This story was published in Medium’s The Challenged.

Meet my mother and father, Dody and Paul Gardner, in 1951, two years after I was born. They’re sitting in the living room of the only house they ever owned. My mom, who died at 95 in 2017, would live in the house for 64 years. Dad died of sinus cancer in 1993.

He thought this unusual and hard-to-diagnose disease might have been linked to his work as an engineer in the fifties on the development of water-based paint. A few months before his death, he built a railing for the stairway into the basement to protect my mom as she aged from her Monday washing sorties: “You’ll live another 25 years, and this will protect you.” He was off by one year, and she never stumbled on those steep stairs.

“They kept her young,” she said about her equivalently aged, widowed, and laundering mother, marching up and down her basement steps.

Resilience!

It’s in my genes.

By the way, they’re sitting on a Hide-a-Bed in what would double as a bedroom for a decade until a two-story addition was added to our modest 1200-square-foot house. I remember watching Romper Room and Captain Midnight from that springy perch.

If you’re an early Baby Boomer like me, you might remember the transparent plastic screens you could lay over the TV screen in the Magic Mirror segment of Romper. Or, after the throwing-up part of the flu passed, sipping Seven-up and eating soda crackers as you watched I Love Lucy reruns.

I always felt loved and taken care of. Even though neither of my parents ever said the words.

My parents were not perfect. That’s no surprise to you, I’m sure. The norms of mid-20th century America bound them. My Catholic mother was apoplectic about Sharon, my first girlfriend, who happened to be Jewish.

My rural Iowa-raised father once referred to Nat King Cole as a “good Negro.” This might have occurred after one of our family dinners at his parents’ farm, where his siblings routinely used the pejorative N-word. I never heard him use that epithet. Perhaps, ‘good Negro,’ was pushing the edge for him and a lesson for his three sons.

And my devout Pope-loving mother never disparaged Jews or Judaism. She knew the difficulty of what was then called mixed marriage, having married an agnostic, Protestant man, as did her mother.

Our parents come from a different time. They pass along their wisdom. And, if we’re lucky, they provide us with enough love and safety to live in what will always be a new world.

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RW Drabble 2.0.090: Hawkish

This story was published in Fiction Shorts. The word is hawkish, and the prompt includes an animal wearing glasses.

*****

“Do I look hawkish?

Someone whose bite might be worse than his bark!

Maybe it’s the sunglasses.

What if I wore a hoody? Or a ballcap turned around? Please be honest. Is it the testicles?

If I was a cat, would you cross the tracks?

We tell ourselves stories about the animals we meet based on images in our heads, pictures that might have nothing to do with the creatures we encounter. We heard these tales from our parents, cousins, friends, and neighbors. They’re hard to dislodge.

But I’m not an effigy. And my eyes are sensitive to the light.”

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RW Drabble 2.0.085: Creation

This 100-word story was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts.

For this drabble, write a letter of complaint to your editors.

---

Dear Short Fiction:

I’ll be brief.

Because it’s become an addiction.

Two years ago, I’d never heard of a drabble. Now, I can’t remember the last time I used an adjective. Or started a story at the beginning.

My grandchildren love my short-winded tales, “You get to the point, grandad.” They won’t leave me alone!

For fifty years, I taught the facts — just the facts. Now, it’s all creation. It’s as if I was a teenager again.

Yesterday, I discovered the fiction section of the library.

Liars all.

You snuck up and bit me.

Ruined my life.

Thanks, Paul

---

Note to the attentive reader: The no adjective claim was hyperbole: last time, short-winded tales, fiction section, & attentive reader.

RW Drabble 2.0.086: Flicker

This story was published in Fiction Shorts. A double drabble, 200 words, featuring the word flicker.

*

“We are all completely beside ourselves.

Of course, all is an exaggeration — 76 million from 1946 to 64. Never were we one. It just seemed that way when we marched against Vietnam, pollution, corporate greed, and for civil rights for blacks, women, Indians, Latinos, immigrants, gays, people with disabilities and low income, and flowers, yes, the environment. As Dylan sang, we demanded our parents get out of the way.

The proof of our sway, we thought, was the reelection of Barack Obama, America’s first millennial president — the double affirmation of a young, black man in the whitest of Houses. Decades later, this was the apotheosis of our idealism, which was built upon the American promissory note of equality.

Now, we see decay everywhere — our own, as we parade, to the tune of 2000 a day, toward the grave. Perhaps, more importantly, we were wrong about the pace of America’s tolerance for reform. Mr. Obama thinks so.

What if we were wrong? Maybe we pushed too far. Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribes. Sometimes, I wonder whether I was 10 or 12 years too early.

Again, the candle of American ideals is fickering.

The reactionaries are winning.”

RW Drabble RW Drabblw 2.0.074: Gobsmacked, with a bonus limerick

This story was published in Fiction Shorts. It is a drabble, 100 words, and will include an original limerick.

*

“You’re not going to believe this. We went to high school together.”

“Let me guess — he was the center on the basketball team.”

“Mike, yeah, Mike was his name. There he goes. Probably to use the bathroom. I’ll ask.”

“What did he say?”

“I’ll be gobsmacked. He used to be a jerk. They’re moving to the side. He said, ‘Kareem always sits in the back.’”

