Fiction Friday: A Story To Tell Chapter Five

On May 31, 2019October 3, 2019 By Lisa R. HowelerIn fiction, Fiction Friday6 Comments

Welcome to Fiction Friday, where I share a piece of fiction I’m working on. Right now I’m in the middle of sharing a story I’m developing into a novel.
IF you haven’t been following along, or need to remind yourself of the previous parts of the story, I’ve provided links to the other parts below:

Don’t want to click from chapter to chapter? Find the book in full on Kindle HERE.

Lisa R. Howeler

I loved the smell of books. I loved the feel of them in my hands. My favorite place to be, if I wasn’t in my room reading, was in the library, curled up against a bookcase in the fiction section. I fell into new and mysterious worlds when I was reading. My boring life faded away into someone else’s adventure. I spent so many days wishing the boring away.

Edith didn’t like to read. She found her excitement in the real world. We were the complete opposite for so many years. She liked her dark hair to be curled and each curl to be in its place. She liked her clothes to be the latest in fashion and to hug her curves, but not too close, so there was at least a little left to the imagination of the boys who watched her when she walked by.

She was confident and frequently had a smart or a flirty remark on the tip of her tongue.

I was the quiet, sometimes painfully shy younger sister she and her friends didn’t know how to talk to. I give Edith credit, though – she tried her best to pull me forward in life, encouraging, or rather nagging, me to experience more than a simple story in a book.

“Daddy, can Blanche and I go to the matinee while you finish your paperwork at the office?” Edith looked at Daddy and batted her eyes, chin on her folded hands.

Daddy didn’t always fall for Edith’s little eye flutters but on this particular day he must have decided she looked a lot like the little girl he used to bounce on his knee because he agreed.

“I’ll drop you off at 2 and you’d better be out front when the movie ends,” Daddy said.

Edith and I agreed.

“And what’s playing anyhow?” He asked.

“‘The Harder They Fall,’ with Humphrey Bogart,” Edith told him.

Daddy was a big fan of Humphrey Bogart. Edith knew he’d have a hard time saying ‘no’ to letting us see Boggie.

“I like that Humphrey Bogart,” Daddy said from behind his newspaper. “He’s a man’s man.”

And he was a man’s man that day on the big screen too. I couldn’t take my eyes off him but Edith’s eyes were on Jimmy Sickler a row over from us, sitting with Annie Welles. I couldn’t read the expression on Edith’s face. It seemed to switch back and forth between angry and hurt.

“I loved it. What did you think?” I asked Edith at the end as we filed to the front of the theater to wait for Daddy.

Edith shrugged.

“It was okay, I guess.”

I knew she’d missed half of it watching Jimmy and Annie.

“Hey, Edith.”

Jimmy’s voice made my sister look up sharply and I saw fire in her eyes. I only liked drama in my books and wished I wasn’t standing between them. Edith’s gaze trailed to Annie standing next to Jimmy, patting her hair into place. Her tense expression quickly softened and she smiled.

“Well, hello, James,” she said sweetly. “Did you two enjoy the movie?”

“We did,” Jimmy said. “Thanks for asking. You’re looking nice this afternoon.”

He turned his attention to me. “Hey there, Blanche. Some sister time, huh?”

His smile was sweet. I always thought Jimmy was one of the most polite boys Edith went out with. His brown hair was always combed neatly to one side and his bright blue eyes were captivating.

I nodded and smiled.

“Did you like the movie?”

“I did. I like Humphrey Bogart a lot.”

I knew I had no idea how to talk to boys and looked at the sidewalk to avoid Jimmy’s gaze, hoping he wouldn’t ask me anymore questions.

I could see Daddy’s Oldsmobile coming down the street toward the theater.

“You two have a good day,” Edith winked at Jimmy and her voice was even sweeter than before, almost too sweet, like sugar on top of a sugar cookie.

She leaned close to Jimmy, hand on his shoulder, mouth close enough to his ear to graze his skin and whispered. I could see Annie’s face just beyond Jimmy’s left shoulder. Her dark red lipstick made her pursed lips look like a cherry on its’ stem and her eyelids were half closed in a furious glare.

I cringed inwardly at Edith’s embarrassing display.

Jimmy’s cheeks and ears flushed pink and he looked as embarrassed as I felt. Edith’s hand slid down his bare arm as she backed away and then a slight smirk tilted her lips as she glanced at the stewing Annie.

Jimmy reached his arm back to pull Annie close to him, his jaw tight.

“Good to see you ladies,” he said curtly as he stepped past us.

Edith’s smile had faded into a scowl and by the time we slid into the backseat of the car the scowl was fading into obvious hurt.

“Good movie?” Daddy asked.

“Oh yes! You’ll love it,” I told him. “You should take Mama next weekend.”

Daddy and I chatted about the movie while Edith sulked, one leg crossed over the other, her foot bouncing and her arms folded across her chest. She snapped the door open and slammed it closed when we pulled up to the house, stomping up the front steps.

Daddy raised his eyebrows and looked at me questioningly.

I shrugged.

“Boy troubles,” I said.

Daddy shook his head. His eyebrows furrowed slightly into a scowl

“That girl and those boys.”

Now it was his turn to look sour as he climbed out of the car.

“I don’t know why I even go out with the boys around here,” Edith said when I walked into our room. She tossed her sweater on her bed. “They don’t really like me. They don’t really want to know me or what I think or what I feel.”

She flopped back on the bed, laying on her back and starring at the ceiling.

“What do you mean? All the boys love you,” I said, confused.

“They don’t love me. They love what I give them,” Edith said.

I saw tears in her eyes.

A chill cut through me.

“What do you mean what you give them?” I asked nervously.

Edith blew her nose into her handkerchief and folded her knees up against her chest.

“Edith…you aren’t giving those boys – I mean, you’re not really…” I felt sick to my stomach.

Edith had her head on her knees and wouldn’t look at me.

