memoir

Well, I Never!

lbeth1950's avatarNutsrok

Well, I Never…

There are some things I do quite well. I am a very good cook. I am quite comfortable giving a talk or making a presentation. I enjoyed being a nurse and believe I was a good one, but there are some things I am totally unable to do. I could never dance or do anything requiring grace or rhythm. I could take dance lessons forever and would only end up embarrassing myself and my teacher. I can carry a tune, but have absolutely no musical talent. I have dreams that one day I will sit down at a piano and music will flow from my fingertips. The only way that will ever happens is if possibly lightning strikes me and scrambles my neurons, rendering me a different person. Foreign language and math are Greek to me, pun intended. I don’t even attempt to keep a checkbook. It’s…

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Kids Logic

amommasview's avatarA Momma's View

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Molly and Andrew Part 17

Molly was stunned to see Andrew standing before her.  She’d long ago given him up. He was emancipated and scarred, little resembling the healthy man she’d last seen.  He dropped to the ground at her feet, wrapping his arms around her legs. “Molly, Molly, I thought I’d never see you again.”

Overwhelmed at his unexpected return after so long, she was bewildered and confused.  As he wept and buried his head in her skirts, she dropped to her knees and held him.  The little girls clung to their mother as she called to Jamie,  “Go get Pap and Gran!  Run! Run!”

Jamie whirled and ran, shrieking, “Pap!  Gran!  Ma wants you!  Hurry!”

Molly felt no connection to the poor wretch she was trying to comfort. Her crying girls added to the confusion by pulling at her.  Amid all this, she heard the weak cries of an infant coming from his pack.

“”Feed him, please.  He’s had nothing since yesterday morning.”  With this, Andrew struggled to work a pack off his back.  He lay it on the ground, tenderly unwrapping it to reveal a starving baby boy, bound in a malodorous blanket.  The child could have been no more than a few weeks old.  “Help please,” he beseeched her.  “He may yet die.”

“God in Heaven!  Poor baby!  Hurry girls.  We have to feed him!”  Forgetting Andrew, she scooped up the wailing baby and ran for the house, pulling Hannah by the hand. Aggie kept up the best she could.  She couldn’t see Will, Aggie, and Jamie reaching Andrew behind her.  With the baby in one arm, she heated milk in a pan over the fire.  As it warmed, she hastily washed the baby, wrapping it snugly in a towel.  Dipping a clean cloth in warm milk over and over, the baby sucked. Meanwhile, Will and Addie supported Andrew between them, seated him at the table, and got him food and drink.  Afterward, Will helped him bathe and get into James’ nightshirt then into bed in spare room.

In the meantime, Molly and Addie bathed and dressed the baby, settling it in the cradle.  Once it was full, warm, and dry, the baby gave them no trouble.

As the excitement settled and the children played at their feet, Molly, Will, and Addie tried to piece the story together.  Apparently, Andrew and a few others had been enslaved by the Powhatan tribe, since his capture.  They had been able to escape after a recent trader brought measles, decimating the village, leaving no one to pursue them.  They’d been traveling several days and he the baby were the only survivors.

Molly had no idea what to make of Andrew’s return with the baby.  She’d married Andrew in England and then, thinking him dead, married James in Jamestown.,  She had no idea where this left her, but today there was business to tend.  At Addie’s suggestion, she sent Will to pay to fine and bargain for the indenture of a sixteen-year-year old girl who was sitting in jail for the crime of having had a bastard child.  It had been stillborn yesterday, so she should still be able to nurse this baby.

She would just deal with what had to be done today and let tomorrow take care of itself.  For now, everyone under her roof was fed and safe.

I Love Mr. Henry

lbeth1950's avatarNutsrok

loveMr. Henry was the one admitted as a patient, but the nurses took care of Miss Alice, too.  Mr. Henry had to have been in his late forties when he married simple-minded little Miss Alice, a girl of fourteen.  Nowadays, that would have been a case for the courts, but when it happened back in the sixties, there was no one to speak for Miss Alice.  They’d been married more than thirty years when I knew them and appeared to dote on each other.  Miss Alice never voluntarily left his side, except to go down to the courtyard to bum cigarettes from patients and staff smoking in the long ago days when hospitals had smoking areas.  Sometimes she even talked folks out of a little money.  After a successful run, she’d bring a couple back up to him to smoke in the room.  Miss Alice ended almost every conversation with, “I…

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Andrew and Molly Part 16

James Andrew Wharton  made his appearance seven  months later, a hearty little fellow.  His parents and Will and Aggie Bartles purely doted on him.  Molly was amused that she’d ever thought James or Aggie stern, especially as they coddled and spoke nonsense to Jamie.  Molly and Aggie enjoyed their new status as free citizens and were active in church.