After the concert, and an Irish whiskey.

The ticket said nothing about Baldy

At first, it was all Grimaldi

But the music was splendid

And when it ended

We said it were better than Vivaldi

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Note: I used this guide for Limericks. Regarding the title and last line, the Irish often use the plural “were” instead of “was” in informal conversation.

If you ever get a chance, you must see Danú.

RW Drabble 2.0.072: Recast

This was published in Fiction Shorts. The photo I took out our kitchen window two days ago suggested the song, and once I started with Credence I couldn’t stop.

The prompt: This story will be 133.333 words. How? One word will stop bef….

Don’t you love Fiction Shorts’ editors?

---

“Susan, I see a bad moon ris…”

“Please, John, no spell on me before breakfast. I feel like there’s a traveling band inside my head.”

“At coffee yesterday, I heard it through the grapevine. Elon Musk has recast Social Security as a Ponzi scheme. Down on the corner, across from the courthouse, people are gathering. So, I’ve been lookin’ out our back door. We could lose Proud Mary.”

“Speaking of the backyard, it’s a jungle out there. Have you seen the rain forecast?”

“Oh, Suzie Q, let’s take the Mary out on the river today.”

“Suzie Q worked last night. And your up around my bend was lovely, very lovely. But isn’t the river green, full of algae? Plus, our fortunate son is coming for lunch.”

“Oh no, there’s trouble on the way.”

---

These Creedence Clearwater Revival song titles have been used in the dialogue: Bad Moon Rising, I Put a Spell on You, Traveling Band, I Heard It Through the Grapevine, Lookin’ Out My Back Door, Proud Mary, Down on the Corner, Run through the Jungle, Have You Seen the Rain, Suzie Q, Up Around the Bend, Green River, and Fortunate Son.

---

RW Drabble 2.0.071: Jurisprudence

This story appears in Medium’s Fiction Shorts. It is a drabble.

A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.

Editor: “Dialogue only.”

Writer: “OK.”

---

“Leon, my father always said, ‘The world is not fair.’”

“I’m reminded of that every day, John. Even here, in this upscale bar, people look at me differently than you.”

“What did you think on that day?”

“Fancy words are cheap. The law is my life. That’s why I’m teaching it. But after George and those nine minutes and 29 seconds, man, that’s the jurisprudence of Jim Crow.”

“What about the rioting?”

“John, some people get to be violent, and others don’t; the violence of some is honored and pardoned. Think about if the January 6 mob had been Black.”

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RW Drabble 2.0.066: Oxygen

This story was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts. It is a drabble, 100 words. The prompt was to use the word oxygen written in the self-help genre.

*

“You want me to do what?”

“Before you put your food scraps in the composter, let them sit on your kitchen counter, open to the air, for three days. Observe how the oxygen breaks down the material into nutrients that will enrich the soil — from death comes new life. It’s nature’s way.

“Becky said you’re a strange psychologist, but she does seem different, more vital.”

“The second homework assignment is to imagine your body decomposing from bones to dust.”

“Huh?”

“Once you accept death’s inevitability, you’re ready to live. Do this daily meditation, and I promise you will come alive.”

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The corpse meditation is from Anthony De Mello’s Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality. On my self-help shelf, this is one of my go-to resources.

This story was published in Six-word photo story challenge, a Medium publication.

Life is one problem after another.

Some problems are doozies — life-changing. Yesterday, I talked with George, a friend with stage four colon cancer. On some days, Katie does not know her life partner, Steve. Rick lives with a back that can’t be repaired.

I’m in my 8th decade in reasonable health. Occasionally, I fantasize about an older me, blanket-clad, sitting in a rocking chair beside a fireplace with nothing to do and nowhere to go, problem-free.

Two days ago, I oversalted my famous ham and bean soup so much that it was uneatable. Instead of putting the mistake into the composter, I dumped it down the garbage disposal. Yesterday, the plumber, after 45 minutes, said, “I don’t know what was down there, but it was sure stuck.”

Ordinary problems.

My irregular fantasy of a problemless life lets the cat out of the bag. I resent problems, especially the common day-to-day ones. Why do I feel this way?

Oliver Burkeman, in Meditation for Mortals, suggests an answer.

‘Problem’ is just the word we apply to any situation in which we confront the limits of our capacity to control how things unfold…[responding] is precisely what makes life meaningful and satisfying.

Further, once we accept this beautiful idea — the inevitability of problems —we can “unclench” ourselves for the more vital task of “living a life of ever more interesting and absorbing ones.”

Problems are life. And vice versa.

This story was published in The Daily Cuppa with a word limit 150.

*

I’m new to this book club business, joining our community’s older men’s reading group about a year ago. It’s called that to distinguish us from a whippersnapper bunch who looked two decades younger when we met in a joint session last August.

When I asked our founder, Jim, why only men, he said, “Because we read different books than women.” Our geezer gang of ten consists of eighth-decade white men, including four college professors, one engineer, one banker, three small business owners, and a psychologist.

We intentionally exclude people by gender and age but not by race. However, we live in an almost all-white town in the nearly all-white state of Iowa. We asked Novian, an African-American English professor at the local college, to lead our discussion.

Two fertile hours later, Steve turned to Novian and said, “You’re the first black person I’ve gotten to know.”

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