revealing how the angst of being a teenager continues with many of the same challenges in discovering one’s identity. After ten or fifteen minutes of driving, we arrive and park. It’s time.

With Ramsey, even selling popcorn is rhythmic. Beyond the ring of the doorbell, the wait, more waiting, the sometimes appearance of a person, managing the door, the screen door, the dog, and the all-important pitch. For a couple of hours in the evening, after the workers arrive home and settle in and even during dinnertime, people will answer the door and buy popcorn although we get plenty of unanswered doorbells and “not interested” responses.

Others don’t want popcorn, but they donate cash, anywhere from a couple of bucks to $10 or even $20. One evening as we looped back from a culdesac a woman came out of a house where no one answered the doorbell. In bare feet, she crossed the street to hand Ramsey a $20 bill. “We don’t want the sweets, but I wanted to help you guys out,” she said.

Older people like to draw Ramsey out. “How long have you been in scouts?” “What does the money you raise go for?” “My husband was in scouts and both my boys.” One remarkable young man says, “I see the order form hasn’t changed since I was selling!”

“You again!” one woman exclaims. Each year she’s reported on the health of her husband, a former Eagle Scout and WWII Medal of Honor winner. Last fall she thought they’d have to move because he couldn’t climb the stairs. Then, last summer he died—and she still doesn’t know how much she’ll receive in benefits—she’ll have to pass on buying this time. “You may have read about it in the paper. He was ninety-two,” she says. “It was time. I’m ready too, I’m eighty-eight, and I’m tired.”

“So sorry,” we reply. “So sorry.”

This year, for the first time, several people have insisted we both come inside, “You too,” they say as they wave for me to come in. For some, it’s a change that quiets the dog, for others, it’s about hospitality. “I won’t bite,” says the owner of Jana’s Haircutting Store. Another woman is watching Ken Burns Viet Nam program on public television. “It’s so awful,” she cries. “We didn’t know and those protesters did!”

“Did you say when the delivery will be?” an older buyer asks. “Just before Thanksgiving,” Ramsey assures her.

“That’s such a long time from now! We’ll forget we ordered the popcorn,” she exclaims.

“Well, we have to have a lot of time to sell,” Ramsey replies.

And I know he’s thinking of all the streets we walk, up and down, offering the caramel corn and yogurt pretzels that many people are wary of—giving up sugar, not eating corn, bad for our health—and how they often buy anyway. Who can resist a six-foot-two beanpole with short hair and a face reddened by the chill holding such luscious illustrations of popcorn?

“I’ll be using whatever I buy as gifts,” one buyer says and she orders large bags so she won’t be tempted to open them for her own use. It was as we left her house that Ramsey said, “Sell now, sneeze later. I just found out I’m allergic to cats!”

Since seventy-three percent of the sales apply to camping fees, troop activities, and funding for the national organization, each sale is really a donation. But I know the sugary temptations increase the buyer’s desire to help. Ramsey and his brother Riley have sold enough popcorn in the past to completely fund their camp excursions, as well as adding to troop funds, which earns them praise for being role models to younger scouts.

But I think the contact with people in their homes and the push of learning to talk with strangers has been the most invaluable part of the activity for the boys. As cute little guys, when they rang the doorbell, lots of people were charmed into buying. Now it often takes a man answering the door. He may have a hard time saying no to the gangly eighth-grader who prompts memories of his own youth when growing up was so hard to do.

Selling popcorn door to door wasn’t anything I ever expected to be a part of; however, as I stand on the sidewalk holding the order sheet and pen at the ready, I’m eager to smile and wave to whoever opens the door—yes, he has an adult with him and she’s glad to be here.


Thanks

Thank you for reading this blog, if you’d like to submit a story for consideration to be published, please visit our submissions page.

If you’d like to keep up to date with all the latest stories, news, promos (including writing competitions and giveaways) plus receive a FREE Ebook, sign up to our mailing list here or fill in the form below.


