Tag: stafford challenge

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Thursday the 12th: Leading up to Friday the 13th

The last person to see our father alive who knew him was Nick Doster.

My brother Ken and I had been trying to keep vigil next to Dad’s bedside so that he didn’t die alone in a room, but the hospice nurse urged us to go take showers and grab an hour or so of sleep when we’d become too exhausted. Some patients look for those moments to die alone, preferring not to have loved ones near in their final moments, she’d assured us. We knew the time was close, too, because just that afternoon Dad had begun the conversations with the others not of this world, but with whom he was having undeterminable conversations and for whom he was reaching.

Nick Doster and Dad had traveled to Wrigley Field in Chicago to see the Cubs play several years back, and shared a deep love of all things sports. So it was no surprise that when Nick showed up in the remaining hours of Dad’s life with a red Georgia Bulldogs hat, Dad found strength for an appreciative smile.

Imagine our bittersweet sadness when the call came at 4 a.m. that Dad had passed. We felt the grief of the loss and the joy of the release of all pain and suffering from this earthly realm into the Heaven he preached about all his life. Now. Imagine us walking into that Hospice room to spend time prior to the funeral home coming for the body.

Take all the time you need, the hospice nurse offered.

Imagine us opening that wide door one last time and looking at the bed, only to see a bright yellow blanket embroidered with Psalm 119:76 in black stitching on one corner covering Dad’s body – the sunshine of Heaven. And imagine a face at total peace, no wires or tubes protruding, no oxygen machine droning, the red hat still on his head against the stark white of the pillow.

My brother and I agreed – – he wears the hat to Heaven. We know it will be the perfect complement to his black doctoral robe with the velvet on the sleeves and the red piping. Above all, we know it will bring smiles to those who will come for visitation to see that Dad, ever the champion of going as far as one can go with education and cheering as strong as one can cheer for the Georgia Bulldogs, can still cause a stirring of hearts.

Imagine the grief

Imagine the laughter

Imagine the joy

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Horror Farm

out by the tree line

of Loblolly pines

fifty feet from our

front door

where the Great

Horned Owl pair

chats across the

pine branches

at 5 a.m.

Ollie and Fitz

stopped in their tracks

to smell the rotting leaves.

They looked like charcoal,

only fuzzy. More like a

squirrel tail torn to shreds.

Or a rabbit.

I had just told my children

about rabbit, rabbit earlier

on the first day of June.

Was this a harbinger of

death for this poor

creature gone except

for its fur?

This farm holds mysteries

that will never yield answers.

It’s been the Johnson

Funny Farm since 1971

when three farmhands

saw a trio of cross-eyed pigs

but it’s not all funny here.

Sometimes there is

a twinge of horror against

all the laughter and tears.

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Huitain Graham Cracker Purity – Slice of Life Challenge Day 11, The Stafford Challenge Day 55

Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers for inspiring writers.

Our three schnoodles aren’t spoiled, but they do expect a hand-fed breakfast every morning, so my husband gives them bites of graham crackers or Teddy Grahams. As they were sitting by the fire on Sunday morning having their royal feast, I wondered about the origins of graham crackers. I was thinking that perhaps since the Huitain is a French form of poetry and poodles are a German breed but are the national dog of France, then maybe if the crackers were of French origin, I could work all of that into a poem and serve it up like a fresh-baked croissant, all buttery and warm.

It was not to be.

I learned more about graham crackers than I should know.

Boo Radley and Ollie eating graham crackers

The crackers do not have French origins, and they were not invented to feed little dogs a healthy breakfast snack. They were invented by a preacher, Reverend Graham, who baked them to dissuade physical affection. I got quite an eye-opening education about these seemingly innocent little wafers. Who knew? 

Huitain Graham Cracker Purity

three schnoodles when hungry like graham squares
breakfast with Dad inspired Mom to inquire
to see where they started, these squares and bears
***
oh my! a sermon: brimstone and hellfire! 
to repress our deepest carnal desire
crackers were baked to dissuade our urges
to keep us out of the funeral pyre
***
stay dressed! eat crackers! say NO to merges!
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Character Motivation – Stafford Challenge Day 5

Photo by Jeswin Thomas on Pexels.com

Anna Roseboro of Michigan is our host at http://www.ethicalela.com for Day 2 of the January Open Write, where educators gather to write poetry and share thoughts. Today’s prompt has us thinking about the motivation of a book character – what drives them to action. 
I thought of the book I’m reading, An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor, and decided on two limericks today, showing the relationship between the old doctor O’Reilly and young doctor Laverty. (I changed the last line of the first limerick about twelve times…..you can guess the obvious struggle with that last word, but I kept it clean since it’s Sunday – my own motivation and reason).

