The old grandfather clock on the landing has just chimed the midnight hour.  I kick at the sheets and get out of bed. Perhaps a hot cup of milk would induce the land of dreams to claim me. Wrapping myself in the cashmere throw at the foot of my linen upholstered sleigh bed, I tiptoe to the darkened lace-curtained window.  Outside the rain is falling, enveloping the neighboring houses in a cloak of mist.

I switch the church candelabra-turned lamp on my kitchen counter on, and set about warming my milk in one of the copper saucepans off the potrack. I remember when papa brought this set of saucepans with him from one of his solo yearly trips to France. I had been about eight at the time, and had come running home from school, bounding up the stairs to see him, only to be shushed by my mother and scooted down the hall into the living-room. I remember vividly the slant of the afternoon sun across the pinks and blues of the Savonnerie rug and the brown leather of the opened suitcases. I remember the shiny, golden orange of the copper pans, and the reflection of my face staring back at me, my large black eyes, my chocolate chip eyes, papa liked to call them, inquisitively trying to peer at the girl inside.  But I cannot remember the day he left. Or why.

And now here he is. His tall lanky frame tucked away in the canopied bed he had shared with my mother.  The canopied bed I would slip in myself those nights after he was gone, when I was frozen with the fear that she would disappear as well.  Why now?  Why is he here now?

When the milk almost reaches the boiling point, I ladle it into my mug, and because I can’t stand the thought of milk alone, break half of a dark chocolate bar into it and wait for it to melt. How perfect the tiny kitchen looks bathed in the lamplight, with the pine cabinets from some farm kitchen long abandoned, and the walnut hutches containing all the pottery and ceramics mother had collected in the years since.

“There’s no way of justifying my neglect of you. Or of your mother.” I start at the sound of his voice, spilling half of my drink across the trestle table.

“No.” I say. “There isn’t.”

“I’ve never wanted children and your mother knew that. I let her talk me into it, I was young and in love, but was relieved when the doctors told us we couldn’t have any.”

“But somehow, you decided to adopt me. That must have been a conscious decision on your part as well. And for a while there, you loved me.” My voice drifts off and I sit still. I feel drugged. As lethargic as though I had taken a narcotic. I look at him; a feeble old man, that’s what he is.  He’s probably come home to die.  Suddenly I don’t want to know his excuses for making me feel so unwanted.  I don’t want to know his reasons for being here.  Perhaps in the light of day that may change.  But now, all I want to do is get between my egyptian cotton sheets and fall asleep.

“Help yourself to whatever is in the refrigerator.” I say.  ”And don’t forget to turn off the lamp.”

This is a work of fiction.  For more, visit

Magpie Tales.

You know how little kids like to get their hands and feet into everything? Well, once when I was about five, my parents visited a relative on a farm who had the pig trough right outside the summer kitchen door. I was a city girl and thought the trough a little wading pool. Sure the water was a little murky, with bits of food and such floating around, but it was a hot day and the air was dry and there was nothing else to play with.

I got in fully dressed and splashed around until I heard my mom’s horrified screams. I knew she wanted to give me a thrashing just from the look on her face and the sounds coming out of her mouth. But lucky me, I was too stinky and dirty for her to touch. A bar of lye soap thrown in my direction, and the ice cold water of the garden hose were punishment enough.

That evening the beds of my fingernails and toenails were surrounded by pus. I was running a temperature, hallucinating, who knows what else. I don’t remember much of it myself. But I do remember the red nails. And the milk baths.

For two weeks after, I had a medication applied to my nails that stained them a rasberry red, besides being forced to bathe daily in a tub-full of goat milk. Where my parents got the goat milk, I have no idea, as we didn’t have a goat. Still, my red toes peeking out of the white milk looked very pretty.  The only thing that sucks about this memory, is that to this day I cannot add any red berries to a bowl of cereal and milk, without feeling nauseous.

Only parts of this story are true. For more great reading visit

Magpie Tales.

Ella married the plumber at seventeen.  By the time she turned thirty, she already had eight children and was pregnant with her ninth.  The plumber was not anyone’s sexual fantasy.  Perhaps he had been when he was single and hitting the gym daily, or perhaps it was just his family’s money and the convertible Firebird he raced around town that had the girls swooning.  Ella, herself, had been one of the prettiest girls around.  But you would be hard pressed to find that beauty in her now. Her housewife ponytail is more white than black, and the curls that used to cascade down her back, just create a halo of frizz.

Ella shouldn’t have married the plumber.  God knows, there were plenty of guys around who wanted her.  And not just in their church community.  But Ella fell in love with him and with the holiness his family portrayed, not thinking for a moment that life could be anything other than wonderful.  And it was wonderful for the entire honeymoon period. She knew she was expected to get pregnant and procreate until menopause set in. She knew she would become her husband’s property.  She just didn’t think it would be so difficult.

