Response to picture prompt and 100 word challenge.
This is the first year without his card. Every year for forty-two years he sent the sweetest Valentine’s Day card with an invitation to dine out as though we were young and it was our first date.
I would take a long bath in gardenia perfumed water, do my toes and nails, apply the usually not worn make-up and dry my hair into some-what controllable waves. I have very curly hair that likes to roll up and stay on my head so I rarely bother using the blow-dryer.
The rules are simple: 1. Post the last photo on your SD card or last photo on your phone for the 31st January. 2. No editing – who cares if it is out of focus, not framed as you would like or the subject matter didn’t cooperate. 3. You don’t have to have any explanations, just the photo will do 4. Create a Pingback to this post or link in the comments 5. Tag “The Last Photo”
I was raised in an extremely strict household. Literally, children were to be seen and never heard. Children did not speak at the table, and so forth.
When my children entered the world, I vowed they would have the freedoms I never had. Freedom to explore their surroundings, to learn about themselves and to question authority, respectfully of course, when a task, request or command felt wrong. Not to just bow down to the “because I said so” mentality I grew up with, without explanation of why.
I’m sure most if not every parent who is reading this, is now rolling their eyes and have predicted the outcome of my very noble endeavors, correctly. I raised, unknowingly, naively even; iconoclast children. Rebel mongers. Rule breakers. Social outcasts.
Yet, I can not say I am sorry. My children know themselves, really know themselves. They hold their own in confrontations but are kind, gentle and compassionate with their partners; of whom they also hold their own or capitulate, depending on the issue.
To be honest, it was pure Satans Fire when they hit and went through their teenage years. I did not think I would survive it, but I did; and now I get to watch it play out all over once again as my daughter raises her extremely iconoclastic son.
Response to Weekend Writing Prompt #246: This weekend your challenge is to write a poem or a piece of prose in exactly 51 words using the word Saunter.
As a people, as a Nation, in one of the most medically advanced countries in the world; there is absolutely no reason so many of our citizens go without health and dental care.
Except for Greed. Greed has overshadowed, no; completely absorbed any semblance of responsibility and compassion for the sick, chronically ill and elderly and turned the care of our loved ones and ourselves into a multi-trillion dollar business with CEO’s and CFO’s, financial analysts, consulting firms, sponsored pharmaceutical research and pill mongering.
Yachts, limousines, mansions and vacation resorts built on outrageous prices propagated by greedy insurance companies; the middle man, the barterer, the auctioneers of our health care. No matter what the doctor says you need, when the insurance company says no go; we go without the prescribed medication while they go to Bermuda.
It’s time we insist on quality health, dental, vision, and hearing care. This country, these innovations were developed out of need. We are in need again and if we as a people, do not demand regulating our insurance and pharmaceutical companies, the only losers will be us. Insist on it!