“Not everything,” she mumbled. “Just enough to keep them coming for more.”

I sat on my bed and didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure what “just enough” was and didn’t even want to know what “more” was. Mama said I didn’t need to know what men and women did when they were alone, besides kissing, but I’d heard a lot what “it” was at school, in books, and from Emmy, who had an older brother.

“Why do you need them to like you so much?” I asked softly.

Edith shrugged. “I don’t need them to like me, but I like them to,” she said. “It’s nice to be adored and paid attention to, you know?”

“Mama and Daddy love you and – “

Edith snorted. “Please. Daddy likes you more than me. You’re smarter and do better in school and he knows you’ll do something with your life. I’ll just be a hairdresser.”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s not true. You can be whatever you want to be. Times are different than when Mama was a girl,” I said. “Besides, Mama thinks I’ll just stay home and be a housewife. She doesn’t think I can be anything else.”

Edith wiped the tears off her cheeks with the back of her hand.

“You’re going to be more than a housewife. Don’t you let them tell you what you can be,” she said. “I’m just not good enough to be anything other than someone who cuts hair and files nails and I know that. And by the way, getting attention from your parents is way different than getting it from a cute boy. Someday you’ll understand that.”

I laid on my side on my bed and leaned on my arm.

“Are you and Jimmy even going steady?” I asked.

Edith laid there in silence for a few moments and sighed.

“I don’t know. We’ve never discussed it. But – I guess I thought we were. I guess I didn’t realize how much I liked him until I saw him with that silly Annie Welles. I just thought – I guess I thought if I reminded him what I could give him that Little Miss Prude won’t he’d want to forget about her.”

Edith wiped her hand across her face.

I flopped back on my bed on my back.

We both laid there for a few moments in silence.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a hairdresser,” I said finally. “They make women look pretty and they get to gossip all day.”

Edith laughed softly, sat up, and drew her hands down over her hair to straighten it.

“Well, those are two things I enjoy so maybe it won’t be so bad,” she said and smiled.

I sat up to look at her.

“Maybe Jimmy’s different than the other boys, Edith. Maybe he doesn’t only want one thing.”

Edith rolled her eyes and slid the record player from under her bed.

“All boys want that one thing from girls. Another lesson you’ll learn as you get older.”

She paused as she lifted a box of chocolates off her nightstand.

“Blanche? You know you don’t have to give it to them right?”

“Give them what?” I asked feigning innocence.

“You know what, Blanche. Don’t play games with me. You’ve got more going for you than I do. You don’t have to – well, you know – there’s a lot more reasons for a boy to like you.”

I touched her hand and she looked at me.

“There are a lot more reasons for a boy to like you too, Edith,” I said.

She looked away from me, and smiled a little as she shook her head.

“You’re too nice, Blanche.”

She placed a Frank Sinatra record on the turn table and we ate chocolate and spent the rest of the afternoon talking about boys we thought were cute and the newest fashions she’d read about at her beauty classes.

It took her mind off Jimmy Sickler and Annie Welles and my mind off my sister basing her worth off what a man thought of her.

“I’ll never be like her,” I told myself, not knowing then that we often become who we don’t want to be.

A new beginning for a small Northeastern Pennsylvania farm

On May 30, 2019May 31, 2019 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, farmers, The Farm Project13 Comments

” Don’t worry,” the 14-year-old told me as he climbed in the driver seat of the doorless Ranger all-terrain vehicle. “I’m a better driver than my mom.”

He grinned.

I knew he was talking about the bumpy, high-speed trip his mom had taken my husband on about a week before when the family’s cows escaped the pasture while my husband was there to do a story for the local weekly newspaper. His mom, Eileen Warburton, assured my husband that the escape wasn’t his fault, but rather the fault of an exuberant family dog who had startled the cows .

She didn’t normally drive so fast, she told me, but it was important to get ahead of the cows to try to herd them back into the fenced-in pasture. I couldn’t help wishing I had been there to see my semi-city slicker husband holding on to the grab handle of the Ranger for dear life, a look of sheer terror in his eyes as they careened over the dirt roads and muddy cow pasture.

I know, I have a warped, slightly sadistic sense of humor.

More than once since visiting farms in our area I have been amazed by the knowledge, politeness, and efficiency shown by children who grow up on a farm. They are well spoken, mature and handle themselves better than many adults. They engage visitors to their farm with wisdom and a sense of professionalism that most businesses don’t even possess. Children who grow up on a farm are eager to tell you how the farm works, what the livestock eat, how they herd the cows, milk to the cows, feed the cows or pigs or any other variety of aspects of a working farm.

They are also almost always confident and not in the least bit intimidated to talk to adults. I’d have to say that most of the credit for the demeanor of a child or children who grow up on a farm goes to their parents and grandparents or whomever else they work with, and live with, on the farm. They are taught, first of all, hard work and with that hard work often comes a love for God, family, country, the land, and their livestock. For families who farm, especially on a small family farm, farming isn’t only a source of income, it’s an entire lifestyle.

“Is that mud on her side?” Eileen asked when the 14-year old, Blaine, walked their prize Jersey cow Cardinal out of the barn that day. “I guess we’ll have to wash her again.”

I don’t live a very exciting life so the idea of watching a cow being washed was exciting. I trailed along behind the boy and the cow somewhat like a giddy child who has been promised a trip to the playground. I’ve visited a few farms in the last couple of years while taking photos for a personal photo project focusing on the joys and trials of family farming. I’ve apparently grown accustomed to the smells of barns because I barely noticed when Cardinal decided to deposit a large amount of fresh manure while patiently waiting for Blaine to finish brushing and spraying her down. I am either accustomed to the smell or my clogged sinuses, courtesy of spring allergies blocked it from me.

Off to one side of where the cleaning was happening, and behind the main barn, was a pile of stone and the future site of the family’s bottling facility for a future-planned business in processing A2 milk. According to the A2 Milk Company, all milk contains two different kinds of proteins – A1 and A2. A2 milk comes from cows who only produce the A2 protein.