It is his controlling behavior that mostly gets to her.  She isn’t allowed to speak with her mother and sisters, nor have any friends.  And then, of course, his beatings. The ones in secret are her shame alone.  But when he takes it out on her in front of others, she wants to die.  A few times he had slapped her face in public, and once, when his parents were over for dinner, had hit her over the head.  She can’t remember exactly why, but it must have been over an insolent look she had supposedly given him.  And last summer, in full view of the neighbors, he whipped the water hose across her back. To teach her a lesson about showing her legs, he said.

So Ella searches the house looking for some way to end her misery.  If she could, she’d take her kids and leave.  But she can’t.  She doesn’t drive anymore.  Besides, the kids are all on his side.  They are his little spies, bribed with candy and sugary drinks.  But tomorrow is her birthday.  What little gift can she give herself?

In the garage she finds the perfect one.  Does she dare?  She knows she’ll go to hell for sure.  Yet until then, until judgement day, years and years may come and go.

Ella settles herself on her bed, unscrews the bottle of sulfuric acid her husband uses to unplug pipes, and swallows it down. For a moment it burns so horribly she thinks she may already be in the fires of hell.  But then the pain is gone, numbness sets in, and she realizes she’s in heaven.

This is a work of fiction. I have no idea what sulfuric acid is used for, but it seems like it should be used in plumbing. For more great readings head to Magpie Tales.

When my Tante Marie’s husband died, she had him buried in the garden across the dirt road from her house.  Every morning, while the valley between the two mountains was still covered by a low mist, she would put on her thick coat, grab a few garden tools and make her way over.  Toward the end of that first summer without him, my sister and I were the only ones left to keep her company, the other cousins already returned to their jobs and school.

Waking up in the high bed that her husband had built, under layers of linen quilts and silver-threaded woven rugs, was always a delicious feeling. The room would be warm, on the table in front of the wood stove thick slices of bread, a pot of honey and one of butter, and a pitcher of milk awaited our hungry mouths.  We would eat, create a fantasy land of play underneath the bed, and when the mist lifted outside the thick walls of the mud hut, slide our feet in our shoes and run out, careful to close the door behind us, ever mindful of Tante’s warning of wolves and bears coming down the mountain side that was basically in her back yard.

We didn’t like going to the garden across the way.  Tante Marie had a habit of laying her body atop the mound of earth that covered her dead husband and crying out, demanding to know why he left her.  Sometimes she pulled at her hair, but mostly she just cried until she was spent. If she happened to see my sister and me there, peering out from behind one of the mulberry trees, she’d rouse herself, grab her watering can and call to us to fetch some water from the already filled well bucket, and bring it to her.  For the next several hours we’d work silently together, weeding, watering, gathering the onions, the radishes, the garlic, and whatever else was ripe enough to harvest for the following day’s market.

At midday when the sun would beat down harshly on her widow black skirts, we would stop our work and she would take us to the river where we were allowed to wade in and play, and even go across the man-made bridge to the other side.  She would watch us and hum a tune of mourning, a tune as old as the mountains themselves, before she remembered that we were growing children and must have something to eat.

That summer, the first summer that we had met our Tante, ended one evening in early September.  The light was already changing when our parents showed up to take us home.  As we started on our way, Tante Marie and her fragrant garden grew smaller and smaller, and although I had worried of what would happen to her during the cold winter months without her garden and without her husband, when Spring returned and we arrived, I learned that life and hope and love go on.
Sorry, this one’s non-fiction. For more tales please visit Magpie Tales.

When my cousin married she moved from the country to the city and took her widowed mother with her.  My aunt was short in stature but she made up for her lack of height in width.  As a child I had never seen a fatter woman.  Her eyes were like tiny raisins in leavening dough, and when she laughed all four of her chins trembled for minutes after her mouth had calmed.  Despite all that, she was elegant and graceful, and had the most slender feet on which she liked to wear jeweled heels, three or four inches high.

Soon after my cousin’s wedding, the three of them moved into a second-floor three-room apartment in the new part of the city.  The building, a square concrete block type, ten stories high popping up all over the country at the height of communism, lacked both a working elevator and lighting on the stairwell.  My aunt though, accustomed to attention from men despite her size, rarely lacked for an arm to lean on, or a hand cupping her elbow as she made her way up.  After she was seen to her door, she had a habit of inviting the gentlemen in and packing them plates heaved high with her delicious pastry before sending them back to their families.

