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 Elephant's Child and can be found here

This week's words/prompts are: 

1. meet 

2. glimpses 

3. apples 

4. taste 

5. memory 

6. garden 

and/or: 

1. letters 

2. year 

3. marvellous 

4. ways 

5. mother 

6. shadow

Here is my story:

The letters had come each year on my birthday, from my Aunt Barbara, but this one was different. It was signed “your loving Mother”. I stared at it for quite a while, noting the handwriting was the same as always, so it was definitely from Aunt Barbara, but the story had astonished me.

Barbara had been a shadow member of my family since I was born, often talked about, but always living just too far away to be able to visit. But she had visited. This latest letter explained quite a lot. While I hadn’t seen her, she had seen me. There had been glimpses of me playing in the garden, the face I’d made at my first taste of apples as a baby.

Aunt Barbara explained how, as a fourteen year old, she had been besotted with a local boy and after sneaking out to be with him several times, she became pregnant. With me! My parents had told me of the year long holiday they took all those years ago, with Mum’s much younger sister Barbara and while they were away, I was born. Somewhere along the way, Barbara was enrolled in a school and didn’t come home with us. My memory wasn’t clear on the details.

But now, this letter, from Barbara! Who wasn’t my mother’s younger sister at all, but her daughter, and my true Mother. My Mother had been my Grandmother. She had died five years ago, without ever telling me. Barbara went on to tell me of the day I was born, the labor had been the hardest work she had ever done, but once born, I was the most marvellous thing she had ever seen. Letters and postcards had been sent to friends and neighbours of how my mother (Grandmother, I thought to myself now) had been so surprised to discover she was expecting again after so long and was now happy to announce the birth of another daughter.

The final paragraph hardly surprised me. Barbara wanted to meet me. She had seen me around town a few times and knew who I was, because I was like her in so many ways. I didn’t know what to do. Of course I wanted to meet her, but what would I say? How would we begin to get to know each other?