Hello, Friends. Welcome back for another Friday spent with Lisa-Jo and the Five-minute crowd. Today, we’re taking five minutes to write on the prompt Visit. Do you have five minutes to write, read, or both? Why don’t you join us?
1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. And then absolutely, no ifs, ands or buts about it, you need to visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments. Seriously. That is, like, the rule. And the fun. And the heart of this community…
Today’s Prompt: Visit
The summer before she died, we traveled to Texas to visit my grandmother. I only knew her through the snippets of stories I caught through door cracks and loose family lips. As best I could tell, the stories were better left untold. I rarely saw her, and the only thing she ever gave me were legs that can run long distances without falling to pieces.
She fell to pieces in other ways, and all the gifts she may have given over the years lay dormant, trapped in her grief, cigarettes, and far too many bottles of wine. That summer, she gave me a ring. She slipped the ruby off her finger and put it in the palm of my hand. I don’t think it fit me just yet.
Months later, after her death, my father drove up from her home in Texas with a U-haul full of her things. I slept in her four poster cherry wood bed after that. I wore her ring sometimes, and I caught myself staring into her dressing mirror and wondering what it was she saw there. I won’t ever know.
I hear the full stories of her life now. Of the loss and the spiraling and the sadness that she tried to drink away. She made horrible choices, she took and took, but just before she died she gave something precious away. And I still wear it today.