Some dairy farmers say A2 milk is more easily digested by people who otherwise have difficulty digesting milk with both proteins. Those with lactose intolerance may be able to digest the A2 milk easier, but because their intolerance is to the sugar (lactose) in the milk, they would still need to consume the A2 milk with caution and maybe special enzymes, Eileen told me. Most people with lactose intolerance are able to drink lactose-free milk, such as the brand name Lactaid milk.

A quick search online will show you there is a quite a bit of controversy about the benefits of A2 milk for those who otherwise have difficulty digesting milk. Consumers seemed thrilled with the prospect of having access to milk that is potentially easier to digest, but there are those in the dairy industry who are skeptical that there is any superior benefit of A2 milk. Some a market to promote it as a threat to the overall dairy industry.

“It’s just a theory at this point in time,” Greg Miller, National Dairy Council Chief Science Officer recently told CBS news. “There is no science that really says that there is any value in a2 protein milk relative to conventional milk. The two studies that were done were with a small number of subjects with different variables that don’t give us the answers we need to tell whether this is really true or not.”

For the Warburton family, scientific research wasn’t necessary. Anecdotal evidence was enough for them. Eileen’s 4-year-old son Marshal has been unable to digest milk or soy since birth, which presented a unique challenge for a child living on a dairy farm. When Eileen read about A2 milk being used in New Zealand she decided to explore the benefits of it further. She tried to order some of the milk for Marshal but the fees to ship it overseas was astronomical. That’s when she began to wonder if any of their own Jersey cows could be producers of A2 milk.

DSC_8067_1

She pulled hair from the tails of the cows, sent it to be tested and was told that out 10 of the 14 cows tested were A2 milk only producers. The proof would be in the chocolate milk, so to speak, something Marshal had always wanted to be able to consume like his older brother. When Marshal didn’t react to the special treat made with the A2 milk from Cardinal Eileen knew they were on to something. Her family began exploring options of bringing the milk to the area to benefit those with similar digestion issues as Marshal.

I was standing in the Warburton’s cow pasture on a warm May day to photograph the boys with their first A2 cow, Cardinal. Photographing Cardinal alone was also on the agenda. Like I’ve said before, it doesn’t take much to excite me so when we headed to the upper pasture with the boys and a wooden bench I was giddy once again but this time to see all the cows gathering around us like five-ton, manure covered and smelly, curious children.

Big brown eyes looked at us and broad noses sniffed and nuzzled to see if we’d brought any hay or grain. Once Blaine sat on the bench the ladies gathered around him in a semi-circle to see what their boy was doing.

DSC_8097_1

Standing on the hill, overlooking the rest of Forks and Overton Township and the Warburton’s farm, I thought about how blessed my family is to live in an area where children are taught from a very early age about hard work and respect for the land, animals, and nature. We are blessed to have people living around us who have personal knowledge of, and a part in, where our food comes from.

I’ve learned in the last couple of years that working and living on a small family farm is not easy, but it is worth it in ways that have nothing to do with money.

DSC_7914-2

To learn more about A2 milk, visit A2 Milk Company’s site HERE or check out the story below that CBS Morning featured in 2017. The Rocket-Courier also published a story about the farm on their site today and that story can be found via their website HERE.

To read more of the posts I’ve featured about farming or farms in our area, click on the following links:

Tell Me More About . . . Mark Bradley, dairy farmer

The Heartache is Real as Family Farms Start to Fade Away

The Farm

The State of Dairy Farming in Pennsylvania

Tell Me More About . . . Engelbert Farms, Nichols, N.Y.

When you finally stop waiting for the calls to come

On May 28, 2019May 29, 2019 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings16 Comments

I used to check my phone often. Maybe a friend would call or message or send an email even. But, no, the messages never came. I sent emails and texts and sometimes I even called but rarely did the calls get returned or a message sent unless I sent one.

Just recently I stopped looking at my phone. I realized I wasn’t going to be called any time soon. I wasn’t going to be emailed either. I wasn’t going to be asked how I was doing. I wasn’t going to be invited to a concert or an event or asked if I wanted to grab lunch together. I finally gave up and bought lunch for myself and ate it alone.

One reason I deleted my personal Facebook account was so I would stop looking at the blank messenger box and feeling depressed. I was starting to feel very pathetic as I looked at it expectingly, every day, only to be disappointed that either a person hadn’t responded to my last message six months ago or not one so-called “friend” had messaged to see how I was.

I should add that since deleting Facebook not one of the people on that oh-so-special “friends list” has asked me where I am or if I am okay. Not one. I read an article one time about a man who deleted his personal Facebook account and all his friends thought he’d died and called to check on him. Apparently, all my friends already thought I was dead and didn’t even bother to check.

It’s weird to get myself out of the habit of checking email or messenger, hoping someone cares enough to ask if I’m alive, but once you finally decide you don’t care anymore it makes it easier. It’s not that I don’t care I don’t have any friends left but I guess if I am meant to have friends again, God will provide them at the right time. For now, I am trying to start my day with a devotional and spend my days not expecting any contact from people who used to say I was important to them.

It makes my existence a little sad but also a little more free of drama and I would say that’s a good thing.

Newspapers: the job that chews you up and spits you out; or trying to remember the good in the midst of a lot of bad

On May 25, 2019May 25, 2019 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings5 Comments

I wouldn’t exactly say my parents encouraged me to go into journalism, but when I decided that would be my major in college, they didn’t fight it – too much anyhow.

“It’s a pretty tough job, you know,” my dad said.

And he was right. Fourteen years later I can definitely understand how some who have left the field can say that newspapers chew you up and spit you out and never look back. It is indeed true in many cases, including mine.

Both of my parents reminded me journalism probably wouldn’t be a lucrative career unless I went to a big publication somewhere, which they knew was unlikely since I was a mama’s girl who hated being far away from home so much I picked a college about an hour and a half from where I grew up.

