Wednesday's Words on a Friday

 

The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over by a moveable feast of participants when Delores had computer troubles. Sadly, Delores has now closed her blog forever due to other problems.

The aim of the words is to encourage us to write. A story, a poem, whatever comes to mind.

If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please let us know so we can come along to read it and add a few encouraging words.

This month the words/prompts are supplied by Lissa and can be found here

This week's words/prompts are: 

01. orphan 

02. island 

03. farm 

04. brother 

05. freckles 

06. red-haired 

07. imagination 

08. friend 

09. charm 

10. home 

Here is my story: 

When I was young, the charm of my island home was unknown to me. It was just home. I'd been born there and grew up seeing the beauty of it as normal. We helped mum and Dad with the vegetable garden he called his farm, it was large enough to keep us all well fed, but without any animals it probably wasn't a real farm, not to my ten year old mind anyway. We were of Irish ancestry and although Mum had brown hair and creamy skin, Dad had black hair and brown skin, all three of us kids were red-haired with freckles. 

We spent a lot of time at the beach, diving off the jetty to collect crabs that we caught in the pots and Mum would boil them in the big old laundry copper while Dad  grilled vegetables on the barbecue. Whenever we kids fought over anything, I would dive into my imagination and pretend I was an orphan, going off alone to get away from my sister and brother. I would take my book and hide behind the rocks of the seawall, the main character in my book becoming my best friend. Until dinner time anyway. 

As we got older, Mum decided we needed better education than what she and Dad could teach us, so we were sent away to boarding school. Here is where disaster struck. on a school outing one day, not far from the school, our bus blew a tyre. The bus skidded and rolled several times, with kids falling about inside and getting injured. Most of us woke up in the hospital later, a couple of us didn't. My brother and sister had a broken bone each, arm for my sister and collarbone for my brother, while I only had a few painful cuts and bruises. my best friend died from her head injury, while the bus driver was crushed by the steering wheel somehow. 

We continued at school, eventually graduating and taking jobs in the nearest city. As my parents aged and became more fragile, they wanted us to return home, but my brother was successfully running a pub and my sister was studying to become an architect. I had been flitting from one job to another, never feeling comfortable in any of them, but not knowing what I wanted to do with my life. I decided to go home to care for my parents. 

As I stepped onto the old jetty after all those years away, I saw and heard the island with new eyes and ears. The colours of sand and sea, the vegetation, the birds, the freshness of the air. So very different from the hustle and bustle of a busy grey city. The feeling of home ran deep into my bones and I knew at last where I was meant to be. Right here on the island, forever.