I Am This Woman

Following suit from Planet Pooks, a drabble is an extremely short work of fiction, exactly 100 words in length. Here goes.

Dale rode his Harley back to the muffler shop to see if there was beer left in the fridge where they kept leftover take-out pizza, raw meat for the dog, brake fluid and more beer.

“Dale! Git that pitbull back to the back because if the constable sees us with any, there’ll be hellfire to pay!” the ancient woman grizzled, jamming her Tiparillo between toothless gums.

“Grandma, I thought you was gonna quit smoking once you got paroled!”

“When reindeers fly, I’ll give it up.”

Dale popped a top to toast her early release, saying, “Hallelujah, Christmas is almost here!”

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Thanks, Holidailies for the “Best of” tag. I raise my can of Pearl to you!

Thanks, Jette, Chip and esteemed panel. This entry is a Holidailies “Best of…”

In other blogs, at other times, I have always promised to write about Threadgill’s, and tonight’s the night.

Way way back in the 70s, when both my middle brother (four years older than me) and I lived at home, we became completely disenchanted grown-ups (20somethings), and decided to Go Out on Christmas Eve. The parental units were insisting on watching TV that night, instead of the usual candles and music, and besides, we pretty much knew the clockwork precision of how the evening (and the drinking) would go.

No, we were Big Kids now (albeit still living at home) and one of us could drive, so by god, we were Going Out. My brother and I never agreed on very much as kids or adults, but we did agree on one very important thing. If Threadgill’s is just a waystation on the road to Heaven, we are not going any farther because everything we could ever want from the Afterlife is on the menu at this Austin restaurant. (more…)

Thanks, Jette, Chip and esteemed panel. This entry is a Holidailies “Best of…”

I miss my dad. I miss him more than I miss my mom. I’m not sure why. It’s not because I favored one over the other. I’m sure I do but it might be more about that gender identification thing. I *am* my mother in many ways, some really cringingly bad ways. I see her looking at me in the mirror, so she is with me most of the time. I do miss our phone calls the most.

But my dad - it’s very odd. What I miss about him is not so much his personality, the memories, the jokes… what I miss is the very oldness of him. He lived long enough to begin having dementia. It’s understandable, and it alters my feelings and memories of him NOT ONE WHIT. It added something to him, I think. He often had that Old Man Mona Lisa smile. I saw that face on a tv show tonight - some movie with a very very old man dancing with his daughter in the nursing home he lived in.

I recognized the look. The relaxed lips caught in a pleasant line, the uncomplicated brow, the slightly glassy but sweet eyes that sometimes look at you in polite vacancy through the ever-thickening lenses, rather than having that inner light of recognition. I could watch my dad go in and out of recognition of his surroundings. Sometimes he was there, in his tv room, watching the news; and sometimes, he was sitting in some generic house waiting for a ride home. (more…)

I did it. Hold on, ‘cos I’m coming back with a story to tell.