There’s a guy sitting on a park bench reading a newspaper…

There’s a guy sitting on a park bench reading a newspaper…

It’s one of the first warm days of the year and everyone wants to be outdoors instead of at their desks, including me. It has been a long, cold winter and the lure of the blue skies and sunshine are irresistible. I cannot wait for my lunch hour and the opportunity to spend some time in the sunshine and warmth, especially since it will probably be cold and damp again tomorrow. Winter gives up its grip just one day at a time and today’s grip is looser.

The clock creeps slowly but even winter cannot affect the passage of time, and soon enough I am able to log out of my computer, grab my purse and coat and head for the elevator that will release me from the great indoors. First I stop and buy lunch from the cafe in the lower level and then with meal in hand I head for the revolving doors that lead to the small park behind this cluster of buildings.

I drink in that first taste of warm air and sunshine. This is a special moment that only happens once a year and I relish it for a few minutes. I want to lock this memory in to sustain me until every day is warm and winter is only a memory. Knowing that the lunch hour will speed by too quickly, I walk into the park and look for a place to enjoy my meal and the warmth. The park is filled with people who have had the same idea as me, but I find a bench near the drained and empty fountain that has just one person on it, a man reading his newspaper. As I sit on the other end of the bench he glances at me, smiles briefly, and then returns to his paper. I quickly eat my sandwich and sip my soft drink and relish this hour of freedom. The man beside me continues to page through his paper and the rustling as he turns the pages distracts me. I look to my right and see the headline on the paper. In a blink it has my complete attention. PHANTOM MEMORIES CREATED BY CHEMISTRY! I look at the name of the newspaper and realize that it is just a rag, the type of paper that prints stories about alien abductions. I return my attention to enjoying the hour and resolve to block this man and his newspaper from my senses.

A few minutes later the man closes the paper and then drops it on the bench as he walks away. I continue to ignore it but the more I try, the more I am drawn to that headline. Finally I give in to urge, pick up the paper, and begin reading the story. “Neuroscientists have discovered a way to erase and create new memories using a chemical cocktail. This has great implications for treatment of patients who are plagued by memories that cause pain or are even harmful. The lead scientist is especially hopeful that this will revolutionize treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome.” The story went into some of the complexities of the chemistry and I skipped down a few paragraphs, not interested in the science.  A new paragraph began with, “But what of the implications of this new science?” I am tempted to discard the paper, because surely this is where the story will dissolve into something crazy, but I was having some of those same thoughts myself. What could this science do in the wrong hands?

“Opponents to this new treatment fear that it could also be warped and used for evil. Someone with enough money and power could buy this treatment and use it to change memories of their enemies or even loved ones. The government could use this to control the people.” “Other industries express great excitement at the uses for this, especially the entertainment and travel industries. People can buy memories of a vacation or create a memory of themselves as the main character in a favorite movie.”

The last paragraph of the story is the most troubling for me. “When asked how long the effects of these memories might last, the neuroscientists were unable to give a definitive answer. ‘The test subject who has retained the memories the longest, who received the highest dose of the compound, has retained the memories for eight months.’ When pressed further, the neuroscientists chose to end the interview with a promise for updates.” 

I throw the paper down, a little disgusted with myself for getting sucked into the story. I doubt that any of it is true and resolve not to think about this anymore. As I turn my face back to the sunshine I hear a voice behind me, interrupting my reverie. “We will have to give her another dose but we need to erase the memories that that lab tech tried to feed her.” “Indeed,” said a different voice. “He was creative, trying to use the memory of a false news story in order to clue her in to her true status.” "How long can we keep this up?" The first voice says, "She responded to our ad to take part in a clinical trial, and so far she is our only successful subject. Are you developing qualms as well?"  As he speaks, the lovely day fades around me….

It’s one of the first warm days of the year and everyone wants to be outdoors instead of at their desks, but not me. I will spend my lunch hour at my desk and continue to work……

While preparing your garden at the beginning of spring, you find the blueprints for your house buried in the earth. When you pull it out and examine it, you find that there is a room in the blueprint that doesn’t exist in your house. Both disturbed and intrigued, you set off to find the missing room. Write what happens next.

While preparing your garden at the beginning of spring, you find the blueprints for your house buried in the earth. When you pull it out and examine it, you find that there is a room in the blueprint that doesn’t exist in your house. Both disturbed and intrigued, you set off to find the missing room. Write what happens next.

My shovel hit something metallic. This is odd, I’ve only dug down a couple of feet, preparing the bed for a new azalea bush. It’s in the one area of the garden that I haven’t transformed since moving into my dream home and before this it was just a grassy area. I reach into the hole and feel a hard surface. It’s a tube, and I try to pull it out of the hole but realize that part of it is still buried. I grab a spade and dig around the object and realize that the tube is wider than the hole, so I widen the hole until I can pull out the tube.

