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A quote: “A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.” ~~ Andre Maurois
I’ll start with a story …
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Beloved’s wake was small – we were childless and had outlived most of our friends. It was still daylight when the last hugs and handshakes were exchanged.
This really was her home – we came as newlyweds to take care of her grandmother. After she passed, I put my skills to making it match Beloved’s dreams. She was a force of nature and her fearless love saved me – month after month, year after year.
Now I face the night alone for the first time. My tears fall on her old red cloak in my hands, a full moon to rise after sunset.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license.
Sparkly Spangles says: We came to live with Lovely, my late wife’s Me-maw, during the Great Collapse. I awake to the sounds of birds chirping. I love waking up to sounds of birds chirping, a gentle breeze blowing the gingham curtain enfusing the air with fresh warm air on these late spring mornings. “Ahhh, I tinkt, “I could go on like this forever.” Suddenly I hear Me-Maw shriek, “Get your lazy out of bed ya damn stupid lazy son-of-a bitch, There’s an ax down by the chicken shed waiting fer ya and you got chickens to kill.”
Mary Lewis says: “Sweet dreams, baby, how long can we dream?” Roy Orbison on the iPad, side by side they drink their morning coffee. The start of another long day.Fifty-five years and still counting. The long conversation long gone. Memories of work, home, children, cameras, boats, and fly-tying have become a fog.
Days, years now, of watching over him, the long goodbye in progress every day. In sickness and in health takes on a grim new significance.Still, happiness in just seeing her, knowing she’s near, penetrate the fog. So she does her best to stay focused.
Next song up: Amazing Grace
Navig8r says: For now the cabin in the Appalachian woods is a pleasant getaway. We pretend it’s a financial investment, but if our high desert home ever becomes untenable, a bug out location. It has the rain and other ingredients for off-grid living. Meantime, there are lessons from my Army days to re-internalize, and for the kids, practical geography lessons. That’s just a local season of rust on the axe, not decades of neglect. Chopping and burning hardwoods is different from pine. Land nav is different when your field of view is measured in yards instead of miles. Tracks age differently too . . .
Donna Beriont says: Chats between lovers right out of the marriage bed are often lively, playful and endless. After children they can be chaotic and repetitive. When children become teens married couples conversations can often be at odds, argumentative and principled. Once they fly the coop chatter becomes exciting and adventurous once again. Covid days of isolation tested our love and constant togetherness. They ebbed and flowed like the beating of our hearts and we felt lucky to hear the sounds of those thumps. Marriage can deepen once tested over time if fortunate more ecstatic conversations can be had from the heavens above.
Dupin says: Yessir, that hand axe is quite old. Yessir, it definitely an antique. It’s cut a lot of kindling and sharpened a lot of poles and maybe even amputated a leg or two which needed it quick-like. Yessir, it’s been handed down all the way from Sam Houston and the Battle of San Jacinto.
I handed it to him and he admired it appropriately. What I didn’t tell him—Sam Houston had never held that handle, never swung that axe head. It had been his, but since then the handle had been replaced four times and the head two times. Yessir.
Cameron says: The spirit cackled as I stumbled away from it, ready to kill. I came to a stop at the old stump. Granddad told me about the old ways and the spirits that were out there. Then he taught me how to fight them when they got loose.
I grinned as my fingers closed around the axe handle.
“You have a little fight in you still?” it hissed.
“Rowan handle, iron mixed with human blood,” I replied. “Let’s see if it works on you.”
It did. And once the thing died, no spirit ever came near me or the house again.
JImmy Bob Kraker says: I was chuggin’ Bud Lite watching a rerun of Walker Texas Ranger, wrapped in my Confederate flag for warmth. Rifle and Colt, my dogs, barked at something outside. I groaned and went outside to see why they was barkin’. I was expectin’ a coon or possum, but to my surprise it was my soy boy cousin from the city, Chadwick. “My wife’s thrown me out again,” Chadwick said. “Okay latte soy boy, you know the drill, you can stay if you chop enough wood to last the winter.”
Trevor wasn’t sure when he started hanging out in the internet chatrooms. After all, it wasn’t like he was putting up a profile on a dating site under an assumed name. He wasn’t an adulterer, just a guy who wanted a change of pace.
And there was something to be said for socializing online. When the other person was just a handle and lines of text, you could get close, open yourself up without worrying that you’d go too far.
Or so he’d told himself when he’d first opened those accounts. He’d be careful, not do anything stupid like try to meet someone in real life. Now here he was, waiting for deltagirl28 to show up. Sure, they’d both made their plans with an awareness of the risks, arranged their meeting in a public place where there’d be plenty of people, agreed to each wear a distinctive but not too obtrusive item of clothing so they could recognize each other quickly and quietly. But now he was wondering if he would go too far.
There she was, the woman with the Hello Kitty pin on the lapel of her jacket. She scanned the room, turned to look directly at him.
He blinked and his mouth nearly fell open in astonishment. “Monica?”
“Trevor?”
In unison: “I didn’t know….”
In the background, the pina colada song began to play.
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