Writing Challenge

The Marble Forest

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Experience Writing Prompt: DEEP IN THE FOREST

Deep in the forest of marble and stone, the first thing that caught my eye  as we drove through the cemetery was an upright grave monument that looked like it was about to fall over.

It was ornate and looked well cared for- all except for the fact that the ground under it was having issues and the monument was collapsing.

I decided to grab a picture of it because the light and the leaves were beautiful, and as I carefully walked around it I saw   a tribute to a wife, her husband and to their daughter:

Photo A.M. Moscoso
Oakwood Cemetery
Beaver Dam WI
October 2023

Maria was the only child of Amia and Lyman and  she died when she was only 26.

She was never married, she had no children.  She died in 1867.

Photo A.M. Moscoso
Oakwood Cemetery
Beaver Dam WI
October 2023

Her father followed her in death 29 years later at age 81

Oakwood Cemetery Beaver Dam WI

Amia followed her husband 11 years later and at this point I thought that  had Maria lived  would have been 66 years old the year her Mother died. She may have even been a grandmother.

Photo A.M. Moscoso
Oakwood Cemetery
Beaver Dam WI
October 2023

As I walked around the monument I saw three grave covers.  My son leaned down to brush away some leaves and he stood up, and told me that the covers were metal.
I was intrigued by the placement of the monument – it was placed at the foot of the graves  instead of at the  head- and I was curious about the material.
I was also curious why the oldest cover was in such good shape and the most recent was not.
So I did a little research into Beaver Dam’s history and learned that the monuments were made of Zinc or ” White Bronze ” ( you can read about it HERE ) .

Photo A.M. Moscoso
Oakwood Cemetery
Beaver Dam WI
October 2023

Photo A.M. Moscoso
Oakwood Cemetery
Beaver Dam WI
October 2023

Photo A.M. Moscoso
Oakwood Cemetery
Beaver Dam WI
October 2023

On that bright Fall morning, in that cemetery far away from where I live, I explored a forest made of marble and stone and it was decorated with leaves of red and gold. 

33 Messages

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Inspired by Fandango’s Story Starter#118– When she looked at her cellphone, she was shocked to see she had 33 voicemail messages

Photographer Unknown

Carline Broom was all alone in her dark  Mother’s living room watching the rain beat against the side window when she heard her phone go off.

It was on the flower table near the front door  buzzing like an angry bee and she had left it on vibrate so it was dancing too. It didn’t ring though. She had turned the ringer off because she had driven over here and everyone knows you shouldn’t use your phone when driving.

She didn’t feel like answering it right now anyway.  The rain had gone from a mist to a down pour and the streets were filling up with water. At this exact moment in time all Carline wanted to do was watch the rain come down and she wanted to watch the sky fill up relentlessly with dark black clouds.

She wondered if there would be thunder and lightning too.

Her phone sat there behind her, quiet as a mouse and just as she was about to give it faint praise for remaining still  it started to  buzz and danced again.

Carline drifted over to the table and looked down on her phone- she had 33 messages- more then half of them had come in this morning.

” Well.” Carline said to her phone. ” Well. ‘

” Where is that thing? ” she heard her Mom say,  from the kitchen. ” Whose damn

phone is that? ”

Carline told her Mom, ” it’s mine. ”

Fiona  brushed by Carline to the flower table, she picked up Carline’s phone and then she dropped it- the phone missed the table and hit the floor and Carline guessed the screen was probably cracked now.

Her Mom walked to the window where Carline was watching the storm rage and Fiona said to her own reflection, ” I’m sorry you aren’t here to see this storm Carline, you’d have loved it. ”

Carline turned and looked at her Mother, then she turned back to the window and watched the rainfall.

”  There are  33 messages on your phone Carline- I’m sorry you won’t be here to pick them up.  The jackass that hit you  when he answered his phone, I’ll bet he’s picking up his messages today. I’ll bet he’s surfing the net and playing wordle too. Bastard. May he rot in Hell. ”

Her phone buzzed from the floor.

Carline did wonder who would be calling her, and where they were calling her from and she hoped they weren’t driving through this storm wondering  why she wasn’t answering her phone.

Photographer Unknown

 

 

Those Little Things That Count

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Artist Unknown

When I was a teenager my friend’s Mom told me that I was ‘dark and negative’ that I needed to smile more and that I should be less snobby and ‘act like a regular teenage girl.”

I shouldn’t be playing guitar and riding motorcyles, she said. I should be going to parties and hanging out with the girls at the pool. I need to be ‘more feminine’ she said. I should wear makeup because I had that ‘yellow asian  skin’ and that I should do something about my big  brown ‘horsey  looking eyes’

I was thirteen at the time, I didn’t wear makeup because my Mom and Grandmother said I was pretty enough without it- plus I was too young for it and when I turned 16 I could wear it if I wanted too.   Mom did buy me those flavored lip glosses that were popular with teenagers at the time, and I thought the way I dressed was pretty cool. I wore jeans and pretty t-shirts that were the rage in the 70’s.

Looking back on it I was dressing age appropriate, which given the times was probably just fine with my parents. And for the rest, I really didn’t start to wear makeup on a regular basis until I was in my mid twenties.

Over the years I thought that maybe I should have listened to my friend’s Mom a little and paid attention to those little details that would have made me, I don’t know- less intimidating I guess.

Maybe she thought she was doing me a favor. It’s hard to be accepted into the herd if you look more like a mangy wolf then a fluffly sheep and being in the herd is important to a lot of people.

To them social acceptance is a mattter of survival.

But lucky for me, though my family weren’t what you’d call super duper close they were super duper accepting of the people around them and that included their somewhat odd family members. So I remember being hurt that my friend’s Mom didn’t think much of me and how I looked and those other things that made me who I was, but honestly in the end I didn’t care.

If you are wondering about my friend and her Mom- well.  When we were in our early 40’s I heard  my friend was in prison and her Mom ended up in a worse position  then that.

My neighbor was helping my friend’s Mom move from where she had been housed for awhile to regular housing  and they were talking about the old neighborhood and what her daughter was going through and then she asked about Anita- that weird little kid-whatever happened to her?

Written In Ink

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Word Of the Day Challenge: NEWSPAPER

Photo A.M. Moscoso

The last time I remember seeing a newspaper in one of those plastic stands that use to dot street corners and stand in front of grocery stores was in 1999.

I remember it because that was when we had the WTO protests in Seattle and after the pepper spray and dust had settled, the free newespaper were flying out of those little plastic stands like crazy-the free papers were carrying a lot of stories about WTO and not many of the articles about the the Seattle Police Department or the local government’s response was what one could call favorable.

So, I was waiting for my bus when a Cop on horseback rode buy and his horse relived himself near the curb.

The cop got off and cleaned up after his horse. I thought that was pretty cool because dog walkers didn’t always do that and horses leave a bigger mess.

What wasn’t cool was that he went to one of the plastic paper stands, which as I mentioned housed a paper that was critical of SPD and he was about to shove his horse’ pile of poop into it when he saw me and a few people at the bus stop across the street.

Now keep in mind this was before youtube and social media and tik tok. He could have shoved that wad off horse poo in there and if we had said anything about it, he could have easily said he and his horse had been framed.

Instead,  let the lid on the stand close and then he went to a garbage can and put the horse mess where it belonged. I’m not sure why he didn’t carry through on his plan to turn a paper stand he didn’t think much of into a toilet- but to this day I remain curious.

 

There were probably newspaper stands all around me after that, but I don’t remember them. This one, I will always remember.

Photo A.M. Moscoso