It’s about 18 inches long and has caps at both ends. I try to unscrew the caps without success and head over to the hose to see if cleaning off the dirt will help me get this tube open. As I run the hose over the tube I notice an etching on one of the end caps: 1945. That’s the year the house was built! Could this tube have been buried for seventy years? Once the dirt is cleaned away I give the end caps another go, and this time one cap reluctantly opens. I peer inside but can’t see what is in there. I head over to the patio and tip the tube over the table. A tightly rolled piece of piece of black or dark blue paper slides out. The roll is about twelve inches long and it isn’t too thick, perhaps two or three pages. I try to unroll them but they’ve been rolled up for so long that I can’t get them to lay flat. I can seen that they’re blueprints of something, and I bring them into the house. I grab some fat books from my huge book collection in the living room and use them to pin down the corners as I unroll the three blueprints on my dining room table. 

The address for my house in the lower right corner of each blueprint, and there is a sheet for the first floor, the second floor, and the basement. There doesn’t appear to have been any work done to the house since these blueprints were made, because the first and second floors look right- same rooms, same walls. When I move to the third blueprint, the one from the basement, I was puzzled because it didn’t look like my basement. I have a full, unfinished basement but the plans show a basement that is larger than than mine. According to these plans, there are two rooms in the basement and one of them extends under the patio in my backyard! I don’t hang out in the basement very much but I know that there are no doors in that one large room. Intrigued, I decide to do a little investigating.

The basement has a couple of naked bulbs but I take my big bad flashlight downstairs with me. This flashlight is long and heavy and really bright. I love the new LED flashlights! When I get to the bottom of the stairs I turn toward the back of the house, where the mystery room was supposed to be. The patio is in the back and at the left end of the house, so I head to that corner of the basement. I had to shift some boxes before I could get a good look at the wall. I turn on the flashlight and play its powerful beam over the wall. This wall, like the others, is cement block and on first blush I see nothing that would indicate a room  behind the it. I rap on the wall with the flashlight but feel pretty foolish- cement block wouldn’t sound hollow, and indeed, there was no hollow echo. I get closer to the wall and examine it closely. At first I see nothing to indicate that this was anything but a solid cement wall, but when I bend down I see what appears to be a small crack at the bottom that goes up about three feet. The crack is fairly straight and as I trace it with my fingers, I realize that it turns ninety degrees at the top. I feel a bit of a flutter in my stomach- was this it? I decide to bring some more light downstairs and run up to get a couple of lamps.

Once the corner is brightly lit I can see the faint outline of the crack. It goes up those three feet and then across, to the other wall. It outlines an area about three feet square on the wall. It has been painted over and is hard to see, which explains why I have never noticed it before. I get a scraper and screwdriver and get to work, digging out the paint until I am down to the bare block. As I work I notice that the cement block in this square is not as cold as the blocks in the other wall, further evidence to me that I may be on the right track. After two hours of scraping and digging I have the crack completely exposed, but if this is a door, how does it open? I don’t see any hinges. I also notice an inch-wide indentation in the center of the square and decide to dig the paint out of there as well. It turns out to be a hole with threads in it and looks as if something could be screwed into it. But what? Will this open the door? I am convinced that I have indeed uncovered a door. As I mull this over, I suddenly remember that after moving in, I had found a jar with odd-sized screws in this basement. I had thought at the time that they might turn out to be important and had stashed them on the other side of the basement, on a shelf above the laundry tub. I walk over and find the jar; in it are a couple of long, fat screws and some pieces of metal that look like long pieces of chalk, with a hole in the middle. The screws look like they would fit in the hole! Were they the keys to open the door?

I open the jar and take out the longest screw and start to thread it into the hole. It takes awhile- there is still some paint in there- but eventually I work most of it in. Now what? I had expected that the door would pop open as I advanced the screw, but no such luck. I look in the jar at the other metal pieces and belatedly realize that the screw would fit through the hole in the metal and form a handle of some sort when I inserted the screw. I can believe I missed this. I remove the screw and slide it through the hold of the metal piece. It made a very nice handle, and I quickly re-insert the screw. As I work at the screw, the section of wall becomes looser and I realize that I might be able to move it in or out. I try pulling on the handle and screw but other than a little movement, the door stays put. I switch to pushing and as I put my shoulder into it, the door starts to slide inward. This has to be it! I push a bit more and then sit on the floor and give a few big shoves with my feet. Bit by bit, the door moves inward and then suddenly it pushes all the way in…to the mystery room.