Get your FREE Ebook

Accomplish more IN a fraction of the time

The pace and intensity of our lives, both at work and at home, leave many of us feeling like a person riding a frantically galloping horse. Our day-to-day incessant busyness — too much to do and not enough time.

With this ebook you will learn to approach your days in another way, reducing stress and getting results through prioritizing, leveraging and focus!

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After The Fire: A True Story

After The Fire: A True Story

We’d like to thank Claire Taylor of the US for her short story submission “After The Fire”, a dramatic true story about a traumatic childhood event which shaped her feelings and perspective’s into Motherhood.

Claire Taylor is a mother, writer, and Licensed Massage Therapist. Her poetry and short fiction has appeared or is upcoming in Yellow Arrow Journal, The Loch Raven Review, Capsule Stories, American Writer’s Review, and Canary Literary Journal. Her writing about motherhood and depression has appeared on Scary Mommy. She is the creator of Little Thoughts, a monthly newsletter of original stories and poetry for children. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland (United States), and can be found online at clairemtaylor.com and you can follow Claire on Twitter @ClaireM_Taylor and Instagram @todayweread.

Photo Credit: Frederick Medina on Unsplash

This page contains affiliate links which may earn me a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you click on them and make a purchase. Affiliate links are how I keep this blog running, thank you. 

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After the fire

After The Fire

I was seven years old when my mother nearly burned down our house. My brother, sister and I were watching TV in the den while Mom was getting dinner ready. She poured oil into a heavy cast iron pan and set the pan on an open flame to heat. We were going to have french fries. The phone rang and I went into my dad’s study to pick up the call. 

“Mom!” I shouted to her from the opposite end of the den. “Phone!” I set the receiver down on the desk and went back to my spot on the couch. 

“Who is it?” Mom asked as she came out of the kitchen and made her way toward the phone. 

“Aunt Denise.” 

“Oh,” she said, and gently closed the study door behind her. 

I can picture her sitting back against the cracked vinyl of my dad’s office chair, her feet up on his desk, distracted, at ease. I remember the sound of her laughter rising over the din of the television. I remember the flash of orange reflected in the TV screen. The brief moment that felt like slow motion minutes as my brother and I turned toward the kitchen, confusion melting into understanding and morphing into panic. I remember the fear in my brother’s voice as he shouted, “fire!” and that same fear on my mother’s face as she threw open the study door and paused for a split second before racing across the den and into the kitchen. She pulled a container of salt down from the cabinet and poured it over the tower of flames. They raged on. She frantically looked around the kitchen, her head on a swivel searching for aid and coming up empty. She caught sight of us in the kitchen doorway–three little wide-eyed faces–and without hesitation, grabbed the handle of the pan and carried it out of the kitchen and through the living room. She pulled open the front door, letting in a breeze that blew the flames back over her hands, and flung the burning pan into the air. It landed facedown in the middle of the yard with a thud, suffocating the flames and charring the grass. 

The front door remained open as my mother stood at the kitchen sink, shoulders hunched as she ran cool water over the blistering backs of her hands. My sister, so young then, had disappeared into our bedroom in search of a stuffed animal. She wasn’t with my brother and me when my dad came home from work to find a pan sitting in the yard, the front door ajar, his wife somewhere unseen, and two of his three children racing toward him yelling, “She’s burned! She’s burned!” He thought we meant my sister until she came toddling into the living room with a teddy bear tucked beneath her arm, until he turned the corner into the kitchen and saw my mother leaning against the side of the sink, her eyes swollen from tears. I remember the way he wrapped his body around hers, pulled her into his chest, his embrace. The way their foreheads pressed together, radiating warmth. 