One day, possibly the hottest day of the year, my aunt was baking Dobos cakes for a wedding that weekend, dressed only in her silky undergarments when the kitchen caught on fire.  She ran, threw open the  windows and yelled, “Fire! Fire!”  before collapsing on the floor in a state of panic.  Within moments her admirers broke down the door and got to her.  Because she could not stand on her feet, four of them carried her out, two holding her underneath her armpits, and two underneath her knees.  But she wouldn’t allow them to go down until two other men running around in circles and not doing anything helpful, promised to run in and rescue her precious shoes.

They crawled on all fours through the smoke to the bedroom wardrobe where the shoes were and while the men ran down the three flights of stairs with my aunt, they shoved her shoes off the balcony, all the while blinded by the smoke and coughing their lungs out.

It was a good thing that the fire department finally decided to show up.  The men were saved, the apartment was saved, but most importantly, the shoes were saved, and my aunt was even talked into procuring a fire extinguisher in place of a new pair of dainty pumps, should a fire happen a second time.

My aunt learned two things that day, and none of them had to do with putting out a fire. The first was to keep her shoes within easy reach of the front door, and the second, no matter how hot the day or the kitchen, to bake fully dressed.

This is a work of fiction. For more, please visit Magpie Tales.

Check out my friend Sharon’s prompt, and participate for a chance at the giveaway she’s having on her blog, French Country Home.

A quarter of a mile up the road from our house, the woods begin.  On a hot summer day, we grab our water bottles and sweaters, and head out.  Within five minutes we’ve left the city behind, with its noise, its traffic, its suffocating heat.  We follow the dirt path that meanders through the firs, the jasmine, and the wild blackberry bushes, the only sound that of the gurgling stream, and birds calling to each other.

The deeper in we go, the cooler it gets.  We don our sweaters and button them up.  The kids race up ahead, my son gathering salmonberries, naming ferns and mushrooms, my daughter picking wildflowers she presents to me, or down to the stream looking for salamanders.  They jump from one rock to another, wanting to be the first to get to the opposite shore.  I watch, my heart in my throat, and caution them.  My husband laughs and tells me to relax.  He goes to join them, a protective hand hovering above the little one.

Finally we arrive at remains of the old Stone House.  This is our turning point.  Husband and I sit on a log, quench our thirst, and the little ones prepare to put on a show.  The old stone structure is their castle, the forest their kingdom, their dad and I, their subjects.

On our way back down, I offer up a little prayer of gratitude.  For my beautiful family, for the magic of childhood, for the trees, and the flowers, and the sun, and the air we breath.  I am amazed and moved to tears.  It is in the midst of nature that I feel closest to God.

It seems like my boy was just born, we had just been discharged from the hospital and were on our way home, the car packed with all types of necessities, our heads crammed with all kinds of practical advice we were already forgetting. Yet, here he is! Already ten, and almost a half. He’s just come home from a weeklong camp, away from us for the first time ever. And I missed him and worried, constantly. in some ways, despite all our reading and all our prayers through the years, and all the advice that we even now receive, we’re still just as clueless as we were then. I look at my parents who had raised five children and at my in-laws who had raised seven, and wonder.  They deserve to be congratulated and respected for this accomplishment, for it wasn’t easy.
My mother’s idealism and desire to fill our lives with goodness and love shaped us into the adults we are.  I reflect upon those carefree childhood days when the only worries we had were which playground we were going to visit, and which friends we were going to play with. She was conscientiously indulgent with her time, with her patience, and with her possessions; nothing was too good for us.
Her gentle rebukes and reminders rarely humiliated our fragile selves. She was fair and consistent in her expectations and her discipline. I try to remember that whenever I lose it and scream my head off for some tiny, inconsequential offense I believe is aimed at me; aimed at showing me what a failure I am as a parent. And I am afraid that the parental will within me, added on to all my ignorant fears, renders my son helpless and angry during the years of his life when he should be untroubled.
Because I don’t want my son disappointed in me as a parent (and to be honest, sometimes I’m too tired, too busy, etc.), I often resort to a dirty little trick: I turn to my husband for his opinion, thus making him the definitive factor in whatever issue is at hand. I resorted to this last night.  For one, I was too exhausted to really go into detail about why a certain behavior is not allowed, and two, it didn’t really seem like such a big deal anyway, so I couldn’t come up with a good enough argument to convince my boy (and my boy is not easily redirected).
My husband did a wonderful job explaining, as he usually does. I cuddled my son next to me on the couch and smiled across the ottoman at my husband, congratulating him for his words of logic.  Yet all the while relieved that I wasn’t the one put on the spot, my words were not the ones objected to.  Not long after, it dawned on me that unless I grow a backbone and stand firm on my own opinions and decisions, my son would still be disappointed.  My role as a mother is not an invisible role, nor a diminished one.  I need to own its existence.  I need to embrace it.  I need to grow in wisdom.  I need to nurture and comfort and love and admonish.  And I need to figure out how. And quick!
P.S. This is a repost with very few changes. You’d imagine I’d gotten smarter in the last year and a half, but it isn’t so. I’m just as clueless.