Of course it is completely dark in this newly-revealed place. Clearly there are no windows and none had been indicated on the blueprints. I grab the flashlight and shine it into the space. I see a lot of dust and some vague shapes but they are too far away to identify. If I want to know what is in there, I will have to go in. I have some qualms- there might be any manner of creepy things in there like bugs, mice, spiders…but there is a mystery in that room and I have to discover what is in there! I grab one of the lamps and bring it close to the opening, then  realize I can probably get it completely into the room. I push the lamp in and then with just a few misgivings, I crawl into the room with my flashlight in hand. 

There is a lot of dust and I stir up enough to make me cough and make my eyes water. I shine the flashlight upward to make sure that it was taller than the three-foot door; it seems to be the same height as the rest of the basement. I stand up cautiously and turn the flashlight onto the wall with the door. No sign of a light switch. It is so dark that even the lamp and the flashlight don’t provide enough light. The room is big- at least the size of the patio overhead- and the walls are either painted black or were very dirty. I decide I need more light, so I hook up some extension cords and bring all of the lamps into the mystery room.

Do you ever dream of buried treasure? Of riches beyond compare? Do you hope to win the lottery? Once the room is lit, I deflate a little bit because I see no treasure chests, no pots of gold. At first I am disappointed because all I can see are books, a desk, and a chair. Everything is so dusty that I decide to clean it all off; perhaps the desk is an antique and worth some money. I crawl out of the room to get some cleaning supplies and then set to work clearing out some of the dust on the floors. I work my way over to the desk and for the first time I get a really good look at the desk and the items piled on top. As my cloth wipes, titles come to light and fine leather bindings are revealed. These are not just books; these are finely made treasures of leather and parchment with gold found in the lettering of title and author. This is a collection of first editions Dickens, Sand, Eliot. I am not a book dealer but even I recognize the worth of these volumes.

I had purchased my home from the estate of the woman who lived here alone for many years. When I moved to this town my neighbors regaled me with story after story about her, a simple woman who loved books. One neighbor in particular told me that there was a rumor that the former owner was a rare book collector but no books or papers to that effect were found after she died. Her children had long ago left the area and left her; when she died their only desire was to see that the house was sold as soon as possible. I bought the house within a year, seeing a diamond in the rough in its simple lines and spare architecture. Now it seemed that I had acquired even more.

As I continue to clean, a thought runs through my mind. Why did the former owner hide this room and hide these books? Surely a treasure like this should be shared, not hoarded! These books are priceless works of art and literature; as a lover of books myself, I am certain of this. I pick up a volume of “A Tale of Two Cities” and reverently clean the dust from the cover. I open the book to find the publication date, and find an unsealed envelope tucked inside the cover. I reason that an unsealed envelope is not private and I reach into it and withdraw a sheet of rose-colored paper. There is an embossed, ornate R in the upper left corner and I recall that the former owner of this home was named Rosa. As I read the last letter that Rosa ever wrote on her special notepaper, I begin to understand the reason for this room and why it was sealed. It was not just the architecture that drew me to this house. The spirit of Rosa had reached through the walls and called a fellow book-lover to ownership. And like its previous owner, I will keep its secrets.

The kids were raised on the mantra “Family is everything.” What happens when they find out their parents aren’t who they pretended to be?

The kids were raised on the mantra “Family is everything.” What happens when they find out their parents aren’t who they pretended to be?

Donovan, Melissa (2014-01-02). 1200 Creative Writing Prompts (Adventures in Writing) (p. 17). Swan Hatch Press. Kindle Edition.


“Family is everything!” was the rallying cry of my parents. I’m the oldest of three kids- I have two younger brothers and I’m the only girl. My parents pulled out that phrase every time one of us wanted to do something or go somewhere that wasn’t open to all of us. It didn’t always work out- I don’t really like baseball but I agreed to play Little League because my brothers wanted to play. They drew the line, however, at dance class and since they refused to take dance lessons, I was told to find an activity that all three of us could do together. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find something like that? I’m just grateful they didn’t want to play football.

“Family is everything” came into play for social events and holidays as well. I was invited to a sleepover party at a friend’s house but it fell on the same day as my youngest brother’s birthday, and so my parents nixed the sleepover. I felt really sorry for my middle brother when his junior prom was the same day as the family reunion- guess which event he attended? I think his girlfriend broke up with him over that one. As we got older it became more and more difficult to insist on doing things as a family but believe me, my parents tried.

“Family is everything” also meant that you supported the family through thick and thin. If someone picked on my little brother, I was expected to step in and defend him. An insult or injury to one was an insult or injury to all. It was kind of nice to have built-in defenders but it could be a pain to have Mom swooping in to fight our battles for us.