These warnings came 20 years ago. I can’t imagine what the warnings would have been had I announced I was going into journalism in 2019.

“You know you will have to pick a side – conservative or liberal – and only cover the news from that angle, right?” my dad would have said.

“Run as far away from journalism as you can, okay honey?” My mom would have implored.

Even by the end of my college career, a degree in hand, it was clear my being in journalism might be a challenge for my family when Dad commented that the BS initials for “BS in Mass Communications with an Emphasis in Journalism”, which was what final degree was in, was fitting for more than the words “Bachelor of Science” when it came to the term “journalism.”

By the time I’d graduated, I already had a full-time job at the smalltown newspaper near where I’d grown up. My last semester of college I commuted, taking classes mainly in the morning and then going into work at the paper, working until midnight some nights, then getting back up the next morning, driving the 90 minutes to school (60 minutes if I really gunned it … um…which I didn’t because I’m a good, law-abiding citizen. The previous sentence was added for Mom), and starting it all over again. I survived on fast food and coca-cola and chocolate from the vending machine in the basement of the paper, near the pressroom. I also survived on very little sleep. It’s no wonder my thyroid died years later and I started to pack on weight on like a pregnant manatee.

How I ended up working at three newspapers in our small county of about 60,000, in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania throughout my journalism career is a long story. I met my husband at one of the papers. Shortly after we married we cut ties with the first paper I had worked at. That story is a bit long but I’ll summarize it with this: boss with a lazy eye yelling at me (or the wall, I’m not sure which) that my husband and I had neglected our “professional responsibilities” by driving one day down to my grandmother’s funeral 600 miles away in North Carolina, staying one day, driving one day back and getting stranded in a snowstorm in a suburb of Philly, therefore delaying our return by one day.

“You had the responsibility to be here when you said you would be here. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, I do,” I told him.

I understood he was a horrible man yelling at a person who had just buried her grandmother. I walked out of his office to the front desk, picked up the phone to call my husband at the satellite office he worked at for the paper and told him “I’m quitting.”

“I am too,” he said.

A couple of weeks later the editor who had tortured us with constant yelling and berating received two two-week notice letters on his desk. I started job searching and my husband started working at the competition, which was actually the first paper he had worked at but was now under a different editor than he had worked for before.

I finished my career at the same regional paper my husband ended his career at about a month ago, though I walked away almost seven years before him.

In many cases when you leave a newspaper your co-workers don’t celebrate. They don’t feel sad either. You aren’t given a cake or a party. Sometimes you get a card and they wish you luck, but honestly, after so many years working with the public, there is little left inside a person to feel true emotions, even when a long time coworker finally escapes.

My husband worked at the paper 16 years, and a few years beyond if you count the years he worked there right after high school. On his last day, he received a card on his desk, signed by his co-workers. No cake, or well wishes.

He did, however, receive a kind farewell, complete with gifts and cake and streamers, from the coworkers at his part-time switchboard job at the local hospital, where he had worked off and on for seven years.

What was not surprising about his departure was the snide comments written on the newspaper’s Facebook page about him when he departed because one thing I’ve learned working at smalltown newspapers is there is no shortage of people who want to tell you that you suck.

I have less than fond memories of working at newspapers, mixed in with a few positive ones. I remember once, as a new reporter, after misidentifying someone in a story, apologizing to the person I had misidentified and being told my apology wasn’t accepted and that I didn’t, I quote, “deserve to breathe anymore.” I remember writing a lifestyle column and having someone scribble their dislike of it all over the newspaper with a black marker, which they had folded over to make sure my column was on top and shoved in the front mail slot with the words “No one cares about your stupid teddy bear or your stupid kid.” To make sure I saw it my “kind” co-workers propped it up on my computer so it would be at face level when I sat down. I tried to pretend I didn’t care, but I went home later that day and cried and wished I had listened to the career test I’d taken in high school which listed journalism as the top job I should never take.

These were the same co-workers that didn’t know I had come in early and was sitting at my desk on the other side of the partition when they called me a liar for calling in sick for morning sickness when I was pregnant with my first child. I almost went over to their desk and puked on them to show them how real the sickness was. I didn’t have morning sickness when pregnant. I had “all day sickness.” I still wish I had puked on them in some ways, though the relationship with them did improve somewhat in the future.

Not long after the note was left on my desk about the column, the publisher called me into his office and told me to stop writing about my kid because no one cared. I stopped writing the column altogether and tried not to look anyone in the community in the eye because I didn’t know who was sitting at home with too much time on their hands, hating me for writing what I thought were funny stories about my kid and his and my childhood. I honestly thought they might like a break from the dismal news that usually appeared in the paper. Apparently, not.

I was walking in Walmart one day with my son in the cart and a woman stopped me and said: “Oh, is this the little boy you write about in the paper?”

I thought she might be mocking me so I was afraid to admit it, but when I did she said, “I just loved your column. It always made me think about the good times I had with my children when they were growing up.”

She asked me why I wasn’t writing it anymore so I told her what my publisher had told me. She told me he was wrong. As the years went by I still had women stop me, most of them with adult children, and tell me how much they missed my column. I always told them ‘thank you’ but that I’d never write the column again. It had been made clear to me what I had to say was “stupid” and “unimportant.”

There is a long list of the cons of my years in newspapers – from being yelled at about mistakes in obits that I didn’t make (we copied them from the funeral homes), from being told more than once to go back where I came from (I had lived in the county my whole life so this one always puzzled me), to being threatened by a convicted murderer’s family (that all worked out, but it was scary at the time); to being told I deserved to die for a misquote; to spending nights crying myself to sleep after I’d had to write about a fatal car accident or a story about two county sheriff’s deputies murdered; that time I was cheated out of benefits by my boss because I had to cut my hours when our daycare provider got busted for not having a daycare license; those times I provided an idea, only to be pushed aside and then have a man come in with the same idea and hear the man congratulated for his amazing idea; and, of course, the many times I got yelled at for writing information provided to us by the police because the person arrested insisted they were innocent.