That fire was the source of my insomnia. For years I’d lie in bed thinking I smelled something burning, or wake in the middle of the night from dreams in which my room had been set ablaze, the house slowly turning to ash and disappearing all around me as I sat trapped in my bed, powerless to stop the flames. I was constantly afraid that everything would catch fire. I turned the ceiling fan off at night despite the insufferable heat and humidity of Texas summers because I was certain the whirring sound meant it would spark and the whole house would burn to the ground. Well into my thirties, I still turn to my husband whenever an appliance makes a funny noise, or a lamp flickers when the air conditioner flips on and I ask “do you think it will catch fire?” It has taken him a decade to calmly reply “no” without first giving me a puzzled look. 

I blame my mother for these anxieties, for my need to get out of bed each night and double-check that I turned off the stove. How irresponsible does a person need to be to leave a pan of hot oil sitting unattended on a gas range? What kind of mother forgets about the safety of her children? Forgets that she was in the middle of making their dinner? 

I have a box of old photos in my living room that my son likes to look through. He pulls it from the shelf with his tiny thick hands and dumps the photos into a pile on the floor. There are pictures of my siblings and me dressed up and sitting in front of a Christmas tree. One of my brother, towheaded and round-cheeked, awkwardly holding a wrinkly, swaddled newborn me. There are school portraits, family vacation photos, and way too many images of my sister and me wearing hideous dresses or high-waisted floral patterned shorts. But my son’s favorite photograph is one from my mother’s 35th birthday. She’s sitting at a kitchen table, a cake in front of her with those number candles, 3 and 5, lit up in the middle of it. She’s smiling brightly despite the fact that three small children are climbing and hanging all over her, each of us scrambling forward to blow out the candles. 

The first time he held up that photo, it occurred to me that I was only a little older than my son when that picture was taken, and only a little younger now than my mother was on that birthday. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to be 35 with three children under the age of six, overwhelmed as I was by the demands of caring for just one toddler-aged child. I looked at the photo, at my little sister not yet a year old in the image, and flashed back to a day when my son was around nine months old and increasingly daring in his efforts to cruise around our living room from one piece of furniture to the next. He was holding on to the side of our sofa and reaching out to grab the coffee table. He’ll never make it, I thought and I moved toward him to help him navigate the gap, but at the last second, I stopped myself. How will he trust himself if I’m constantly stepping in to make things easier, I reasoned. How will he learn his limits if I never let him test them? So I held back and I watched him reach out for the table. Watched him let go of the sofa. Watched him fall forward and bash his chin against the edge of the coffee table. Blood filled his mouth instantaneously, muffling his howls of pain. 


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I couldn’t get the bleeding to stop and I couldn’t think clearly. I tried to push him to my breast to comfort him by nursing, but he pulled away and screamed even louder. Should I call an ambulance? Rush him to the emergency room? Was he going to die? It was just a bump on the chin, but I didn’t know what could kill a nine-month-old. Everything, I assumed. I felt panicked and desperate. I called my husband to have him call the pediatrician, and then I called my parents. My dad answered the phone, and though he is calm and comforting in a crisis, I remember thinking how much I wished my mom had been home. 

As I drove to the pediatrician’s office, my son still crying and bleeding in his car seat, I pictured my mother on the day I fell on the playground in preschool. I was climbing up the side of a big metal fire truck and slipped on the rung of a ladder, whacking my chin against the metal. It split open, requiring stitches. I waited in the office of the church building for her to come pick me up and bring me to the hospital, and I can still recall the heartbreaking relief I felt as she walked through the door. 