My parents must have come up with this “family is everything” when they had kids. They rarely talked about their own families and we had never met any of our grandparents; they had all died before we were born. We would talk about it sometimes and wonder why they were so adamant about "family togetherness." It was great to be close and luckily we all got along, but why were they so focused on “family is everything?” For years we batted ideas around but never came up with a good theory. We badgered Mom and Dad for years with questions about why and how they came up with their mantra and begged them to ease up, but they rarely  strayed and kept us on a leash, too.

We grew up, went off to college, built careers, had our own families. We had all decided long ago that family was important but we wouldn’t force our own families to follow the “family is everything” rule. We all settled within 100 miles of each other, mostly to please our parents, but it worked out for all of us. Mom and Dad kept trying to impose FIE from time to time but I think they realized that it was a lot harder once we had our own spouses and children.

Years passed and Mom and Dad grew older and retired from their jobs as professors. They depended on each other and were totally devoted to each other. It was almost as if the two of them made one whole person- Mom couldn’t drive, so Dad did the driving and Dad couldn’t manage the stairs, so Mom did the laundry. They died within weeks of each other; one couldn’t survive without the other. With sad hearts, my brothers and I met at Mom and Dad’s house one weekend to pack up their things and prepare the house to be sold.

We had a lot of good memories to share as we found mementos of family vacations and events. We found old programs and had a good time reminiscing about school plays and concerts, and shared a laugh when we found Mom’s shell collection. We worked our way through the house and saved the attic for last.

Our old attic was a mysterious place. Mom and Dad kept the door locked and never let us in the attic, citing danger and spiders and mice (which were enough to keep me out of there). We found the attic key in Dad’s desk drawer and prepared for our first-ever trip into the family attic. We thought we would find old textbooks, antique furniture, and a bunch of dead mice. We could never have imagined what we would find when we opened that door.

Sometimes when you’re a kid and things are going badly, you think that you must be adopted because you couldn’t do things as well as everyone else. I remember my youngest brother saying that he had to have been adopted because he couldn’t sing a note while the rest of us sang, if not perfectly, at least passably well. I thought I was adopted when I got my first “C” in high school- no one in our family ever got a “C” on anything. It never occurred to us that our parents had a big secret.

In that attic we found…big floppy shoes. Enormous hats. Brightly -colored wigs. Make up kits. Sparkly costumes and tutus. A unicycle. And posters. Posters all over the walls, garish posters proclaiming that the circus was coming to town. And on those posters were pictures of the performers, including pictures of our mom wearing a tight white costume and hanging from a trapeze. Another poster showed a crazy clown, and when we looked at it closely we realized it was our father. Our parents had been circus performers! Why had they kept this a secret? We searched the attic for more clues.

We opened one trunk and found photo albums of the circus owners, their families, and their performers. It was a family business and we found letters and documents that revealed that Mom and Dad’s parents had been major partners in the circus. We poured over pictures of Dad in a bunch of different clown costumes, and of Mom learning to fly on the trapeze. There were other performers’s pictures but none of the first names were familiar to us.   We wondered- could any of these people be our relatives? The grandparents that we never knew? Their last names were familiar and some of them even looked like Mom and Dad, including a frightening-looking bearded lady with Dad’s eyes and nose. The last set of letters was dated over fifty years ago and it seemed that the two families- Mom’s and Dad’s- had a bitter argument and sold their portions of the circus to other owners. No wonder Mom and Dad believed that “family is everything;” their families, once so close, had been torn apart.

Once we got over the shock, we had to laugh at the irony- Mom and Dad ran away from the circus to become college professors!

The protagonist walks into his/her home and it’s completely different- furniture, decor, all changed. It doesn’t look like the same house anymore. And nobody is home.

Today's writing. I'm stretching a bit.

The protagonist walks into his/her home and it’s completely different- furniture, decor, all changed. It doesn’t look like the same house anymore. And nobody is home.

Cara drove up to 13 Meadowlark Lane. She was so excited- she hadn’t been home to visit her family for several years, having just completed a deployment in Japan for three years. Text messages, Facebook messages, even Skype were all good ways to keep in touch but Cara felt really distant from her family home; not distant so much in miles as in connection. She grew up there and had her first date, her first prom, her first broken heart all within those walls. Of course she missed her mom and dad, and her brother Caleb, but she found that she had missed the house, too. It was part of her family and she was so very excited to return.

