Growing Pains Chapter One Continued: Leaving Home Town

Growing Pains Chapter One Continued: Leaving Home Town.

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Growing Pains Chapter One Continued: Leaving Home Town

“But I don’t want to move! What about my school? All my friends are here.” Annie whined with all the desperation that can come from having no control over what happens to you.

Her life had been wrapped in this town for as long as she could remember.

She could feel her face getting hot as she stormed out of the kitchen and up to her room. She threw herself onto the bed and started to cry. Her mind was racing. She couldn’t believe it! She was in her last year of junior high and anxious enough about starting high school in the fall. In the past two years she had a paper route and had formed special friendships with a few of her customers. These women would later be thought of fondly by her, as some in the long line of influential people in her life. She had been having a hard time with her relationships with her two best friends.  They were becoming very close to each other and were beginning to leave her out a lot.  She had felt betrayed, powerless and foolish for sharing her friends with each other. It was a confusing time for her as it was and the idea of moving out of town to the country seems like the end of her world.

Besides, she was a town kid. She rode her bike everywhere.  The bike she had saved up for after walking the first year of her paper route. She loved to feel the wind blowing through her hair. She had wanted long hair all her life. She loved the beach where she had spent a lot of time with her dad. On Sunday mornings they would sometimes go fishing and sometimes they would just sit and talk over donuts, coffee and cocoa. Her brother and she would always get so excited when their mother would turn a maybe into a yes and they would gather up their towels, jump into their bathing suits and race to the VW Beatle Bug, her mother drove, to see who would get there first to sit in the front seat. Her mother would saunter out, book in hand. Off they’d go. She could smell the sea air as they’d get closer and hear the seagulls call. She would get so giddy. As soon as they’d get there she would drop her towel on the sand and run as fast as she could down to the water and jump right in. Her younger brother would love to sit and make mud pies with the wet sand and her mother would settle onto the blanket she laid out where she would sit and read looking up every now and then to check on their whereabouts.

She babysat for her history teacher’s kids. She really looked forward to any babysitting opportunities on a Friday or Saturday night. It was a chance to get out of the house, to feel independent and, like her paper route; it was a chance to make her own money.

“How could they do this to her?”

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Growing Pains Chapter One: Leaving Home Town

Growing Pains Chapter One: Leaving Home Town.

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Growing Pains Chapter One: Leaving Home Town

Leaving Home Town

It had been a long winter, one of displacement, one of isolation and one of uncertainty but it was now April. The snow was starting to melt under the warmth of the spring sun and so brought a sense of renewed hope to her, to all of them.

“Annie, can you come down here?” she heard her mother call.

She put down her book. “I’m coming, Mom.”

Her family had moved to this farm ten miles outside of town, a week before Christmas, from the quaint town where she had lived since she was four.

It was her mother’s dream to raise animals and grow her own food. She had wanted to live on a farm ever since her stepfather had moved her and her mother to his farm when she was twelve. But it wasn’t her dream.

They had been in the grocery store not too long ago. Her father’s company was on strike and Mom was adding up the groceries as she went. They were at the meat counter when her mother gasped at the prices but were in the grocery checkout line when she turned to Annie and said. “Geez Anne, meat prices are getting so high we really need a farm.”

It sounded like a neat idea at the time. The reality of that statement and what all that entailed she would learn, all too well, soon enough. Then what seemed like a few innocent Sunday drives in the country turned into packing up the home of her childhood.

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Walking Along This Dark and Quiet Road

Walking Along This Dark and Quiet Road.

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Walking Along This Dark and Quiet Road

Walking Along This Dark and Quiet Road

By Kat McMann

Walking along this dark and quiet road

Feeling very frightened, feeling very alone.

Crackles and howls from the woods beyond.

Not really knowing if friend, foe or fawn.

Someone comes to walk beside being informed of path behind.

Yet the air is still cold and the path just as barren.

Not a flicker of light to be seen in the night.

My companion trying to assure everything will be alright.

Takes my hand gently as not to add pain

To the misery felt at making no gain.

To look behind, to look ahead to feel as though one in the same.

To have the fear of never seeing a star, to never stop feeling always to blame.

Not knowing where this road leads and what to come.

Makes for fear in the soul and dread in the heart.

The wind never colder takes every step in vain.

Causing me to stumble, to cry out in pain.

As the fog rolls in, images disappear.

 It clouds my vision seems no one is near.

Hearing whispers in the darkness not knowing what to expect.

Feeling only emptiness; loss of all hope and respect.

Wanting to run and wanting to hide

 though the one who walks along keeps pulling me beside.

Trying to look on ahead but not able to see.

From this darkness, never to be set free?

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Forget Me Not

Forget Me Not.

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Forget Me Not

Forget Me Not

By

Kat McMann

 

Think of me when you feel alone.

I am in your heart, you are home.

I am there when the rain falls down

And when you hear the birds’ sweet sound.

Think of me also, when you laugh

And know I’m with you on your path.

I am there laughing with you, too.

T’was our favorite thing to do.

Think of me again while you cook

And the time, to teach you, I took.

I am there when you serve others,

making sure their needs you cover.

Think of me when you pick flowers.

They too have their healing powers.

I am there when you shed a tear.

Forget me not, for I am here.

                                                       ∞

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Soul Mates Forever

Soul Mates Forever.

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Soul Mates Forever

Soul Mates Forever

All of a sudden, she was aware she was dreaming.  She loved dreaming. There she was skipping and dancing through a field full of wild flowers with the sun shining down on her face. She was happy in her dream. She hadn’t been happy in a long time.  Not until she had met a man online whom she believed was her soul mate and the man she had been looking for her whole life.  The sun was so bright she had to close her eyes. When a big, puffy cloud passed in front of it she opened them again.

As soon as her eyes opened she saw the light.  It was a big, round light shining down on her. She tried to turn her head to look around but the doctor who was standing next to her bed, patted her shoulder and said, “Welcome back”.

She looked up at him, confused at first, and then her memories came flooding into her mind and the tears streamed down her face.

She had been on her way to meet her love, for the first time, the night before.  The last thing she remembered about the accident was seeing the truck that was trying to avoid a deer, approaching on her side of the road.

“I know you’ve been through a lot”, he continued, ” but rest assured I was able to repair the damages caused to your face”.

As he handed her a mirror, she gazed at the reflection.

How could this be?

It was……… of him.

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