Sara's Smile

“Life is what you make it”, she said. 

He could hear her now.  She was always giving him advice on how to live more positively and therefore more happily.  Sara-isms, he called them. 

The thought of this made him smile and as he did so, he could hear her saying, “Did you know that when you smile your body releases endorphins that will help your mood?  So smile even when you don’t want to and things will seem a lot better.”

“Be grateful for what you have,” she said.  And he was - grateful for her, for their new baby daughter and grateful for the opportunities that he had been provided at work.  So why did he have this niggling feeling that something just wasn’t right?

As he pulled into his driveway, he just couldn’t shake the feeling.  Opening the front door, he thought about how he would try to explain it to Sara and how she would make him laugh with one of her Sara-isms. 

“All you have is here and now,” she would say, “Don’t worry about what hasn’t happened.”

“Sara, I’m home.” 

Nothing. Maybe she was sleeping.  She had been up with the baby quite a few times last night and she was probably tired. 

He walked down the hall to their bedroom. His wife was slumped in the rocking chair where she sometimes nursed the baby.  Her nightgown was stained with breast milk, her hair hung limply around her face and her red-rimmed eyes stared straight ahead.  As she saw him in the doorway, fresh tears started to roll down her cheeks.

“I can’t do this,” she sobbed. “I am not a good mother.”

He crossed the room and scooped her up out of the chair.  Falling onto their bed, he rocked her like a baby while she wept, uncontrollably.  He struggled to find the words to comfort her but all that came to mind were Sara-isms. 

“Well, why not,” he thought.

“A very wise woman once told me,” he started, “that God wouldn’t give us more than we could handle.”

She smiled beneath her tears as she recognized her own words and at that moment he was so grateful for endorphins and Sara-isms.

Red Writing Hood

This week's Red Writing Hood prompt comes from Carrie of Views from Nature.

Flash Fiction can be fun and a real challenge. This week focus on the words and the strength of each to contribute to your story. Write a 300 word piece using the following word for inspiration: LIFE.

A Song For Saturday - Michael Buble Lost

Michael Bublé - "Lost"     'Cause you are not alone I'm always there with you And we'll get lost together Till the light comes pouring through 'Cause when you feel like you're done And the darkness has won Babe, you're not lost When your worlds crashing down And you can't bear the thought I said, babe, you're not lost   I think we all need to be reminded of this from time to time.  Great song!

A Song for Saturday - Dixie Chicks Everybody Knows

Dixie Chicks - Everybody Knows

I love the Chicks and I love the words to this song:

Tell me now if you came sneaking up behind
Would you know me and see behind the smile
I can change like colors on a wall
Hoping no one else will find what lies beneath it all
I think I hide it all so well...

And my favourite part:  

Looking through the crowd
I search for something else
But every time I turn around
I run into myself 

We are definitely our own worst enemy.

Trapped

 

She felt trapped in this grey November day and trapped in this life.  The black, heavy clouds pressed down upon her like the lead vest at the dentist's office rendering her limbs heavy and clumsy.  The dentist's office was a memory from another lifetime, one in which she could afford such things as dentists.  She wielded her tattered umbrella like a prescription for Prozac in an effort to protect herself against the persistent droplets of misery that dampened her threadbare coat and her failing spirits.  She plodded along, her head down, trying, unsuccessfully, to avoid the puddles.  The water seeped into her boots through holes that were put there by previous feet, feet that belonged to people whose toes were probably dry right now, having had the luxury to exchange the holey boots for a new pair.  She didn't usually succumb to feelings of self-pity such as those that were seeping into her thoughts today but the weather was getting to her, making an already impossible situation worse.  She just hoped for a little sunshine.  Things always looked better through the filter of sunlight.  She stepped off the curb and onto the street, her head still down.  The sound of a blaring car horn startled her and her head snapped up just in time to see the startled face of the man driving the grey car as it pummeled into her.  

She awoke in a state of confusion.  There were people moving above her, shouting words that she couldn't understand.  She listened to them from a distance.  She tried to open her eyes, just a crack, but closed them again right away because the bright light above her was shining directly into them.  Her last thought as she drifted back into a deep peaceful sleep, a little smile touching the corners of her mouth, was that she was warm and everything was okay now because the sun was shining again.

 We had two different options this week at Little Red Writing Hood: write flash fiction based on the prompt "Trapped" or "I truly enjoyed spending time with them. I just had to decide which of them I would kill." 

Check out The Red Dress Club here to see the other posts that were inspired by these prompts.