She was surprising everyone by coming in a day earlier than she had announced. She suspected that they would be tidying and planning and she really didn’t want a fuss. She wanted the familiarity of home as she remembered it, with Caleb’s hockey equipment piled up in the hallway or the kitchen counter filled with piles of sorted mail. She wanted to run up the stairs to her bedroom and jump onto the comfy four-poster bed and snuggle into her favorite quilt, the one with the whales and dolphins on it. She wanted to admire the walls that she had painted to resemble a sunny day at the beach with their warm blue-greens. She loved the sand-colored wooden floor and the rug that looked more like a beach towel. And she wanted to plop onto one of the tall kitchen chairs and soak in the familiarity of Mom’s country kitchen with its oak and maple decor. 

She exited from the interstate and after a few streets and traffic lights she turned onto Morninglark Lane. Her house was the fourth on the right and it sat majestically, calling her home. She parked in the driveway, switched off the engine and sat for a moment, drinking in the sight of home. Nothing had changed. It was still the beautiful blue-and-brick that she remembered, and the trees and bushes were the same, just a bit bigger. The lawn needed to be cut and some of the bushes could stand a trim, but to Cara’s eyes it was all perfect. Grabbing her purse, she jumped from the car and found herself running down the front walkway and leaping up the three stairs that led to the front door. She opened the screen door and tried the doorknob- locked. No problem, she still had her key. She fished out her old keychain and found the front door key, unlocked the door, and prepared to be awash in nostalgia.

What the heck?

She found herself in a stark white entry hall that opened up into an equally stark white living room filled with black and white furniture and dominated by a white marble fireplace. Cara stood frozen with confusion, then went back outside to check that she was in the right house. The familiar black mailbox on the wall next to the front door still displayed the number 13 in brass numbers- she was definitely in the right house. Foolishly, she realized that of course she was at the right house because her key had opened the front door. She went back inside and once again was assaulted by the unfamiliar. The entire first floor was one huge space and it was a checkerboard of black and white furnishings and decor. With a small cry of dismay, she noticed Mom’s country kitchen could no longer be called country; in fact, she wasn’t sure what to call it, other than a chrome and granite nightmare. Gone were the oak cupboards and maple table and in their place she saw glass-fronted white cabinets and a glass and steel monstrosity with spindly metal chairs. This was a nightmare. What had happened? Had her parents moved and forgotten to tell her? Then she noticed mail piles on one of the white-marbled counters- thank goodness, something she recognized. She walked over and pulled one of the piles toward her and saw her father’s name on the top envelope. This was certainly her family’s house- but where was her home?

“Mom? Dad?” she called. “It’s me, Cara- I’m home!” Instead of warm replies, she heard nothing but cold silence. “Caleb?” she shouted. No response. It seemed that no one was here. She walked around the large space, discovering more changes. A glance out the kitchen window was reassuring; the backyard appeared as she remembered it, with the patio furniture and Dad’s grilled. The old swing set was gone but after all, she and Caleb were grown now. She was a little surprised; she thought that they would keep it for the “someday” of grandchildren. Dad had built it himself out of thick timbers and ship rope and it could have lasted for another 25 years. She turned back to that terrifyingly alien kitchen and walked through it, back to the equally frozen landscape of the living room. The shock was wearing off a little but she still didn’t understand what she was seeing.

She had a horrible thought- what had they done to her bedroom? Her beautiful seaside cottage bedroom? She bounded up the stairs, noticing that the wooden railing had been replaced by a flat chrome bar that was bolted to the wall. She arrived on the second floor and found that it was all painted in the palest blue, only marginally different from the white of the downstairs. The first room she came to was her parent’s bedroom and she saw that the pale blue extended into what was once a cozy yellow haven. The old bed had been replaced by a modern affair with twisted posters of some black material. Nothing, nothing was the same in this room. The lovely wooden floors were hidden under a black rug, and in the middle of the dull gold bedspread lay an elegant but unfamiliar white cat. The cat stared at her with its green eyes and seemed to mock her; “this is my house, little girl, not yours.” She backed out of her parents’ room and turned to run down the hall to her bedroom. She stopped short as she passed Caleb’s room, or what was once Caleb’s room. Gone was the bed, the bookshelves, and his poster collection and in its place was an artist’s studio. An easel dominated the room and canvases were stacked along the walls. A huge skylight had been cut into the ceiling and the room was flooded with light. The canvas on the easel was covered with a cloth and the canvases scattered around the room contained a variety of subjects from fruit bowls to landscapes. None of the pieces appeared to be finished. This was just getting weirder and weirder.

She went on to the closed door at the end of the hallway. This was her old room and she was afraid to open the door. What more would she find? A recording studio? A junk room? Nothing would surprise her. She pulled in a deep cleansing breath and opened the door.