The Young and The Old

There was a young doctor from Belfast
whose countryside practice in green grass
was learning the ropes
in this village of folks
from an old mentor doctor with wise sass 

When Laverty finds Doc O’Reilly
he bites his tongue, sees raw truths wryly
patient respect is a must
as country doctors earn trust
before they’re regarded so highly

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Scrabble Tile Name Word Poems – Stafford Challenge Day 4

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Take a prompt from Anna Roseboro at Ethical ELA (go over there and read it – it’s amazing) and spin it with Scrabble tiles using the letters in a book character’s name, add a current event, and show the perspective that the character would have on the real event today, and this is something like what you might get:

DR. BARRY LAVERTY Laments Chancellor Departing NUI

Dr. Barry Laverty
of Ballybucklebo
would find it quite
A TEARY DAY
to see that chancellor go

He himself from Belfast,
a young BRAVE new M.D.,
found a job
in lush, green hills
in Irish country, see?

As Dr. Manning
hangs his gown
this YEAR at NUI
his more than DREARY
stepping down
grieves those lamenting
his good-bye

My poem is based on the character Dr. Barry Laverty from An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor, my current read, and the news out of Ireland about the current chancellor, Dr. Maurice Manning, stepping down from the National University of Ireland (NUI), hanging his ceremonial gown for the last time. 

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Frozen Toad – Stafford Challenge Day 3

It was 13 degrees when I woke up to take the dogs out at 5:15 a.m. For three years now, I have risen well ahead of time to leave for work, just so I can get my daily writing done. My goal time is 6:00 A.I.S* in the living room chair where my lap desk, lamp, and computer are arranged. 

I was trying to talk myself out of a shower in this insane cold, but I knew I needed what my husband calls “climatizing” – – water that regulates the body to the normal temperature before heading out into the world to see what the day brings.

Normally, all three dogs get a treat and head back to bed while we get ready, but somehow two of them got shut out of the bedroom and remained in the living room while I took my shower. I heard whining at the door, and when I opened it to go into the living room, Fitz and Ollie made a beeline for the bed to join their brother Boo, who was buried under the covers, snoozing.

That was when I saw it.

Aha! I thought. Making a mess by the couch, I see. No wonder they hung back in the living room.

Not one of our boys wanted to go to the edge of the woods in this cold as they usually do for this kind of business. They’d all three peed and come straight back inside. But not one of them did the other emptying.

I grabbed a paper towel to clean it up, but when I got there, it wasn’t what I thought it was.

This dog mess was a frozen toad. 

I picked it up to toss it back out the door and wondered whether it may still be alive. On closer inspection when I flipped it onto its back in my hand, I saw the poor creature struggling to breathe. 

My Grandmother Jones would be rolling over in her grave, but I clasped the frigid little thing between my palms to warm it and soon felt a stirring. A muscle stretch. A pulse of life. 

But how? I wondered. How had this frozen toad gotten into our house?

I’d brought the plants inside at lunchtime the previous day, ahead of the cold. Perhaps it could have come in that way, but it was far too cold to have slept in the heat of the house. I concluded that it must have been waiting by the door and jumped in when I’d taken the dogs outside. 

As I put my socks on, though, it hit me – – the toad had been quite frozen, too stiff to move. There was no way it could have hopped twelve feet from the door to the corner of the couch. 

What had happened?

After piecing the possibilities together, my husband and I believe that our toad-loving Fitz brought this little buddy inside and hopped up into his favorite living room resting place on the back of the couch with it, guarding it. That must be why he and Ollie hadn’t come back to bed – they’d been toad watching.

We slowly thawed it out, and I took it to work with me – and to the local coffee shop for a meeting – in a little plastic box with the lid half-cocked and taped shut. At lunchtime, I brought it back and released it right here on the farm so that it could return to its family. Not many Pike County toads can say they were brought back from death and taken out for a morning of work and coffee.

But Lazarus can (thanks to Glenda Funk for suggesting the name).