Throw into those cons that night a drunk guy threatened me because I accurately quoted him at a local school board meeting during the public comment section.

“If you…if you print what I say .. I’ll..I’ll….” he slurred into the phone.

“You’ll what?” I asked.

“I’ll..just …you better not print what I say,” he said.

Mixed into the negative were a few positives – nice people met, friendships formed, appreciation expressed for stories written, a husband met, skills learned (like the ability to compartmentalize emotions, shoving them inside until I could have a proper cry later in the darkness of the night before falling asleep.

I learned how to work fast, how to be semi-organized and you would think I would have grown a thicker skin, and in some ways I did, but in other ways, I simply decided people were better off to be avoided because eventually, they’d find a way to tell you that you suck.

Someone once asked me if I miss working at newspapers. I told them, “Sure. Yes. The same way I would miss a bullet in my brain.”

“Would you ever go back into newspapers full time?” someone might ask me one day.

My answer would be simple: “Not even if I was offered a million dollars.” Okay – maybe only IF I was offered a million dollars.

I hate to sound so negative about newspapers because my husband recently started a new job at a newspaper that I worked at (and have the least negative memories of) and there are aspects of small-town newspapers I wouldn’t mind participating in again – like maybe writing a lifestyle column, although that could bring me hate mail over any tails of teddy bears I might share again.

Newspapers were good to me over the years – gave me a job that was never the same from day to day; helped me learn a little bit about a lot of things; helped me hone my writing skills (yeah, I know – keep honing); led me to a husband and from that to two amazing children; and helped me meet some amazingly kind people.

But I still carry the teeth marks and I can’t imagine ever placing myself back in that lions’ den, especially now with so many lions ready to eat journalists alive.

‘A Story to Tell’ Chapter Four

On May 24, 2019October 3, 2019 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, fiction, Fiction Friday, short stories5 Comments

This is part of a continuing fiction story I’m working on.

You can find the other parts of the story at the following links:

Part I

Part II

Part III

Don’t want to click from chapter to chapter? Find the book in full on Kindle HERE.

We spent Sunday mornings in church and Sunday afternoons sitting on our front porch, taking naps or, if it was summer, swimming at the pond behind the church. On the last Sunday od month there was a church picnic and Mama, Edith and I made pies to take to it.

I sat next to my parents each Sunday, in a hard, wood pew, trying my best to pay attention to the pastor. Edith dressed her best to make sure all the boys had their attention on her instead of the sermon. Most Sundays it worked and I had seen many backs of heads slapped when mothers or girlfriends had followed the gazes from some distracted male to my sister adjusting her skirt or fanning her clevage with the bulletin.

The first pastor I remember hearing at the church spoke more of damnation than hope. I was sure Pastor Stanley must be 100 years old and sometimes I wondered if he would die from all the yelling he did. It wasn’t the yelling that took him, but he did finally pass away, ironically quietly and peacefully in his sleep, next to his saint of a wife.

“Your sins will lead to your dastardly end!” Pastor Stanley used to shout from the pulpit, sweat beads on his forehead, even in the winter. “The wages of sin are surely death! Death! Is that what you want for your future?! Repent or your soul will be damned to the fires of hell!”

Pastor Stanley may have died peacefully but he lived angrily.

I knew he was speaking the truth in many ways, but it was the way he spoke that made me feel like God was an angry God, watching and waiting for us to fail and fall on our faces so he could cast down punishments from the sky.

The next pastor who filled the pulpit had a different mindset about who God was.

“God is a forgiving God,” Pastor Frank told us one Sunday. “Is he happy when you sin? No. But is He ready to welcome you back into his loving arms when you ask for His forgiveness? Yes. There is nothing you can do that will ever separate you from the love of your God and His son, your savior Jesus Christ.”

Pastor Frank would make his way to the back of church once we were dismissed and do his best to shake the hand of every person in the congregation as they left, asking how they were and offering to help when he could. His wife was Lillian and she was beautiful. She had long black hair that hung straight down her back, almost to her rear, usually kept it in a tight braid. I marveled at the braid, wondering how she weaved it on her own or if maybe Pastor Frank braided it for her. Lillian’s skin that was the color of coffee with cream.

Some of the people in our community called her a not-nice word behind her back, but I never did. My mama wouldn’t allow that word in our house and even if she had I never would have used it. The word sounded dirty and Lillian wasn’t dirty. She had perfect, straight white teeth and bright blue eyes, set off by her darker complexion. Mama said Lillian was from somewhere called Jamaica, which I had only read about in books at school. Pastor Frank had met her there when he was a missionary. I didn’t care where she came from. I cared that when she spoke to me she cared about what I had to say.

“Blanche, you look so pretty today,” she told me one morning as I shook her hand after the service “Is that a new dress?”

I nodded. “Mama made it for me.”

“Well, she did a fine job,” she said.

I loved her accent, the way it sounded exotic, like the voice of someone who had experienced adventure.

“Thank you,” I told her.

“I can’t believe you’re going to graduate next year. I did get that right, didn’t I?”

I nodded again.

“It’s going to be such an exciting time for you!” she said and hugged me close.

I was glad she was excited, but I didn’t even know what my future was going to be. I felt more apprehensive than excited.

“Of course, you have plenty of time before then,” she said quickly. “This next year of school is going to be the best one yet – proms and graduation and memories to be made.”

I didn’t bother to tell her I probably wouldn’t go to prom. I wasn’t the type of girl boys asked to proms.

Out in the sunlight the food was already being set up on the tables by the ladies of the church.

“What’s that boy doing here? I’ve never seen him in church,” Stanley Mosier said as he looked across the field near the pond while we ate watermelon, sipped fruit punch and watched the children chase each other in the high grass.

I looked up, a piece of watermelon in my hand, and saw Hank standing under the weeping willow by the pond with an older woman’s arm hooked in his.

