The exercise:
Write about: the search.
Had a nice Sunday with the family, capped off by transplanting our cabbage and broccoli plants into the garden in the late afternoon. Max was periodically helpful - when he wasn't trampling the seedlings or refusing to let me use the trowel because he needed it - and actually pretty good at separating the plants when there were two or three per cell.
I can just imagine what it'll be like out there with him in a couple of years.
Mine:
Keep looking, keep looking, keep looking. It's too soon to give up. Don't give up. Keep looking.
What about over there? No? Okay. That's okay. Just keep looking, all right? This is important. You understand that, don't you? Good. Good. Keep looking, will you? For me? Good.
It has to be around here somewhere. I mean, where else could it possibly be? Right? There's no way it escaped the house, just no way. So it's gotta be in here. Thinking it's been lost or forgotten. That would be worse, I think. Believing you've been forgotten?
But that's not what happened here. Okay? I know that it's missing. I haven't forgotten it ever existed. I'm not stupid. Okay? Good. Now help me find it already. Just keep looking!
My sanity has to be around here somewhere...
2 comments:
Hmm, I don't remember trampling the seedlings being in most of the gardening manuals, so Max must know something that the rest of us don't. And it sounds like you need two trowels ;-)
Heh, I really like the frantic air that your writing has today, and the punchline was very neatly delivered and fitted perfectly.
The search
"Dad, is this really a good idea?" Lydia whispered so that only her father would hear, and though she knew it would look suspicious she couldn't stop herself glancing nervously at the body-armoured and armed men gathering around them. Above them all the sky was getting darker; not only was the evening settling in, but storm-clouds were rolling across the sky with no end in sight. There was a slightly sour smell in the air that she couldn't place, and the birds were falling quiet faster than she'd expected.
"Your brother's missing," said her father shortly. He was only just taller than her and had a thick but neat mustache that seemed sergeant-majorish. His eyes, blue like cornflowers, were staring across Piggett's Field towards the straggly treeline that marked the start of Cobb's Woods. "We'll take all the help we can get."
"He's probably just run away again, Dad," said Lydia. There was a whole unspoken conversation here about who was supposed to have been looking after him.
"If you know that you'd better say so now." He didn't look at her. She wondered if she'd have the courage to call the search off now even if she did know where her brother was.
"I don't." Her voice sounded small, even in the silence that the evening had now brought. Someone coughed off to her left. "But, Dad?"
"What?"
"Is it really a good idea to let Charles Ascigiumento lead the search?"
Greg - yes, well, clearly someone out there knew more than somebody else... :P
And I did (eventually give up and go) get a second trowel from the garage. Seemed like the easier course of action.
Oh dear. Charles leading the search? This can only end in tears.
Loved your descriptions, by the way.
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