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.

Fiction class with Elizabeth Herron Fall 1980

Since I can't date most of my fiction and memoir, and it looks like I revisited some old pieces for this class, which, sadly, turned me off to fiction, I'll file them here, at the end of the year. I pretty much abandoned the prose process after taking this class and it wasn't until I established this blog that I was willing to revisit prose. 

I still have an aversion to fiction. I'm much more comfortable with memoir. I do like Elizabeth (as a poet), but I sure didn't like her class. I came away feeling like a complete failure in both poetry and prose. I'll own it, not blame others, it was all on me. My doors of perception, self-doubt, and vulnerability conspired against me. I wasn't very good at pleasing others with my work, which required a wrestling match before I got it down on paper (who knew I had dyslexia?). I guess I learned something from the class. But there's still a bitter taste in the back of the throat some 36 years later. 

The one good thing about the class was that I became fast friends with Ockly scientist/engineer Michael Fulton, who was working on a sci-fi novel. We saw each other for a few years, and kept in touch through the 1990s. Worth the price of admission. I've added most of this prose on 10/2016. It's hard not to resist fixing them.   Onward, as they say.