“He’s here with his mother,” John Hatch said, lighting a cigar. “His father kicked him out a few years ago, but she asked him to come with her today, I guess.”

John’s wife Barbara snatched the cigar from his mouth and shot him a disapproving glance.

She silently mouthed the words “not at church,” as she tossed the cigar to the ground and crushed it under her heel. John watched her with a bewildered expression.

Edith propped her elbow on the picnic table and her chin on her hand, lifting one eyebrow, like she always did when she was about to be mischevious.

“Why’d he get kicked out?” she asked John.

“Wrecked his dad’s car, for one,” John said. “He was drinking. He was about 16 at the time. After that he was always getting into trouble one way or another. Getting kicked out only seemed to make him worse, in some ways. He’s been working at the mill. Lives in an apartment over the Cranmer Funeral Home. Seems to show up at work at least – unless he’s been at a dance the night before. He travels with that band of his. Thinks he’s a regular Hank Williams or something.”

Edith looked at me as she said in a sickly, sweet tone, “Well, anyone is redeemable. Aren’t they, Mr. Hatch? Isn’t that what the pastor just preached on?”

John had his back to her, scowling slightly at Hank and his mother, thinking.

She fluttered her eyes at me and smiled. I glared at her.

John nodded and turned back to face us.

“Yes, you have a point there, Edith. Let’s hope he repents and makes a turn around,” he said.

“If he doesn’t we might have to have the sheriff dig his dead body out of the pond one day,” Stanley Mosier said, shaking his head as he reached for another piece of chicken. “A path of destruction like that only leads one place and it’s nowhere good.”

I grew up a Daddy’s girl in a lot of ways. I loved Mama but I was Daddy’s special girl. We both loved baseball and Abott and Costello and, of course, reading.

When I was real little he read me classic books before bed.

“Porthos: He thinks he can challenge the mighty Porthos with a sword… D’Artagnan: The mighty who? Porthos: Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of me,” he read one night, with me snuggled under the covers, eyes wide as I held on to every word of the Three Muskateers and waited to find out what would happen next. “D’Artagnan: The world’s biggest windbag? Porthos: Little pimple… meet me behind the Luxembourg at 1 o’clock and bring a long wooden box. D’Artagnan: Bring your own…. And – well, well, look at the time. You have school in the morning so we will have to finish this tomorrow night.”

“Daddy!” I cried. “You can’t leave me hanging like this!”

“It’s never a bad thing to have something to look forward to in life,” he’d tell me and lean over, kiss me on the forehead, and then stand with a grin on his face. “Sleep tight, Blanche and don’t let those bed bugs bite.”

“Bed bugs? We have bugs in our beds?”

He laughed, a big hearty laugh that came from somewhere deep and free inside him. Daddy was a big man, tall, his belly protruding over his belt, yet his face slimmer than other men who carried the same weight. He wore bifocals when he read, looking over them, down his nose if he looked at someone while reading.

“It’s just a figure of speech, little one,” he told me.

“What’s a figure of speech mean?” I asked.

“It’s something people say a lot – now stop stalling with all these questions and go to bed.”

Mama was a reader too but she read romances and mysteries, books Daddy teasingly called “trash literature.” Daddy read more “classic literature”, as he referred to his collection of Dumas, Dickens, Elliot and Tolstoy.

As a teen I started to miss those special times with Daddy.

When I started developing – as in breasts and all that goes along with physically growing up- I think Daddy just didn’t know how to talk to me anymore. I didn’t grow up top the way Edith did, but it was enough for Daddy to start looking at me differently. It was like he thought I was a different person inside because I looked different on the outside. I wasn’t different, though. I was still Blanche. I simply didn’t know how to tell him or show him I was.

Sometimes he’d still read to me while we sat together in the family room, after my homework was done, a passage here or there from Hemingway or Steinbeck, even though we both agreed Steinbeck wasn’t our favorite.

When Daddy started going to church more he read to me from A.W. Tozer. The living room was dimly lit by a lamp next to his chair as he read , a fire crackling in the fireplace. His pipe was lit and smoke curled up from it where it sat in the dish on the table by the lamp.

“The yearning to know what cannot be known, to comprehend the incomprehensible, to touch and taste the unapproachable, arises from the image of God in the nature of man. Deep calleth unto deep, and though polluted and landlocked by the mighty disaster theologians call the Fall, the soul senses its origin and longs to return to its source.”

Sometimes the passages Daddy read to me made me think too much and no matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t make sense of it. There were a deep thoughts in what he read but I was just too distracted by adventure and romances to focus on them.

Daddy was an accountant, working in a dingy office in the town 20-minutes from our house. Cramner & Robins Associates Inc. opened before I was born when he and Franklin Cranmer, a distant cousin of his, started the business. They opened the office soon after Daddy returned from a college two hours from home, a degree in one hand and Mama’s hand in the other.

For Daddy working with numbers came easy. Numbers were how he made a living but words were what made him feel alive. Some days he worked long hours and we didn’t see him until right before we went to sleep, but other days he came home around 5 and we all sat together for dinner. Mama said it was important for us to sit at the table and tell each other about our days.

“How was school today?” Daddy would ask Edith and I, because parents only seem able to ask their children about the child’s least favorite experience in life.

Edith usually shared about a person she had met, a new boy at school or a sweater she wanted to buy. I almost always shared about a book I was reading, a new author I’d discovered, or what I’d learned in history class.

“You’re too worried about those boys,” Daddy would say to Edith, looking concerned, the concern growing as the years went by.

“Oh, Alan, boys are something all girls talk about at this age,” Mama would say, smiling across the table at Daddy. “I was no different when I was Edith’s age. I know I chatte: about you to my parents after we met that day in class.”

Daddy blushed when Mama talked about how they met and Edith and I would smile across the table at his obvious discomfort.

“Well, I just – it’s just – I mean we need to meet some of these boys you are always talking about,” Dad stammered a little, looking at Mama as if to say “Don’t try to throw me off my game by flirting, Janie.”