Walking barefoot through the dew drenched grass is one of my favorite ways to start a summer day.  Years ago when I still lived at home with my parents, and then after, when we had a lawn of our own, I used to love waking up early on summer mornings, sometimes as early as five, to curl my toes in the grass, inhaling the early morning scent of the roses climbing the side of the house, before settling on the doorstep with my steaming mug of hot milk or coffee, and a side of half a loaf of crusty French bread.

Any child can tell you that very few things taste better than bread smeared with butter and honey and dipped in milk, first thing on an empty stomach.  Add a handful of sun ripened raspberries and the melody of chirping bluebirds, and it is blissful heaven.

When I was a kid we had egg laying chickens, and it was my job on summer mornings to go and fetch the still warm eggs.  The chickens terrified me and I used to take a stick with me to swat at them should they come flying my way.  I don’t remember them attacking me, but I do remember having to shove them off the eggs.

If there were enough for all of us, my dad would peel a few potatoes, wash them well and cut them into strips for frying.  He’d fry the eggs too, just enough to be considered cooked, but still soft yellow and runny, and make a fresh cucumber and tomato salad on the side.  We’d eat them hungrily, wiping our plates clean with leftover bread, that last taste of all the flavors soaked into its crust, the most delicious of all.

But my favorite start to a summer day, is when I awaken sandwiched between the bodies of my little loves, their gentle snores singing in my ear.  Perhaps it is the early morning light that wakes them and brings them to our bed.  I hold them close and breath in their sweet scent, wanting the moment to last forever.  Their daddy and I watch them sleep and whisper our love for them, the joy they bring to us, wanting so much to be perfect parents to these two blessings entrusted to us for loving and raising.  Only after we are all awake do we make our way to the kitchen with its many windows and refrigerated bounty for a hearty breakfast only daddies know how to prepare.

This blogging once a week thing, isn’t as easy as I thought it would be.  I had an extremely busy week, yet I kept thinking of you all, and your families, in your corner of the world, and whether it was raining or sunny, or whether you all were happy, or sad.  And my big ego, of course, worried that I wasn’t missed, or worse still, that I was forgotten entirely as you went about your days.

I had been planning to read two books this past week, and also to write.  The books I didn’t touch, the writing very little.  I did clean my house from top to bottom, though, and I also baked almost every day.  Oh, and we played ball with the kids in the house, and managed to break a chandelier into a million pieces; pieces I’m still finding underneath bookcases and end tables.  But hey, we were having fun! And lighting stores are filled with chandeliers. And childhood is so short. So…

Anyway, wishing you all a lovely, sunny weekend! And one for me too.  I’m thinking of having a yard sale.  I need to, since chandeliers aren’t cheap.

How many pencils does it take to write the story of one’s life?  Here I sit in my little attic room, gazing at two hundred pencils, all lined up in the top drawer of my desk.

“Start with one.” My wife whispers to me.  Her voice and eyes are gentle.  I smile at her, but I cannot start.  She prods me daily, and yet all I can do is stare at them and the next day go and buy some more.

There used to be a day, so long ago it seems it happened to someone else, that any pencil that came into my hand was put to use, writing the most elaborate stories and fantasies for anyone who would read them.  I didn’t know about life then, yet I was read widely and much appreciated not just in my country, but in those surrounding.  And just like that, in the quickest breath that time could take, the world became a nightmare, my works were destroyed, and I was a person no one wanted to associate with.

Perhaps I don’t have a story to tell, after all. Who cares, really, about a has been, other than a handful of people, and maybe not even those.  I had been imprisoned, beaten daily, my fingernails pulled, and the tips of my fingers burned with a lighter, and when they thought that I was broken, released like a dog. They opened the door and kicked me out, a heavy boot on my backside.

My wife tells me to write of how I escaped.  How I walked the one hundred miles home, only to find someone else living in it, how I begged them to allow me to spend the night, at least, and give me a hot meal, and how they turned me away, apologizing that they didn’t dare, that they feared for their lives should they do so.  I was a free man, yet, apparently no one was free to share a kindness with me.

She thinks the world needs to know how I turned away and went in search of my friends, and found none. And how I lived in the woods and foraged for something to eat, and how on the day when I couldn’t even see my shadow, how I walked to the border, and lay in wait in the tall grasses.  When the change of the guard came, I ran over the open field into the river, and swam across it expecting to be killed at any moment, yet not caring one way or another.

Her idea of escape isn’t mine, and my idea of a life isn’t hers. Perhaps when I shall figure out what to write, I will start with a pencil and find out how many it takes.

This is a work of fiction.  For the remainder of the summer season I will most likely blog only about once a week. For more, please visit Magpie Tales.