I pretended it was a museum, filled with the oldest stuff I had ever seen. Crowded and dusty behind smoke-stained glass. Relics from a world that no longer existed. No signs, but the rule was understood: “Do Not Touch”. Admission cost a kiss on the cheek and Nana’s cigarette breath.
Robert Ludemann is happily retired and getting better each day at not working.
Rutabagas, incandescent. Golden turnips, soft as flesh. Caramelized carrots, parsnips roasted and crisp.
She chooses to remember the vegetables sliced and seasoned by her grandmother’s hands, translucent as Vidalias.
The rest of her roots, she knows, belong mangled in the disposal. Feeble skins and rotting corpses, bitter fennel, putrid beets.
Joree is an anti-poverty advocate who moonlights as a writer when she’s not recovering from putting her toddler to bed.
“Grandy, will you tell me about Hawaii?”
A pause, and then he brushes his bottom lip thoughtfully with the edge of a thumb, the blue anchor on his forearm gone soft and blurry with time. In his eyes, I catch a glimpse of metal and fire.
“Not much to say.”
Erin Gilmore is a writer and editor living in Los Angeles.
Grandpa snapped open the latches. The case creaked as he pulled up the lid.
“Why are you keeping our stubs? They’re not worth anything.”
Grandpa smiled over his shoulder. “We had fun though, didn’t we?”
Twenty years later in that dusty attic, I cherished those priceless tickets. “Love you, Grandpa.”
Jason wishes he could have met his grandfathers, and wishes he visited his grandmothers more when he had the chance. He marvels at how value lies in the eyes (and heart) of the beholder.
I do not know, six decades from now, what memories will persevere in my children and grandchildren.
But I’m taking my shot at short-term immortality, dipping this toddler in the ocean, locking eyes as a loose dog licks salt from her giggles and her father screams at me from behind.
Lee D is hyphenetically challenged and not sure if this qualifies as a 50 word story. Editor: It does!
The white gold, worn thin by years, cut her grandmother’s cold finger as Julia removed it. Her tears caught the diamond’s fire.
“She wanted you to have it,” Pops said.
“I miss her already.”
“Me too, Babe.” He held Julia close and kissed her head.
“…How much is it worth?”
Frank Solomon retired from the University of Kentucky after 30 years as a Systems Programmer and now pursues his many passions from his home in Kentucky. http://www.franksolomon.com.
“What are your plans for the future?” Grandma asked me during dinner one evening.
“Er,” I said. “Um. Uh. I guess…”
“You should become a lawyer,” she declared, “and find yourself a wife.”
So I went straight home, fired up PhotoShop, and started putting together some grad and wedding photos.