After dinner Mama would go sit on the front porch and soon Daddy would follow. They sat together on the wooden swing, whispering and giggling like teenagers. Edith and I, inside doing our homework, looked at each other and giggled when we were younger, but when we were older we rolled our eyes and made gagging noises.

Mama was always sure to have a hot meal ready for Daddy when he walked through the door, even if he came home late.

“He’s supporting this family; the least I can do is provide him a hot meal at the end of the day,” she told me more than once.

On the late nights, she and Daddy ate alone at the table. Daddy shared what had delayed him at office – usually a difficult customer or a new client who would bring more business.

Mama wore her dark brown hair in a bun on her head, no matter if she was home or out. I almost never saw her with her hair down. She went into her room at night with it up and woke up before us all, twisting it and pinning it in place again before the rest of us saw her. The only time Edith and I saw it flowing across her shoulders and back was if we were sick or had a nightmare in the night. She’d rush in, her hair flowing behind her, scoop us into her arms and take care of our needs, never complaining that she was tired or frustrated.

Her voice was soft and smooth as she sang in the darkness.

“I come to the garden alone

While the dew is still on the roses

And the voice I hear, falling on my ear

The Son of God discloses

And He walks with me

And He talks with me

And He tells me I am His own

And the joy we share as we tarry there

None other has ever known”

Mama always wore dresses, even when she was digging in her flower beds or Daddy’s garden. Her day started at 5 a.m. every day. She made Daddy’s lunch, brewed him coffee to take with him to work in a Thermos and then she made breakfast, always fresh – eggs from the chickens out back (the only farm animals we had even though we lived in between a row of farms), slab bacon or breakfast sausage from a local farmer and toast made with bread Mama cooked herself while we were away at school or work.

She washed clothes in a basin, rinsed them in a deep sink in the laundry room, dried them on a line out back, or if it was raining they were dried on wooden drying racks around the house. She ironed everything – shirts and dresses and sheets and even towels. She made a full dinner every day, even Sundays after church. She washed the dishes and put them away every night before bed. She scrubbed the floors and washed our bedding once a week.

She was more than I could ever be and I knew it. Maybe that’s why it worried me when she had suggested that I’d be just like her one day. I knew I could never be as good at her at keeping a household and a family together, but I also knew I could never be content only doing what she did.

I am really not a photographer who “poses”

On May 22, 2019May 23, 2019 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, photography, thoughts on photographyLeave a comment

I’m rarely drawn to an image where I’ve posed someone or something for a photograph. My eye and interest is almost always drawn to an image where the moment was unscripted and unprepared. I live in an area where most requests are for sessions where everyone is posed and since I enjoy photography as a way to earn some extra funds for my family, I accept these sessions, knowing I can cleanse my pallet later by photographing my children or a freelance job.

I know I’ve rambled about this before on my blog but I suppose why I enjoy unscripted photography so much more than posed is because of my journalism background. When I worked for small-town newspapers I never knew what a day was going to bring, no matter how well I planned it out. I might go in expecting a ribbon cutting in the afternoon and a school board meeting at night but by the evening I was writing about a car accident or a fire I had gone to or a murder the police had sent us a press release on. I grew accustomed to the unpredictable nature of small-town news, even though there were some days I longed for a “normal” day where everything went as planned.

I suppose that the spontaneous nature of my job rubbed off on my photography as well. When I was taking photos for a newspaper I preferred to capture the action because that’s what draws the readers’ eyes to the page – a well-captured image of the action – much more so than a person standing in one place and smiling at the camera (unless the person is someone famous or prestigious.) The desire to capture the action passed on to my personal photography as well and it’s essentially how I approach moments I plan to document through my camera.

_DSC5102bw _DSC9871

Although, if you throw something unusual into a posed photo – say a group of cows in the background – then that posed photo does become more interesting. It is moments like the one I experienced the other day with a herd of cows and a teenage boy when spontaneity can break into the posed. In fact, I often keep snapping the shutter because I know something unexpected will break the monotony of the plain ole’ stand or sit here and smile at the camera shots.

My brain doesn’t seem to be wired for the organized and the planned when it comes to photography or art and as much as I would like the rest of my life to be more planned and organized, it doesn’t seem to work out there either. Admiring the spontaneity in my photography is something that has encouraged me to try to do the same in life and although I often find myself failing at embracing the unknown in my every day, I plan to keep doing it in my art.

The state of our world today

On May 21, 2019May 22, 2019 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Faithfully Thinking2 Comments

I was very anxious about several situations the other night, feeling restless and bitter about the actions of others, in my world, in the world in general. I knew I should be reading the Bible instead of scrolling through social media and seething so I left my phone behind and grabbed my Bible when I went into the backyard to watch the dog. Isaiah has been bookmarked since Easter when I was reading about the prophecy of Christ’s death and resurrection.

000009_DSC_0802-(1)

When I read Isaiah 65: 1-5, a few pages after that prophecy (Isaiah 53: 1-12), I felt like I was reading a message for today.

“I was sought by those who did not ask for Me;

I was found by those who did not seek Me.

I said, “Here I am, here I am,”

To a nation that was not called by My name.

I have stretched out My hands all day long to a rebellious people,

Who walk in a way that is not good,

According to their own thoughts;

A people who provoke Me to anger continually to My face;

Who sacrifice in gardens,

And burn incense on altars of brick;

Who sit among the graves,

And spend the night in the tombs;

Who eat swine’s flesh,

And the broth of abominable things is in their vessels;

Who say, ‘Keep to yourself,

Do not come near me,

For I am holier than you!”

These are smoke in My nostrils,

A fire that burns all day.”

Isaiah 65: 1-5

Things aren’t great in our world right now. We have a lot of hatred, a lot of horrible things being said by people who are supposed to be leaders. We are at a crossroads in our nation and sometimes the choices we have to make are frightening, but none of this is new to God. There has always been upheaval in the world.

