NatalieSugabelle asks, “What is the quintessential sign of spring?”

To answer this query, I took a walk in a park. And met a few mentors.

*

Rebecca and I live in northeast Iowa, in the United States. Believe it or not, in this flat state known for corn fields, there are valleys. Palisade Park and the Upper Iowa River protect our community’s eastern flank.

Looking west from the park’s summit, you can see the location of our home.

We live on Water Street, which got its name because the river used to overflow the middle of town. In 1948, Decorah utilized federal government funds to construct a land dike that runs west to east through the city.

In the past two decades, Decorah has experienced two 100-year floods, with minimal damage. In 2008, the river reached the top of the dike, and we briefly evacuated our homes.

Yesterday, prompted by Natalie, I decided to take a walk through Palisade to experience this most wonderful time of the year.

New green growth everywhere. The vitality is hard to miss. Nature is so much better at repair than human construction. The same may be true for our bodies. Sometimes, renewal happens naturally. I’ll take the Tylenol off the top of my bedside table and put it in the drawer.

However, I did wonder whether, amidst the buzzing and humming, the queen was present.

What is the hive’s version of the Roman Catholic Church’s puff of white smoke? Gender exclusions aside, did they have a leader?

Regardless, imagine a community working toward a common goal. Oh, America, if only…

Two years ago, we moved a young birch tree from one part of our yard to another when we put in a new sidewalk. We’d both grown up with Joni Mitchell’s admonition in the Big Yellow Taxi to NOT “pave paradise and put up a parking lot,” so we very carefully dug around the root ball in the fervent hope our transplanted tree would survive.

The park offered the obvious — trees usually find a way — the power of resilience.

Not surprisingly, our little birch, which is now co-existing with concrete, is doing fine.

Even dead plant life continues to give back as a habitat for insects, bacteria, and fungi—a kind of eternal life.

The quintessential mentor for this 75-year-old author.

RW Double Drabble 2.0.102: Sidekick

This is a Double Drabble, a 200-word story. It was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts.

The first line will be, “That’s where it all went wrong.”

*

“That’s where it all went wrong. Or it could have if we hadn’t found out before they went up. Pedro doesn’t know Spanish. He’s from Brazil, so he speaks only Portuguese and English. John hired him late Friday. His papers said he was from Brazil, but John assumed he spoke Spanish.”

“He looks comfortable on the edge and in the air. Who’s his sidekickhandling the rope communication?”

“Adriana, his wife. I’ve been watching them for 30 minutes. She keeps him loose.They have three children in school. I think he’ll work out. We’ve got the Catholic and Methodist churches this summer, high and steeply angled.”

“Isn’t Pedro our first Brazilian?”

“Yeah. This morning, we had three Mexicans, four from Guatemala and Carlos from Panama. He was your first south of the border hire, right, Dad?

“A born leader and the hardest worker I’ve ever known.”

“He reminds me of you.”

“On Fridays, I volunteer with Gabriela, his wife, at the Food Pantry. She helps with our Spanish-speaking clients. Do you worry about losing any of these guys?”

“Carlos is a citizen, and the rest have green cards. The local guys can’t keep up. Of course, I’m very worried.”

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Note: The title “Americas ” refers to North and South America.

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.