I pictured my mother kneeling on the bathroom floor, gently applying bandaids to scraped knees. My mother pulling the sheet back to let me crawl into bed beside her after a bad dream. The sound of her voice saying, “oh honey.” The weight of her hand smoothing over my hair. My mother holding a bag of ice to my swollen cheek as I sat on the edge of a hospital bed waiting for x-rays. My mother wiping tears away from the tip of my nose. My mother carrying a pan of fire out of the kitchen, not right through the den, just a few steps to the backyard, but through the living room, the long way out of the house, away from the area where her children were waiting, and out the front door, holding tight even as the flames blew back, scalding the thin tissue of her hands. My mother, overworked and overtired, enjoying a brief adult conversation, a moment of respite in a long day of parenting young children. My mother making a simple mistake, a forgivable error. My mother staying calm and clear in a moment of danger, knowing better than to throw water on a grease fire. My mother not nearly burning our house down, but heroically saving the house from catching on fire, sacrificing her own safety to protect her children. 

My hands trembled as I gripped the steering wheel and glanced back at my son’s angry red face and bloody lips. I pictured my mother’s hands, mottled and scarred in the spots where the fire had burned her. I pictured them reaching out, gently cupping my cheeks, and I knew everything would be okay. 




Thanks

Thank you for reading this blog. You can read more stories HERE and if you’d like to submit a story for consideration to be published, please visit our submissions page.

If you’d like to keep up to date with all the latest stories, news, promos (including writing competitions and giveaways) plus receive a FREE Ebook, sign up to our mailing list here or fill in the form below.


Get your FREE Ebook

Accomplish more IN a fraction of the time

The pace and intensity of our lives, both at work and at home, leave many of us feeling like a person riding a frantically galloping horse. Our day-to-day incessant busyness — too much to do and not enough time.

With this ebook you will learn to approach your days in another way, reducing stress and getting results through prioritizing, leveraging and focus!

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Knitting for Leo – A Short Story

Knitting for Leo – A Short Story

We’d like to thank Alex Grey of the UK for her touching short story “Knitting for Leo”.

After a lifetime of writing technical non-fiction, Alex Grey is fulfilling her dream of writing poems and stories that engage the reader’s emotions. Her ingredients for contentment are narrowboating, greyhounds, singing and chocolate – it’s a sweet life. Her poems and short stories have been published by a number of ezines including Siren’s Call, Raconteur and Toasted Cheese. One of her comic poems is also available via a worldwide network of public fiction dispensers managed by publisher Short Edition. Alex is not a mum, but she works in healthcare and this story comes from her compassion for the women who have shared their lives with her over the years.

You can read Alex’s blog HERE

Note: this story mentions still birth and is a work of fiction and not based on any identifiable individual.

This page contains affiliate links which may earn me a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you click through and make a purchase. Affiliate links are how I keep this blog running, thank you. 

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Knitting For Leo

My mother taught me to knit. 

Back then, knitting was a necessity, not some artisan craft like it is today. She would get patterns from Women’s magazines and cheap wool from the market. She knitted my clothes – sweaters, cardigans, even skirts. I was the eldest. As soon as I could hold a pair of needles, I was knitting booties for my baby brother and sister. 

I got married in 1969, when you could buy wool in every colour that you could imagine. I was eighteen, but I already knew how to keep a house. Calum worked long hours, keen to get on in his career and be a good provider. I had a part-time job in our local greengrocers. In the evenings, we’d sit by the fire in our terraced house. It was before we had a television, so we’d talk about the future, about the children that we’d have. I’d knit and he’d do the crossword in the newspaper. I knitted tank tops for him to wear to work – he had a different one for every day of the month.  Years later he admitted that he got teased by the other juniors. But my Calum was a hard worker, and the teasing stopped when he kept getting promoted. 

Calum was already a manager by the time I fell pregnant. Lucky that he had enough tank tops, because as soon as I started to show I stopped knitting for him. I bought some new wool, all soft pastel yellow and lilac, and started knitting for the baby. My friends said it was bad luck to knit for the baby too soon, but I wanted to be ready. 

I thought I must be carrying a boy, a footballer judging by the kicking. Calum was very modern, he liked to lie by my side with his hand on my bump, feeling every movement. The basket I kept in the new nursery soon filled with clothes – judging by the size of the bump he was going to be a whopper. I started getting nervous about giving birth, but the midwife said I was young and had nothing to worry about.

