Dialogue: Chores with a 4-year-old

Jeff Meller

30 Oct 13

559 words

“I’ll get it, I’ll get it,” squealed 4-year-old Marilyn Little Bear as she raced down the hallway, proud that she was big enough to answer the front door herself.

When the doorbell rang, Walter and Marilyn were in the kitchen cooking breakfast while Marilyn’s mother and baby sister slept.

“Good morning, Marilyn,” said Jason Wood squatting down to child height and shaking hands. “That smells gooood,” he continued, sniffing the air. “What’s for breakfast?”

“French toast and bacon,”  Marilyn exclaimed with excitement as she ran back into the kitchen. “And I’m helping. I mixed the eggs.”

“Good morning’” said Walter, Marilyn’s father, over his shoulder from the stove. “Pull up a chair and I’ll get you some coffee. What do you want in it?”

“Good morning. Milk, please,” Jason replied.

“I’m just fixing Marilyn’s French toast. I’ll make yours next,”  Walter said.

Jason sat at the kitchen table. He was wearing blue jeans, worn and frayed at the right knee.  Jason and Walter, 41 and 45 respectively, work together and Marilyn usually sees Jason wearing business clothes. 

Pointing to the hole Marilyn said: "Look daddy, Jason is dressed like a college kid today."  

***

“Your French toast and bacon are ready Marilyn. Sit down and I’ll serve you,” said Walter.

Marilyn asked, “Daddy will you cut it into squares for me?”

“Cut it into squares for me, what?” echoed Walter”

Cut it into squares for me, please,” replied Marilyn 

With a knife Walter cut four parallel lines across the warm slice and then four perpendicular lines to make bit-sized squares.  Marilyn poured on maple syrup and picked up one square with her fork. This square had not been severed completely for the next square.

"Daddy this piece is not unbuttoned" she said.

***

The three finished breakfast and were getting ready to do some chores.

Walter said, “It’s going to be chilly out this morning. We’d better get our fleeces.”

“Daddy I want my Winnie-the-Pooh fleece,”  Marilyn said. They spent 20 minutes quietly, so as no to wake the baby, searching for the fleece because Marilyn had not been worn since last spring.

They found it and set off for the first chore which was haircuts for Walter and Marilyn.

They drove to Massachusetts Avenue and parked the car. Marilyn put the money in the meter and they walked to Charlie’s Barber Shop, enjoying the swirling leaves on the windy autumn morning. As they approached the barber shop, Marilyn sang out, pointing to the rotating barber pole:

“Here we are. The bangers."

“The bangers?” asked Jason. 

"The banger," Marilyn explained, "where I go to get my bangs cut."

***

After the bangs were pertly trimmed, the trio next were to visit Marilyn’s aunts, who live together near by.  As they were about to get into the car, Marilyn proposed: "Why don't we take our feet."

***

The final chore of the morning was to get wood to build book shelves for Marilyn’s room.  They visited a lumber yard and inspected some pine boards to be used for the shelving. One board had a good sized dent in it from a steel band which had tied together a pallet of boards for shipping.  Marilyn said: "That board has a sore."

***

After all the chores were done the three returned to Marilyn’s house where her mother and younger sister were awake and eating their breakfast. “Did you guys have fun?” her mom asked.

"It was starving fun, mommy," by which Marilyn meant it was intensely fun.

- 30 -

Sources:

None.

Description: place, person, feeling, sound

Jeff Meller

24 Oct. 13

172; 113; 91; 46 words

Place – Hay Barn

I push back gently the creaky barn doors on ancient, rusty hinges. Some screws are missing from each hinge and the doors hang crookedly.

After the glare of the hot August afternoon, the dark barn interior is impenetrable until my eyes adjust. Rain taps lightly on the corroded metal roof.

I back in the wagon and unload the hay.

When finished I sprawl on my back, limp and sweating. Spears of straw stick in my back like needles in a voodoo doll. But I’m too tired to move.

Shafts of sunlight filter between cracks in the shrinking barnboard siding, revealing motes pirouetting in the thick, dusty air.   Countless hay seasons infuse the air: today’s fragrant harvest, last year’s fully dry crop, the pungent reek of moldy older seasons.

Now the rain dances raucously on the roof. Haying is done for the day.

Person – Newspaper man

“Hello,” sings the newspaper man cheerily in an indeterminate African accent piercing the crisp, pre-dawn gloom. Only his left arm is visible in a worn sweater sleeve leaning out the window of an SUV and a flash of white smile reflected from the ceiling light in an otherwise dark interior.

“Good morning,” I shout in a hoarse whisper, to not disturb the neighbors, from the porch in my cozy pajamas, slippers and fleece vest.

We wave goodbye to each other as the newspaper man speeds on his rounds, then home to get his children off to school, and on to his second job, while I, drinking coffee by the fire, read my paper.

Feeling – Contentment

Autumn in the forest, imbibing the gentle fragrance of desiccating leaves, parched and shriveled.

Noiseless, save the intermittent sound when a detached leaf nestles on the ground amongst its sisters and brothers for a winter’s rest.

Shuffling when walking would do, but would not be half so much fun. Furrowing a bow wave of dried leaves in front, leaving a wake of vermilion maple, golden birch, maroon beech behind.

Ten million years of evolution refines our senses to revel in the creation of 300 million foliage seasons for one autumn afternoon.

Sound - Ice

A fierce nighttime wind shattered the ice on the pond into slivers. In the morning these thousands of floating icicles clinked together sounding like an orchestra of crystal chandeliers swaying in the wind as it lapped the shards against the shore.

- 30 -

Sources:

None.