There have always been people who have denied him and even spit in His face, figuratively and literally. There is nothing new under the sun for God. He created this world, He gave humans free will, He knows our past and our future. He knows the time He will send his son to gather us home.

Sometimes it is hard for me to remember all this when babies are being torn from their mother’s wombs and people say they aren’t babies they are blobs.

It’s hard to remember when babies and adults are dying at the borders of nations, not only our own, looking for a better life, but politicians won’t agree on how to help them.

It’s hard to remember when so many children are lost and looking for their identities, impatient to grow up and state too soon who and what they are.

But even in those moments, God is here.

I don’t know why He doesn’t pluck us all out of this confusion and set us straight, stop all the sadness and horror from happening in the world; it’s something I argue with Him about often. What I do know is one day it will all make sense and one day those who deny Him won’t be able to anymore.

A far from perfect Christian – that’s me

On May 19, 2019May 22, 2019 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings2 Comments

It’s never fun having to admit you’re not as perfect as you would like to be. It’s always awkward writing about faith after knowing you just blew it big time and someone out there is reading that post about the need for us to be good Christians and thinking “hypocrite.” I don’t know that I’ve specifically written a post suggesting we need to be good Christians, but I mean if I had that’s what a few someones in my life would say, especially this week.

Sometimes you bite your tongue so long it bleeds and before you know it you’re lashing out in pain and regretting everything that comes out of your mouth and flies through your fingertips. Maybe you don’t regret finally telling someone you’re pissed off but you are really mad at yourself for how you did it because you’d been doing so well at not going off like that lately and now you’ve blown it. It’s like stepping back to square one, head down and saying, “okay, fine , but next time I’ll do better,” knowing you might do better next time but some other time you’re just going to blow it again and go right back to square one.

This week I was the epitome of what a good Christian isn’t, complete with the bad language. Did the person have it coming to them? Not really because God doesn’t believe we have it coming to us so why should we think someone else does? What I said came out of frustration at what they said not because I dislike or hate the person. On the contrary, I love the person very much and I let an issue get in the way of expressing that because I wanted them to just shut up already. Wanting a person to shut up already is not a good excuse for telling them off the way I did and I regretted it very quickly. I knew it stemmed from hurts I thought I had addressed within myself long ago.

“Every time those old feelings of anger come up, you put them under the blood of Christ,” my mom has told me and told me again.

And she was, and is, right, but yet I seem unable to do what I know is right.

The apostle Paul wrote: “For I do not understand my own actions For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (Romans 7:15)

Oh, Paul, you and I would get along so well because this week I did the very thing I hate and I don’t know how to fix it. I suppose the books you wrote might be a good place to start and meditate on this week.

Forcing the introvert I am to experience life

On May 18, 2019May 23, 2019 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings2 Comments

When you’re an introvert you prefer your books, your smartphone and your pets to people, except your immediate family, though some days you would rather not see even them.

Every time I leave the house I have to talk myself into it. I have an internal dialogue that sounds like a cross between a hostage negotiator and a motivational speaker. I tell myself I can do this and if I don’t listen to myself I issue a proper scolding and demand my negative thoughts release my positive thoughts so I can function like a normal adult.

Sometimes looking at a person I don’t know results in an emergency, Star Trek- like alarm going off in my head and all I can hear is buzzing and repeated thoughts of “You’re ok. You’re going to be fine. You’re only talking. Nothing bad is going to happen.” Followed by: “You’re an adult. Pull yourself together. Even if you pass out right here, for no reason, they will not, most likely, possibly, hopefully, think you are a total and absolute mental case.”

This wasn’t how I’ve always was. One would think I would have been like this more in my early years and I was but to a smaller degree. In some ways, my social anxiety seems to have gotten even worse the older I have become. I’m not sure what accounts for this, other than maybe shifting hormones wreaking havoc on my body, slowly breaking down any ounce of bravery I once had.

In my old life, I was a newspaper reporter and I’d call myself fairly brave. I’ve met former presidents and first ladies (though only briefly so it wasn’t that exciting), I’ve interviewed state and national senators and congressmen. I’ve covered car accidents and fires, sat in on three murder trials and interviewed countless every day people about countless every day things. Sometime after my son was born panic attacks I’d dealt with as a teenager came rushing back and there were days I had to talk myself into even leaving the house; which was a necessity since I was working for a small town newspaper at the time. The panic attacks weren’t new but the intensity and frequency of them were. Every day was a battle and every second my thoughts screamed at me that I was going to stop breathing and die and never see my child grow up.

f74d6-traintrackscopyrightlisar-howelertraintrackscopyrightlisar-howeler

I rarely told anyone about the attacks because when I did people looked bewildered and told me there was nothing to be anxious about and I was fine. Of course, I knew they were right but my mind and my body refused to recognize logic and I was often sick, dizzy, short of breath and weak all over my body. Eventually, I would be diagnosed with low thyroid function and high estrogen. Treatments for both and changing my diet helped some and eventually I was able to also find ways to cope with the anxiety, both the mental and physical effects it had on me.

Recently, though, those old feelings have come back and I don’t actually know how to handle it some days. Some days I wonder if I should find some medicine to take or try changing my diet again. Most days prayer is my medicine, though, and I’ve started telling God I know His healing will be what ultimately gives me freedom from it all – whether it is physical or mental. The one thing about healing is that it isn’t always quick and immediate like a miracle. It can be a process and that process can be painful and seem to involve a lot of setbacks. That doesn’t mean the healing won’t come. It may not even come the way we expect and hopefully, it will be something even better.

And I take the advice from an article a former friend once shared with me – even when I am scared I do it anyway. I push myself outside my comfort zone as much as possible and if I meltdown during my experience at least I did something and didn’t just wallow in the anxiety.

God never promised us he would take us out of every uncomfortable situation but He did promise to always be there during those situations and moments where we would rather run away.

000006_DSC_8222