The kicking stopped when I was 37 weeks. 

I remember that night – I slept for 8 hours, my longest sleep since I fell pregnant. I woke up all rested and, for a minute, everything seemed fine, but my bump did not wake up with me. I begged for my baby to start kicking again, but he was still. The hospital induced the birth, I had to go through it, but they knew it was all for nothing. I caught a glimpse of him before they wrapped him in a towel and swept him away. He looked so perfect, like he was sleeping. I wanted to hold him, but they said it was better for me not to see him, to move on quickly, a strong young girl like me could try again soon enough, these things happened.




There was no death certificate because he had never lived. Yet in our hearts, he was always Leo, due in August, our fierce little lion who almost made it.

We carried our grief out of the hospital door and swaddled it with our hopes in the little basket of baby clothes I’d knitted. I burned them all.

Of course, we tried again and within the year we had a beautiful baby girl; two years later, our son was born. I stopped knitting. Honestly, who has time to knit with two young children and a husband working all hours? 

Late at night, though, I’d hear Calum sobbing quietly beside me and knew he’d never got over losing Leo, just as I’d never got over the feeling that my knitting had cursed our firstborn. There was no emery board that could remove the festering hangnail of our hidden grief. 

Calum lived long enough to walk his daughter down the aisle and to stand shoulder to shoulder with his son when he was wed. When our first grandchild was born, I realised that I had not seen Calum smile like that since the day that I first fell pregnant and our future had sparkled with undimmed hope.  

I brooded on it after Calum’s funeral, how his poor heart had flexed with grief and joy, like the metal fatigue in those planes that crashed, destroyed by a hidden stress.

It was then I decided to tell my children about Leo. They didn’t know, you see, because we didn’t talk about these things back then. They were…surprising. They cried, but with relief, they said they had always felt that there was something, someone, missing. We had Leo’s name carved onto Calum’s headstone and I started to knit again.

I live with my daughter now. I have a lovely apartment with plenty of space for my comfy recliner chair. I have everything I need, a TV, my knitting needles and a pile of wool given to me by kind donors. It’s all colours and textures, but that doesn’t matter. Once I picked up the needles again, my fingers remembered the old patterns, so I can sit here watching my favourite shows while I make babygro’s, bootees and cute berets to keep the babies’ heads warm. 

My daughter knocks on my door.

“Mum, the driver’s here.”

“That’s fine love, I’ve got a load ready for him.”

I hand her a neatly wrapped box, the label says “Knitting for Leo” along with a charity registration number. This batch is going to our local hospital, but I send parcels to maternity units all over the country. You see, Leo’s charity got quite big once my daughter mentioned it on the internet. We must have over a hundred volunteer knitters now, each with their own sad tale to tell. 

I knit tiny clothes that would fit a doll, or a baby born too soon and too still. I finish each little outfit with a ribbon and put it in the basket by my side. I imagine how parents will take these tiny clothes and dress their stillborn babies. They will hold their precious bodies, take photographs. In that moment, the quiet infants will become part of their families forever.

I raise a cup of tea to the dead who never lived.

You never lived, but you were loved. Rest easy my son.




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I’m Sure Jesus Liked Cheese: A Micro Story

I’m Sure Jesus Liked Cheese: A Micro Story

We’d love to thank Paula Nicolson from Scotland, for her story ‘I’m Sure Jesus Liked Cheese’, a sweet story about jet lag and childhood games, based on true events.

Paula Nicolson lives near Lockerbie, Scotland, with her family and is a mum to a teenage daughter, two grown-up stepchildren, and an overly chatty cat. She enjoys laughing, eating cake, and writing with Lockerbie Writers; preferably all at the same time. She worked as a scientist for 22 years in England, but now works as a librarian in a Scottish town where there’s more sheep than books (she made that fact up, but seriously, there are lots of sheep up there). She’s a published poet, short story, and a prize-winning flash fiction writer. She’s also a judge for BBC Radio 2’s 500 words and Castle Loch Trust’s children’s writing competitions.