Oh, thank goodness. Her room was exactly as she had left it. Her beach cottage was intact with its soothing blues and greens, her beach towel rug was still on the wooden floor, and her quilt covered the bed. She crossed to the room and sat on the bed, drinking in the familiar. After a few minutes, she heard the front door open and heard footsteps. “Cara? Cara, are you home?” Her mother’s voice echoed as she walked with brisk steps through the living room and into the kitchen. Cara knew she should run down the stairs and jump into her mother’s arms, but she was still numbed by all the changes she had seen. “Cara?” “I’m up here, mom, in my room,” she said, and waited while her mother came up the stairs and down the hall.

Who was this? This tall, thin woman in a dress that looked like it was made of scarves? A woman with violent red hair? She sounded like her mother as she crossed the room with a happy cry to enfold Cara in a hug that was both familiar and alien. Mom wore jeans and sweaters. Mom wore sneakers. “Cara, honey, we weren’t expecting you until tomorrow!” this elegant woman cried. “We were hoping to have some time to prepare you…things have changed a little bit around here.” “A little bit?” snorted Cara. “Mom, everything is different. Even you are different. What is going on? Will Dad arrive in a Brooks Brothers suit?” Her dad, a high-school history teacher, always looked the part in his khakis and corduroys, and Cara couldn’t imagine what she would see when he came home after school. 

“Silly girl. Dad wouldn’t wear Brooks Brothers to teach. He saves those suits for our trips to art galleries and exhibits!” Art galleries. Exhibits. Okay, who were these people and what had become of her parents? “Mom, I am so confused,” said Cara, as her mother drew her out of the room and down into the kitchen. “Well, honey, you’ve been gone for over three years,” Mom said with a smile. “Your dad and I decided to re-invent ourselves. We took some art classes and I’ve started to paint.” She bustled around the kitchen, filling up a chrome tea kettle and pulling glass mugs out. At least this was familiar. Mom loved her afternoon tea…but Earl Grey? That was new. “With you in Japan and Caleb in graduate school, we decided to make some changes.” Changes? thought Cara. There was change and then there was upheaval. “But we didn’t want to upset you too much, so we left your room the way it was.” Cara supposed she should be grateful for this but she was still too stunned to express gratitude. “Mom, this is so different, like one-hundred-eighty degrees different. It will take me some time to adjust.” Actually, Cara didn’t think she would ever adjust. How do you go away for three years and come home to find that it wasn’t home anymore?

Her mom reached into a voluminous handbag and pulled out a stack of cards. “Cara, honey, now that you’re back in the country and living in your own place, we want to move on with your room. What do you think?” The stack of cards were paint samples. Gray, taupe, even a subdued violet. “We want to create a sitting room, a place to relax and drink in peace. Do you think these colors will create that atmosphere?” she asked as she fanned the paint colors for Cara. Cara looked up from the paint colors to meet her mother’s eyes- had she gotten contacts? They seemed bluer than usual. “Mom, you can’t change my room. Its my room! I painted it and decorated it! It’s the only sane room left in this crazy house!” she cried, as tears started to fall. She expected her mother to comfort her and promise to keep her bedroom as it was, and so she was surprised when her mother calmly said, “Cara dear, we’ve moved on. You need to accept that and perhaps move on yourself. Dad and I have been through counseling and we’ve decided to live for ourselves now. We’ve been keeping that bedroom like a shrine for you, but you’ve had your glimpse of home and it’s time for us to make the final change.” “Final change?” asked Cara, wiping at her tears. 

“Yes,” said her mother. She looked past Cara and seemed to signal with her eyes. Cara snapped her head around but never saw the hands that grabbed her or put a dark hood over her head. She struggled until the pinch of a needle in her arm sent her into a warm blackness.

The unmarked van was driving down the street as Cara’s dad pulled into the driveway. He got out and kissed his wife and asked, “Is it done?” “Yes,” she replied. “I know you wanted to see her first but she was becoming unstable. She didn’t want to accept these changes.” She looked at him just as her contacts dissolved, revealing the all-black eyes that were as cold as they were dark. They held hands as they walked up to the house and went inside, shutting the door behind them.

Describe your cooking skills

Describe your cooking skills.

I can be a good cook. I’ve been a good cook in the past. When we were first married and when we had kids I cooked almost every dinner; we had rare nights out because we were a single income family. I’m a picky eater and therefore I am a picky cook. That was limiting but I still managed, and surprisingly, both of my kids are adventurous eaters, despite being subject to my pickiness.  My son has even become a bit of a “foodie.” Ken has always told me that he liked my cooking…he’s a smart man.