Back-Again Amphibian Tanka

In the house, a toad

Somehow, in from dark night’s cold

Lazarus, jump forth!

Resurrected Frozen Toad

Back-Again Amphibian

A.I.S., as defined on an episode of the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, means ass in seat.

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Melatonin Dreams – Stafford Challenge Day 2

Photo by Vladimir Gladkov on Pexels.com

melatonin dreams

sweet sleep or nightmares?

milligrams matter

It’s always a coin toss. Do I want to get some sleep even with disturbing dreams, or do I want to wake up at 2 a.m. and try to suffer through the day?

I chose the sleep with dreams last night. Ten milligrams brings nightmares, but a five milligram dream is not all that terrible – usually.

In my 5 mg dream, I had been on a cruise ship with my husband’s side of the family, and we’d just returned home when some of us fell ill. And by family, I mean all of the Thursday night dinner crowd: Briar, his dad, his brother and sister-in-law, his son, and me. When two of them tested positive for the flu, some guys in white coats showed up at our door and put us in a van and took us to a medical testing lab to see if we had it, too.

We did. 

They took us into a hall, where everyone was lying on the floor waiting on a bed. All the cruise baggage was still there, and each person was lying next to the luggage they brought. I took a picture of this, because I wanted proof they were making us get on the floor.

One by one, each person was taken down the hall when a bed became available.

I pointed to the copy machine I’d brought. Our office really did get a new one recently, and we’d all had to attend the 15-minute training on how the new one works and what not to do to break it. So it seemed logical that I’d taken the new copy machine on the cruise and now had it with me, rolling it around everywhere, even here in the medical facility.

The doctor came to tell me I’d tested positive and that I was being admitted to the hospital, and he had a little laptop that had my entire history on it. ”Well, if I’d seen that you’d taken pain pills when you had your children, I’d have never prescribed them for you. You’re probably only here for the prescription pain meds,” he accused.

This sent me into a fiery rage, and I unleashed on him. I screamed and caused a scene, right next to my copy machine I was pulling around.

“You %@$&@%^,” I yelled, pointing my finger an inch from his nose, making sure everyone in the building could hear me. “Yeah, you in your professional lab coat. I am not here by choice. Your people came and got me and accused me of being sick, and now you’re falsifying documents to say that I am and you’re forcing me into the hospital against my will when I have to go to work tomorrow. I am NOT taking your medicine.” 

I find myself so satisfyingly bold in dreams, yet never enough like this in real life. 

With that, he motioned to a nurse to come start an IV on me, and I started kicking and flailing my arms. 

“What exactly do you do?” he asked.

“I make sure people can read so they have sense. Something you skipped in school. You have no sense. You did not ever get the help you need, and all these people in this facility think you’re a real doctor, but you’re not. You’re here to try to trick us, and you’re sending us to another planet.” 

Everyone was staring at me, dumbfounded, and my family was all in a deep sleep, too deep to care. They’d already gotten their IV medicine and were being taken away, one by one.

I moved over behind my copy machine, but suddenly it sprang a handle and wheels and started looking more like a wagon, and one of the male nurses pulled it off to the side where I couldn’t get behind it. I was scared my school was going to charge me for it, and I threatened to sue the nurse for damaging this high dollar equipment.

The nurse didn’t care. No one cared.

They put me on a bed and wheeled me to a chamber.

They made us all get into hyperbaric pods so they could monitor us to be sure we were sleeping the fevers off. The chambers slept 4, with beds all around the edges of a capsule shape. Two kids’ beds were at both short ends, and regular twins were on the edges. You had to step up into the chamber on a little step that dropped down, and it looked a lot like a cross between an Airstream camper and a silver space ship. There were even lights on the thing.

They tried to put me in one with an old lady and a young child, and I saw them asleep and started screaming to wake them up. I screamed in the child’s ear, directly in the ear, thinking the child would cry, but she didn’t. 

The door sealed shut like on an airplane, and an engine started revving, and I was beside myself with fear, knowing I was headed to Mars and that no one on this ship knew how to fly it. 

I woke up in a sweat at 5 a.m., more ready than ever to go to work.

I didn’t have a copy machine to lug back to the office, and I was not headed to Mars.

I’m cutting back to 2.5 milligrams of Melatonin tonight. I’ll cut the gummy in half and see if I can get to a more manageable and more normal nightmare.