James Wharton lost some of his austere persona with the happiness of his marriage.  Molly’s relationship with him blossomed as she had leisure to spoil him, a luxury she and Andrew had never enjoyed.  She was surprised to find him a skilled and generous lover with none of the urgency she’d experienced with Andrew.  Before Jamie was a year old, she was pregnant again.  James was ecstatic to see his family increasing.  He engaged a young bondswoman woman to help Molly as soon as he could.  James had expanded his acreage and engaged another man soon after they married.

Molly gave birth to a girl she named for Addie then little Hannah the next year.  She teased James that he’d tricked saying he wouldn’t be a virile husband then landed her two babies in a year.  He added rooms as the family grew, including one for Josie, the bondswoman.  The children called Addie and Will grandparents.  The family truly thrived.

The four years Molly shared with James were precious, all the more because she knew she wouldn’t have him with her forever.  One evening after supper, he took her hand.  “Mollygirl, I am old.  When I work hard, it pains my chest.  I want you to know, you are the best part of my life.  I have my affairs in order.  I will engage another man to ease my labor, but I won’t be with you much longer.”

Molly wept softly in his arms.  “I will always love you, dearest.”

He began spending his days around the house with Molly as the bondsman worked the farm.  Two months later, Molly went to wake him for breakfast and found he’d left left.  She’d lost two husbands before she was twenty-five.

She grieved James as Will Bartles helped her learn to run the farm along with the two bondsman, though not a day passed that she didn’t think of his strength and kindness.  One morning as she hung clothes on the line, a man in buckskins came running from the woods.  She was gathering her little ones to run when she heard a familiar voice calling, “Molly!  Molly!”

 

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jacquelineobyikocha's avatara cooking pot and twisted tales

Income through creativity. Publish, Earn, blog, promote, revenue streams, Niume

Publish and Start Earning Immediately

Earning from their creativity is the biggest challenge that most bloggers/creators face.

One of the goals of this platform blog is to seek tested ways that bloggers/writers, creative people can maximize and get the best out of their creativity and a huge part of that is earning some revenue.

It is my belief that asides from personal gratification, an artist/creator should earn from their endeavours and I can’t say this enough. We also have bills to pay like every other person.

In my quest to keep sourcing for ways of building income streams from my passion, I came across Niume.com.

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Therefore, I would like to share with my readers’. You can promote your blog, publish your…

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Andrew and Molly Part 15

Whaton and Bartles spoke to the clergyman first thing the next morning, explaining the need for a quick marriage.  He agreed it was in the best interest of all parties to marry mmediately to avoid the appearance of wrong doing.  Molly would have liked time to make a fine dress, but Aggie loaned her a lace collar and presented Molly with two yards of fine linen and a skein of lace for a new apron.  Her blue Linsey-Wolsey was still new enough to make her proud as she stood beside Master Wharton in what was to be her new home.  Aggie and Will Bartles felt like family as they stood up with her.  The relief at her unexpected marriage helped  salve her grief at the loss of the first man she’d ever loved, the father of her unborn child.  She determined to look ahead with joy and gratitude. They were all relieved when the minister stated he’d not checked a calendar in three days, so it was up to them to record their marriage dates in their own Bible. “I’ve lost track of the dates of a lot of marriages over the years.  The happiness of a marriage never seemed to depend on the date,”  he told them as he left.

Aggie had baked a honey cake and served a heady punch while Battles served a pig roasted with yams and corn, so the wedding feast was fine.  Aggie and Will insisted on doing their evening chores as a wedding favor then left them alone as the crickets chirped and fireflies flashed in the early evening.  They stood together in the fading light till her new husband told her they needed to go in.

“Sit with me,” he said, taking her hand and lead her to a seat at the table. “I know you didn’t marry me for love, but I vow that I will make you as good a husband as I am able.  I will love you and hope you feel kindly toward me, as well.  Your child will be mine.  I won’t ask for more than you can give now, but look forward to being your husband n every sense when you’ve put your grief behind.”

“James, you are my husband today and every day.  I would not have married you had I not intended to be your true wife.  We will make our way together, Dearest.”

She stood and took his weathered hand.

 

 

 

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islandeditions's avatarBooks: Publishing, Reading, Writing

READERS will also find this interesting (and they can *see below how they may help), but …

This post is mainly for all you angst-ridden authors out there who moan and groan about how little promotion and publicity you receive for the books you publish. Yes, it’s true, there are definitely fewer outlets reviewing books or interviewing authors. So what are we supposed to do to get the word out and attract new readers to our work?

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When I ePublished my first novel, I received “some” attention (i.e. Not a lot …) for my efforts, but I carried on regardless and continued to promote other authors, as well as my own books, through my business Alberta Books Canada. Then I moved back to the Caribbean and become much more involved in the online writing community, especially with regards to indie authors around the world who…

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