She wished her heart was broken as cleanly as the frost-ravaged stone in her winter garden. Surely a wound with such crisp edges could heal, given time, leaving few noticeable scars. Her heart, she was certain, more closely resembled a flag that had been left at full staff in a vicious hurricane. Another long jagged tear appeared as he raised a threatening fist in thunderous rage. Already tattered edges were flayed yet again by a pelting torrent of hateful words. One more irretrievable piece was torn away when he stormed out the door in a hail of curses. Seeking shelter for her wounded heart, she wrapped herself in a faded quilt and huddled in the corner of the sofa as the tempest roared off into the night. She wondered for the thousandth time just how much longer the last fragile threads of a mother’s love could withstand such a battering from her only son. And she wept.
Author Archives: dreaminofobx
Broken
Smile!
Okay, so it’s Day 4 of my plan, and already I’m cheating by using a photo that I did not take today. But I was looking through photos from the past weekend, editing them to be uploaded to our online album, and I just couldn’t resist pulling this one.
Hetty, as I’ll call her, is a Herdwick sheep living on the steep hillside below the lofty ruins of Corfe Castle in Dorset. She’s just been caught taking a break from her duties, as her face is unbearably itchy and she’s sneaking up behind this tree for a good scratch. Hetty and her fellow Herdwicks, along with some smaller brown Soay sheep, have been stationed at the castle by the National Trust to keep the hillside vegetation from running rampant. This is a common, environmentally friendly, and cost-effective practice employed by the Trust at many of its properties; we frequently encounter various breeds of grazing sheep and sometimes ponies as we approach castles or stately homes or wander down National Trust trails. These four-legged groundskeepers ensure the ear-splitting racket of lawnmowers and strimmers (weed whackers) won’t shatter the peace of the surrounding countryside, and in fact add an element of authenticity to the vistor’s clichéd expectations of rural England. Nothing completes the English experience like scraping sheep poo off your shoes.
Churkendoose
When I was a kid, we had a book called “The Churkendoose” about a strange bird that was part chicken, part turkey, part duck, part goose. I think I found one today! He’d made himself at home in an overflooded ditch/field, and was having a good old preen in the late morning sun. He was all alone, which made me wonder whether, as in the story, all the ordinary chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese had ostracized him for his unusual appearance or if it was just the type of morning best enjoyed in one’s own company. Find a vacant pond (no shortage of those, thanks to months of rain), have a bit of a paddle, stretch the old wings. Not a care in the world, until some strange lady with a camera comes along to ruin the solitude. At least she had a pocketful of bread to share.
(If you’d like your own copy of “The Churkendoose,” used editions are available on Amazon today for $97.95. I assume the going rate was considerably closer to the 39¢ cover price when my parents purchased it for our childhood collection!)
Personification
I passed this tree on my walk today, and the first thing I noticed was its symmetry–it’s the ace of spades from all directions, presumably because it stands alone and does not compete with any other trees for England’s precious sunlight. Almost simultaneously I noticed that it’s dressed for winter in a sweater of deep green ivy. The entire trunk and all the major branches are snugly enveloped in a solid sheath of leafy vines. When I looked again, the tree looked less like the highest card in the deck and more like a young boy with his arms raised, his mother having just drug a chunky wool turtleneck sweater over his head, leaving behind a wild halo of fine, static-charged hair reaching out in every direction.
Reflection
When I was her age, going to the beach in the dead of winter was never a thought. Not that we were living close enough to the coast to pack up the car for a day’s hike along the shore anyway. No worries, though. I’ve got her same little-kid sense of wonder and excitement every time my feet hit the sand, regardless of the season or my age. Today, I looked just like her, right down to the sand eddying around a pair of cute wellies as the gentle waves receded. Maybe my seaside adventures were meant to be delayed. My younger self no doubt would have enjoyed hunting for shells, digging in the sand, and racing the approaching waves, but I’m not sure I would have appreciated other aspects of the day: the tang of the nippy salt-laden breeze on my lips, the perfectly imperfect striations on the razor clam shells, the way the sun’s rays illuminated the beached strands of Crayola-bright kelp, or the flat-out, belly-to-the-sand run of an Australian sheepdog chasing his favorite ball. So much to take in, yet there is no haze of ambiguity or impression of chaos; every detail is unusually clear yet remains solidly in its context. My senses, it seems, only ever work to their full potential when I’m at the beach.
Things I See and Know 