Reporting Scene: Stone Steps

Jeff Meller

19 Oct 13

522 words

“One man’s warning is another man’s invitation,” Craig Nitreau, 50, tells his daughters.

“PARK CLOSED” warns the sign.

“Perhaps it was not meant as an invitation,” cautions[1] the obedient, older daughter, Aurora Nitreau, 9, accustomed to her father’s independence.

“Well maybe,” admits Craig. “But I want you girls to think for yourselves.”

The Nitreaus stroll slowly though the deserted parking lots, closed by a federal government shutdown, delighting in the quiet. It is peak foliage season on the Maine coast and normally the lots would be full. But no one is venturing up Dorr Mountain on Mount Desert Island. They have the mountain to themselves.

It’s a soft, yellow Indian summer morning. Craig, Aurora and 6-year-old Acadia have come to see the stone steps on the Murray Young Path. Hundreds of stone steps were built on this trail in the 19^th century by the Rusticators, rugged men who believed one goal of American civilization was to master nature.

The Young Path starts in the pine needle quiet at the edge of the parking lots and gives way to the brittle crunch of oak leaves higher up as the Nitreaus reach the first series of stone steps.

“The Rusticators didn’t look for the easy way up the mountain,” Craig explains. “They looked for the hard way up because that presented the greatest challenges.”

“The stairs almost look natural,” Aurora marvels, “as if they are part of the mountain.”

“What are those little burrow things in the front of each step?” asks Acadia, pointing to a series of hemispherical grooves about 4 inches deep.

Craig acts out for his daughters the process of building the steps. First, he wields an imaginary sledgehammer and chisel to split a large granite boulder by boring a series of deep holes. Then he tamps in black power to blast a slab from the boulder. Next, he drills smaller holes in the slab. Finally, he gently taps wedges in these holes until the slab split into stone steps, leaving the half-burrows Acadia observed.

They resume their climb up several more flights of steps, passing through waves of warmth on open trail and coolness when the trail returns to the shade. A whiff of skunk drifts across the path. They reach a lookout point half way up the mountain and break for cookies.

Eastward across the Gulf of Maine oak and birch tint the hills brown and yellow against the green backdrop of the predominant evergreens. Intermingled in the green are the blue jigsaw bays of Bar Harbor. Incongruously interjected into this bucolic wilderness is an immense cruise ship - 950 feet long with 19 decks – seemingly at anchor in a pine forest.

The hikers resume the trek. In an hour reach they top. It is not a long hike, but it is a lot of stairs, roughly the equivalent of climbing the Empire State Building. Their reward is a 360° view, 75 miles in every direction. They break out sandwiches as a vintage propeller-driven plane put-puts by, its propeller thwacking the crisp air at a leisurely 85 mph.

“It feels like we’re on top of the world,” Acadia exclaims.

- 30 -

Sources:

None.

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[1] I appreciate the advice to use the more neutral verb “said” in connection with quotations. But I will use more descriptive verbs as a matter of personal style. 

Castaway Scene: revised

Jeff Meller

9 Oct 13

503 words

He's trapped.

Five days have passed since the corporate jet crashed and Chuck Nolan, the sole survivor, washed ashore.

At first he was in shock, then exhilarated - a brush with death makes one feel fully alive.  Then he felt grateful, mingled with melancholy - for friends who were dead, for wives and husbands who do not yet know they are widows and widowers, for children who will celebrate Christmas without one parent.

He reconnoitered the island. As far as he can see in every direction he is alone: infinite sea, boundless beach, limitless sky, impenetrable jungle.

Primeval: sounds only from nature - wind in trees, chirrup of insects, waves on sand; light only from sun and moon.

After a week he is sunburned, bearded, grimy, his hair matted with sweat. His pants barely bend at the knees, stiff with sea salt.

For five days he has had nothing to eat but coconut, nothing to drink but coconut milk.

Each day he wakes thinking: “They must be looking for me. Today I will be rescued.” But the sky remains empty, the horizon unbroken.

This morning he says to Wilson, a basketball which serves as his security blanket, “I should try to make a fire to alert searching planes or passing ships.” Wilson does not disagree.

“But how to make a fire?” he wonders. Flint and steel. A bow and spindle. A mirror. He has none of these.

Then he recalls - vaguely - a fire can be started by rubbing two sticks together. Make a groove in one piece of wood and rapidly rub the pointed tip of another piece of wood back and forth. The friction between the two is supposed to create heat.

He shaves a point on different kinds sticks he finds along the beach. Then he makes a groove in other pieces of wood. He tries different rubbing techniques. He breaks many pieces of wood. Nary a hint of heat or smoke.

He has been trying for hours, all day it seems. With each failed attempt frustration increases his anger and despair.

Toward dusk, when he thinks he sees an actual wisp of smoke, his eyes widened in disbelief. He nurses the wisp gently with his breathe, adding coconut coir as tinder. Sweat drips from the end of his nose. Burning coir is the best aroma he ever has smelled. When the smoke sizzles into a small burst of flame, he cheers “Fire.”

He adds more tinder, then palm fronds, then logs. The small flames grow into a bonfire, a celebration of his triumph. Waving a burning frond aloft he exults, “It’s a signal fire.”

And he calls to the burning sparks rising on the heat of the flames into the now dusky sky: “Fireflies go!” They are not trapped like Chuck: “You’re free. You’re free.”

“Look what I have created,” he cries, “I have made fire,” as the indifferent surf foams gently at the shore, as it has over eons when other men have claimed to create fire.

-- 30 --

Source:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUDEjulbqzk&feature=player_embedded