I’m not a very creative cook. I can follow a recipe and have done some improvisational cooking when I realized I was missing an ingredient or two, and most of my improvisations have been pretty edible. For instance, a couple of weeks ago I made beef stew stroganoff instead of ordinary beef stew, simply by adding sour cream to the beef stew at the end of the cooking process. I think a good cook has to have a good sense of taste and I fear that my pickiness limits my ability to be anything more than an average cook. I don’t like vegetables and will not cook or eat any seafood. I cooked fish a couple of times for Ken and was nauseated the entire time. And that fishy smell lingered for days.

I’ve watched Julie and Julia at least a dozen times and I admire anyone who can do all of that prep work. Quite honestly, if it takes a lot of prep time, I doubt I’ll cook it. Wash your beef cubes individually and dry them with a paper towel. Chop this, mince that, blend these- too much work. I’ve looked through the Joy of Cooking and I wouldn’t eat most of those recipes- they contain too many things I don’t like. Betty Crocker is more my style and indeed, she was my guide through the early years.

When I went back to work (my kids were in high school) I began to cook fewer meals, mostly because I didn’t have time. The meals I did cook were also very simple- hamburgers with Kraft mac and cheese, hamburger/chicken/tuna helper, “breakfast for dinner” (always fun, quick and yummy). And once my kids were grown and gone I just about gave up cooking except on the weekends. Ken and I both had substantial meals at lunchtime and so resorted to PB & J or canned soup for dinner. 

I recently got a new oven/stove- a convection oven and it has been fun to rediscover some cooking. A convection oven makes a really moist and tender roast beef, and our Christmas turkey cooked in half the time. It’s certainly different to cook with an oven that hums!

To me, cooking is a bit like housework. You spend a lot of time doing something (prepping ingredients, etc.) that goes generally unseen and unappreciated, and then all of your work disappears once the meal is eaten. Unless you’re an amazing cook, no one will remember a particular meal that you cooked. It was gratifying, however, when my newly-married daughter asked for some of my recipes. And now that we are empty nesters, I might try to cook some new things. Might. No guarantees.

Did you enjoy school?

I'm back in Pittsburgh after five days in San Antonio, visiting Dan and Holly in their new and lovely home. Everything is indeed bigger in Texas- 12 foot ceilings! I somehow managed to be in San Antonio for five days of clouds, rain, and cool temperatures. We stuffed a lot into those five days- the River Walk, a visit to Wayside Chapel, visits to several really delicious restaurants and finally, a fabulous last-minute drive through San Antonio to find a gas station and fill up the rental car. 

I also got to see a very interesting airport- Detroit- Terminal A has 78 gates and it is one looooooong building with a tram. There is a terminal B- much shorter, and a psychedelic tunnel that connects the two terminals. Truly- it has swirling, changing colors and patterns with odd music. My final assessment of the airport is.....thank goodness for moving walkways!

And now for today's writing.

Did you enjoy school?

Do you remember how much you wanted summer vacation to start? That feeling used to start right around Labor Day, which is when I used to go back to school (elementary, junior, senior high). I don’t remember particularly liking or disliking school as a kid, other than feeling out of place and therefore not always comfortable there. I didn’t have many friends in elementary school, and was picked on a lot once I began wearing glasses. When I try to remember elementary school, the bullying and feeling like an outsider is what I remember most.

When I was to start sixth grade, my parents transferred me from the public school to a private school for girls. I made my first real friends there and built some confidence in my abilities. I did well in my classes and was involved in drama and choir. I liked studying the sciences but don’t recall anything else in particular as a favorite subject. Although the English elective "TV and You" in 11th grade was definitely fun, if a bit empty of academic worth.

College was a weird time for me. I went from an all-girls school with 135 people in my class to a university of 4000 mostly male students (the school had only been co-ed for 7 years). EVERYONE there had been in the top ten percent in their high schools, and so for 90% of us it was a shock to find ourselves ranked below (sometimes FAR below) where we had been in high school. Lehigh University was also insanely competitive, far far more than high school. I floundered a bit before finding my footing. Despite my love for the sciences, I found myself competing against the extremely intense people who would spend two years at Lehigh and then 4 years at Hahnemann Medical School. I had to choose between studying something I loved or studying something at which I could succeed, hence my BA in English Literature. What I really wanted was to become a nurse, but I had to graduate from college first, and by the time I chose my major, I had become another competitive Lehigh student.

From Lehigh I went to nursing school and there my love for school flourished and it became more about the learning than the competition. I loved what I was studying and practicing and therefore loved the entire pursuit. Ever since then I have been an ardent student. Sometimes I’ve been an official student, earning a post-bacc Bachelor of Science in Nursing, a Master of Nursing Science, and a post- Master’s certificate in Healthcare Informatics. Other times I have taught myself. When I am embarking upon a new endeavor I often throw myself into a study of that area- for example, when I got a job with a revenue cycle consulting company, I read and learned a great deal about the revenue cycle of a hospital, even though that wasn’t my area of concentration.

