Serendipitous Parade my mom called it, moments of unexpected events crossing your path. Moments like ducks crossing the road causing you to stop and wait but, generally the moment consisted of people coming around a corner starkly out-of-place.

I watched the five women round the corner walking bunched for safety, gangly arms entangled with others gayly chatting as they made their unfamiliar way…

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The under-manager's voice was that of the lisping and effete care assistant my youngest child adopts when he wants to make me aware of my age.

‘Mrs Davies, I’m sorry to say your bank account is overdrawn by thirty-six thousand pounds.’

I laughed.  …

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The small bowls are there, filled with arrowheads, unfinished stone tools, rocks that caught her eye for color or shape, square nails, and other artifacts one finds on a ranch. Bird nests sit on the shelves by the worn books so old their leather is cracked. The books have been her passports to travel the world, enabling her to smell jasmine, taste the salt of an ocean she’ll never see, and hear the rumble of elephants on an African plain.



85 years she’s lived in what is termed as… Continue

The gun lay where it always lay, next to the bed, silent and waiting. Sue covered her face with her hands, chest heaving with emotion, trying to decide whether to ignore the damn thing. Life wasn‘t worth living anymore, all she did was work and work some more, being busy kept all the losses in her life tucked away.

Yesterday her daughter called telling her excitedly about the…

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Sweat ran down her face, puddling in the hollow above her collarbones as she hurriedly threw the door to the chicken house open. More Texas heat and humidity accented by the ripe odors of the birds made her close her mouth and squint her eyes as she approached the nest boxes lining the walls. Keeping her long skirts gathered in one hand, she placed the eggs she blindly gathered in her apron until her hand encountered…

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She buried children, born and unborn on her journey through the west, in cotton camps, picking fruit, doing what it took to survive. Her only living child survived through her sheer will, weighing less than 3lbs at birth. Doctors removed most of her stomach, left her with a single rib on each side and half of a lung in a free experiment to treat tuberculosis in AZ. She never weighed over 90 lbs after the operation,…

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After so long, it wasn't easy to trust those feelings..those thoughts.…

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Every man in the Universe worth his scars, cringes at a homecoming female voice that utters the words, 'do you know what they did and said?'



He listens in amazement as she completes a full short story, with character dialouge and background color in one continuous breath that an opera singer would be jealous of.



His faining interest lingers over warm inner thoughts of 'dinner, sex, or should I just go fishing?'



A breath later she captures his interest when she… Continue

“Durga, heat some milk for your father”- her mother when she was five. “Durga, your mother needs you to mind the kids, so you have to drop out of school”- her father when she was ten. “Durga, on the dowry we can afford, can you really expect a husband better than the one we have got you?”- her parents when she was fifteen. "Durga, can’t unless you go back to work immediately, we can’t afford to feed you”- her mother-in-law a week after her daughter was born. The irony of her name was never lost… Continue

I know that nagging little weekend project is going to morph into umpteen more as her little plaintive voice sings from the garage and I tell her that the Lions are up by ten.



And she says 'it's such a small request and we've been putting it off to waste away in so many memorable perfect fall days and winter will catch us unaware.



And with me in the garage on the ladder I tell her quit calling that bubble on the level a liar and get me the stud-finder that you haven't used… Continue

I am posting this here as per the email I got from Rob today. Poor guy is backed up at the other page. Hope you like it, and as always, please leave feedback!





Inner Woman







They see the vibrant, positive, happy go lucky lady that is glad things are finally going her way. She doesn’t show them the real woman inside. She doesn’t share all the pain she suffers through every day, the hurt that is still as painful today as it was two months ago, the anger that… Continue

She was at the bar in the lobby when I made my move and Ms. DeBreve gave me the once over revealing the slightest smirk of a smile on her glistening lips. I’m like a duck now, calm on the surface but nervously paddling like crazy underneath while this beautiful woman looks me in the eye for several seconds more than I could comfortably endure before saying in the most honey, sweet voice I have ever heard: “That your best shot?”



Whoa, I’m pumping the brakes! I’m thinking I bit off… Continue