Her 100th birthday

They were running late as usual, no place to park, the streets were rimed with white SUVs and oversized white trucks. They found a doghole down the street to squeeze their rusted brown sedan into a parking spot with a little elbow grease, and some discreet bumper kissing. 

The woman’s heels clicked a rapid staccato on the sidewalk as they hurried toward the house. The kids dragged their shoes on the cement, slowing her down. Late again, she thought. Late, she hated the abrupt accusatory bark of the word. Her mother said that she will be late for her own funeral.

The front door was open wide, the party was in full swing. Folks wandered in, carrying tinfoil covered dishes, and the womenfolk headed toward the kitchen to ease their burden. The menfolk made a beeline for the coolers lining the porch to ease their discomfort, taking solace in the chilled brown necks of the bottles nestled in their hands. Their empty hands sought simple comfort as they gazed out, talking of the weather.

In the living room center stage was a shimmering bouquet of black and gold helium balloons proclaiming a hundred years of living. They squealed and chattered amongst themselves like young girls as they swayed on the air currents. Two clear balloons had gold starfish printed on their bellies. A backdrop curtain of black kelp undulated and swayed like cabaret dancers. The fat 100 was minted in gold. 

People gathered in tight clumps, or drifted into other constellations, moving like the tides from conversation to conversation. The air conditioner hummed a monotone song, the chink of glasses, and orphaned fragments of conversation mingled and tangled into a pastiche.

The old woman, whose birthday they were honoring, sat in the wheelchair, her claw-like hands, gripping the steel arms, as if she were about to rise, but they all knew that would never happen. She had been confined to her metal chariot ever since the fall. She didn’t want presents. She said she had enough, she didn’t need anything more.

A broken hip at that age was a death sentence. You could see how the tumble took its toll. A precursor of things to come. But nobody wanted to look that closely. She thought how the monotonous days rolled on and on like an endless soap opera. But today was different, her hair was freshly styled, her nearly new clothes unstained, and she smiled radiantly, glad to see her clan gathered around her on this momentous occasion of her hundredth birth.
The younger ones, unable to fathom the distance of her age with their’s, ignored her and treated her like a diorama. She was part of a living tableau, always there, but a backdrop for their playground. They rolled and crawled at her feet, tumbling like kittens on the rug, squealing in delight. They couldn’t see how she watched them so greedily.

The blood bond between cousins was the fabric of their world. Without knowing, they knew they were connected on a deeper level—it was cellular. Instant best friends. They rolled and wrestled, and their laughter was soothing to the old woman’s ears. She remembered when she was young playing at the feet of her own grandmother. The one who was stone-deaf, but smiled beatifically whenever she caught their eyes.

She could still hear them caterwauling even with the hearing aid turned down. That was a secret blessing that only she knew about. The celebrants didn’t know that every single sound—chairs scuffling on tile, the clang of the pots in the kitchen—became an unbearable cacophony. Like knives thrown against steel. She wanted the silence to ease the burden of memory. All the things she did, or that she should have done. Oh, well. No use crying over spilt milk, her grandmother always said.

That hubbub of conversation cloaked her like a blanket. But the children’s laughter sustained her and kept her in time present. At least for now. At her age, there was only now. This moment in time. The next was not guaranteed. Oh, how her mind wandered. Whatever happened to that boy she once loved…. Oh yes, the war. She thought of the sea.

The long afternoon shadows were drawing in. They’d forgotten all about her as she dozed in her wheelchair, and then she drifted off like a boat loosened from its mooring. Yes, the silence. Yes. At last. What she was waiting for? The silence was deafening.

4/2/23

TheNarrativeMethod.com

Note bene: This bit of fiction came from a workshop called the Narrative Method with Shari Foss. I didn’t like the image, nor was I wild about the prompts, and I found myself distancing from what I know, and I began writing about something I knew little of and was always a voyeur to—middle class Americana. Marriage, kids, grandkids. I suppose I could write a part two describing my crazy family life. 

But I have never been interested in writing fiction, the pedantic need to take care of the reader seems a big burden. Not like with poetry. Oh well, not every workshop has to be fantastic. I don’t have to like everything I write. I miss my poetry group, but I’m teaching on Wednesdays. Maybe I should treat it like flash fiction that starts nowhere, in the middle of things and goes nowhere fast, but it abides. If I expand it, maybe I should consider it something for NaNoWriMo. I’m bored with it.

The first prompt was, what were the grandchildren unprepared for? And the second prompt, who was pushed to change the perspective? This second prompt took us away from our initial image. I liked the mosaic process where we each read a line, and they all connected because we were using the same prompts. I could see using this technique to have kids create a group poem, so all was not lost. It is amazing when you realize how far you can go in 15 minutes of freewrite, but that’s what we want is for the writing to take us to a place we had never been before, nor thought of. And certainly this was true for me—even if I don’t like it, not that I’m being judgy.