After I completed my last degree, everyone asked me if I would go on for my doctorate. The answer to that is no, no, no. I've reached a place in my life where I am no longer interested in deadlines, bulletin board postings, APA formatting, and reading endless articles written by the same 10 people. I like school but I am done with school.

The answer to the question is, yes, I enjoyed school. But what I enjoy even more is learning. Our digital age presents a lot of free opportunities to learn a variety of subjects- iTunes U, Coursera, Lynda.com (not free but you get a lot of choices for a yearly fee). Even Audible.com now sells The Great Courses, which are university lectures on history, art, science, philosophy and more. I wrote about some of these opportunities last year in an earlier blog. 

An arrogant businessman hits a car full of old ladies. He gets out and approaches their vehicle, blaming them for the accident

An arrogant businessman hits a car full of old ladies. He gets out and approaches their vehicle, blaming them for the accident. 

Donovan, Melissa (2014-01-02). 1200 Creative Writing Prompts (Adventures in Writing) (p. 9). Swan Hatch Press. Kindle Edition. 


Darn it, he was late again and it was his mother’s fault. She always called him at the most inopportune times; why couldn’t she understand that he was a busy man, an important man and didn’t have time to visit? Yes, it had been several years since he had been to see her but he had been busy, building his clientele. In fact, he was the youngest account executive at Batterson Advertising, respected by the other execs and admired by the support staff, especially the ladies. Why didn't wasn't she content to shop and garden with her batty old lady friends? Irritated, he gunned the engine as he turned onto 5th, only to find himself headed right for a stalled car. He was going too fast to miss it and plowed right into the rear quarter panel of an old boat of a car. His airbag deployed, filling the compartment with choking particles and smoke. After the big bang of the collision, all he could hear was his engine coughing and dying. His car! HIs perfect, beautiful car! Who had been so stupid as to stall in the middle of the street? It was clearly their fault- they should have pushed their car to the side of the street. They were so thoughtless! His anger simmered and then boiled over as he reached for the door handle. He was going to shred the driver of that stalled car, turn him into mincemeat.


As his door began to open, he heard a sharp rap on the window. What was this? He snapped his head up and met the steeliest pair of green eyes that he had ever seen. The green eyes were in a face that was soft with age, but the mouth was pursed and tight and the eyes were piercing him right to his seat. The the old lady spoke. “Get out of that car, young man. You have a lot of explaining to do! She rapped on the window again for emphasis, and he saw that she had a cane with a brass top, fashioned into what looked like….a bat? He felt a creeping fear and then just as quickly shoved it away That crash must have addled his brains- how could he be afraid of an old lady?



He opened the car door, swung his legs out, looked up and saw….another pair of steely eyes, these the grey-blue of thunderclouds. Odd- she had the same aged face, even the same wavy white hair- and a cane, but this one was topped by an upside-down brass bat. Now he KNEW that he must have hit his head. He probably had a concussion. Steely blue-eyed lady banged her cane sharply on the ground and said, “Get up out of that car and explain yourself! Why did you not stop when you saw our car?” 


He felt irritation returning. This was definitely not his fault. These two women had left their stalled car in the middle of the street and it was their fault that he had run into them! He stood, hoping to intimidate the old women by towering over them. But as he straightened up, he heard a cold voice from behind him, on the passenger side of the car. “Young man, you are a menace on the roads and you will certainly be made to pay for the damage to our car!” He spun to see the coldest pair of brown eyes that he had ever seen boring into him over the roof of his car. Odd, he thought. He had never seen cold brown eyes before but this woman’s eyes and expression made him shudder. She raised her cane, topped with a brass bat with wide-spread wings, and shook it at him.


Okay, this was too much. He was an important, admired, respected man and he wasn’t going to be bullied by a bunch of old ladies, no matter how steely their eyes or creepy their canes. And then from the old ladies’ boat of a car came an eerily familiar and harsh voice. “Young man, you will come to this car and help me get out of my seat. Right. Now.” He strode over to the car, determined that THIS woman was going to bear his wrath. He yanked open the driver’s door, earning a "tsk tsk" from the women behind him and a hiss from the woman in the driver’s seat. He reached for the driver’s arm but instead had his knuckles rapped by a cane topped with a brass, beady-eyed bat. The driver elegantly stepped from the car, stood up to her full height of five feet, narrowed her eyes and said sweetly, “Well, hello David. I thought we might run into each other one of these days.”


“Hi...mom...”