welcome readers & writers! thank you, readers; writing every day wouldn't be half as much fun without you. thanks also to Linda G., Chuck Galle, Kathryn Magendie and J2B for sharing more about yourselves in response to sunday's post. so fun to read more about you all. and thanks to FilmGuy (who wins the award for the shortest story ever posted on write away every day!) and krowles1981 for sharing your responses to yesterday's photo.
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here, friends, is today's photo prompt, along with my (memoir) reflection on it. i'd love to read whatever tale you have to spin, be it story, poem or creative non-fiction. just click on comments below to send it in. 250(ish) words or less. as you can see below, word count is flexible.
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He called at seven on the dot every night, and we'd talk until eight. I'd sit on the floor in the hall outside the kitchen, twining the thick, springy phone cord around my fingers, marveling at its ability to carry the sound of his voice across the city to my house. We spoke about friends, school, where he might go to college next fall and my family's impending move out of state. Our favorite topic, though, was us. Each night we'd add to our common daydream about a sunlit someday when we could finally be together. Cue mixed tape: Air Supply, Chicago, Styx. The Rose.
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We teased about running away together, but we were both too good to be serious. He was busy being his high school's valedictorian, and I the well behaved preacher's daughter. But still he would ask me how much time it would take me to get ready if ever he rode in on Lancelot's white steed. Wanting it to be clear that I was effortlessly beautiful and a no-fuss, minimal baggage kind of princess, I boasted that I could be ready to go away forever in a mere seven minutes. On the morning of my fifteenth birthday he called my bluff. He'd asked my parents' permission to pick me up and take me out to breakfast before school. My mom woke me up with a whisper, "Kenneth is here. He says you have seven minutes to get ready."
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Reality crashes in. My room is a mess. No clean laundry, though Mom comes to the rescue with a birthday present: turquoise pants and a neon yellow shirt*, both of which I hate but am too polite to say. I need to wash my hair, but our bathroom only has a tub and no shower. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. takes at least fifteen. I patch myself together as best I can, worrying. Is this it? Will he realize I'm not so very beautiful and that my life, in more ways than one, is a mess?
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Remarkably, he didn't see it. At least not on that day. On that day the fairytale was still ours.
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*this was the mid 80's, after all
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*this was the mid 80's, after all
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come write with me!
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