You can check out Paula’s blog HERE

Photo by Alexander Maasch on Unsplash

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I’m Sure Jesus Liked Cheese

Have you ever tried playing Hangman with a five-year-old that has only just learned to spell?
We’d just returned from a family Christmas holiday in California to our home in Portsmouth, Hampshire. We’d met every Disney princess going (and there was a lot), ate cinnamon pretzels until we too were twisted and smelt of apple pie, and had exhausted our replies to, ‘Have a nice day!’. But the after-effects of an eight-hour time difference was taking its revenge on our bodies: I was ready for my dinner at 3am and my bed at 6am. Not helpful if you wanted to get your body back to the UK industrial revolution clock.
To alleviate the insomnia, my husband and I took to watching the US series: The Walking Dead (a horror story of life after a zombie apocalypse). Yeah, hindsight is a wonderful thing; probably not the best method to lull yourself off to sleepy-sheepy land. But we already had a steam cleaner and didn’t need a zirconium ring from the shopping channel, and so we became hooked. I even sympathized with the zombies as I too felt like chewing someone’s arm off at night with hunger, and shuffling around the daylight hours groaning.
One night, I’d managed to fall asleep at 11pm only to be awoken by my husband at 1am striking up a conversation with me about cars (WT−), and then at 2am by our daughter with a request to play Hangman; a pink felt tip and scribbling paper tucked tightly into her armpit.
Yes, why not, I thought. Eyes don’t need to be fully in focus – tick; she’s already brought the materials – tick; we don’t have to get out of bed – tick. This will be easy.
However, after 10 minutes of running through a few letters, and drawing our one but last limb, we were seconds from being hung. How could we not get this three-letter word? It was G?T, after all.
‘I give up,’ I shouted, hurling my hands above my head and waving them in the air.
‘It’s “get” Mummy, you know G … I … T!’ she said.
I will say at this point, that I’m from the Eastend of London and my husband is from Scotland and we often wondered what sort of accent she would develop. However, we needn’t have worried as we’d just been delivered evidence that her own homegrown Portsmouth accent had finally come shining through. I imagined my mother at this point, squirming, for she was always a stickler for knocking any regional accent out of me. However, with my husband and I trying not to laugh (too much), I corrected her spelling politely and gently with, I should say, no mention of what ‘git’ meant.
We decided to have one more game before, ‘We really have to try and get some sleep,’ but the hangman’s noose was beckoning, again. Why couldn’t we guess ‘??EES?S’. We asked her for a clue.
‘He was born at Christmas and came down to Earth to tell us to be nice to one another,’ she said.
‘Jesus?’
‘Yes Mummy!’
‘But that’s spelt–‘
‘C … H …E … E … S … O … S! I’m good at spelling, aren’t I?’
‘Yes darling, you are,’ I said hugging her. And if Jesus loved cheese, which I’m sure he did, he would have hugged her too.
We did, eventually, go back to sleeping in line with the UK. Our daughter’s spelling improved and we are still fans of The Walking Dead.
But my husband continues to talk to me about cars, late at night; some things never change.


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Thanks

Thanks for reading this blog. You can read more stories HERE and if you’d like to submit a story for consideration to be published, please visit our submissions page.

If you’d like to keep up to date with all the latest stories, news, promos (including writing competitions and giveaways) plus receive a FREE Ebook, sign up to our mailing list here or fill in the form below.


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Accomplish more IN a fraction of the time

The pace and intensity of our lives, both at work and at home, leave many of us feeling like a person riding a frantically galloping horse. Our day-to-day incessant busyness — too much to do and not enough time.

With this ebook you will learn to approach your days in another way, reducing stress and getting results through prioritizing, leveraging and focus!

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