Two drabbles, in an effort to write something unlike the wip:

Sleep

It’s a pet cliché of romance writers to say someone looks younger and more vulnerable asleep. Take your rugged hero, have him sleep next to the heroine (usually after they first consummate their love), and she’ll notice how boyish and sweet he looks.

As is the way of clichés, there’s truth in it. But I never expected it to fit a one-year-old. Awake, Annabel is a child. She’s slender and strong-boned. Her eyes are alert with mischievous intelligence, and she’s just learned to run. But asleep she curls in on herself, all soft and round and fragile. She’s a baby.

It’s All Relative

A grocery store on a weekday afternoon. Annabel sits in the shopping cart, wishing I’d steer it close enough to let her strip the shelves of all those lovely bright red cans of processed tomatoes. Another mother passes us, with a baby still in a bucket car seat. “Jaden, look at that big girl.”

Safeco Field on a Sunday afternoon. Annabel and I stroll the upper level concourse. She accepts the enchanted smiles of fellow fans and ballpark employees as no more than her due. Along our path there’s a family with a screaming three-year-old in a stroller. I try to pass them, politely blind and deaf, but Annabel pulls me to a stop so she can investigate. “Look, Hannah, that little baby is smiling. I bet she took her nap.”

Both of them are lovely, Susan.

I've always thought it was grossly unfair that babies - who don't need to look like perfect roses while sleeping - are so gorgeous when they sleep. Adults? Not so much.

drabble

Sweet sixteen and never . . .

He's a senior from the play we're in. He sidles up in the high school cafeteria. "Why not come for a walk with me after lunch?"

"Um, what?"

"Come out to the parking lot with me."

"Why?"

He smiles, leans closer. "Get to know each other better."

"Uh . . ." Confused, I just slip off to my usual table and friends.

It's years before I realize what he might have wanted with a redhead with big, naive blue eyes and a startlingly precocious bustline.

Ignorance is bliss.

HA! connie, I was about to post one that's not only on the ignorance is bliss theme, but on the same experience.

Ignorance is Bliss: February 1970, the Capitol Theatre, Portchester, New York

Ah, innocence.

The Dead just finished. It's two in the morning, the last Manhattan train left an hour ago, I'm in a miniskirt, and it's snowing.

Garcia sees me peering out the backstage door. "Miss the train?"

"Yes." Snowflakes spatter my face. "FUCK!"

He grins. "Want a ride?"

"Yes! Manhattan, right?"

"Nope. North - New Palz. But you can catch a ride."

I blink. wondering why he thinks I'd want to go north. The band's manager leans over, looking amused. "Deb," he whispers, "the only thing you're going to catch in New Palz is the clap."

So how'd you get home?

So how'd you get home?

You would have laughed your head off at me. I stood out there on the damned train platform, huddled in the only doorway I could find - it was an outdoor station, with a little waiting room, and they locked the waiting room at midnight every night - until the first NY bound train showed up at not quite 7:00 am.

The real pisser? I got home, with mild frostbite, and there was my mother, furious and manic, shrieking at me that I'd spent the night with someone. Bad timing on her part - first, she normally paid less attention to what I chose to do than she did to, say, the outgassing of one of Jupiter's moons. Second, I hate being accused of things I haven't done.

So I snarled back at her, shut UP, I did NOT, I could have spent the night in a nice warm bed with a nice warm musician but I didn't want to, I spent the night shivering my inadequately clad ass off. And then stomped off muttering to myself to run a hot bath and get a couple of hours sleep.

I actually did have mild frostbite, no exaggeration. No fun. But weirdly enough, she dropped it. I guess that for once, the truth was so obvious even to her that she had to believe it.

"Do you think I'd look like this if I didn't have to!"

which reminds me ...

Locking the stable door after the horse is gone

Senior year in college, my friends from high school are all home on the same weekend for once, and we're headed out.

"See you later, Mother, I'll put gas in the car."

"Be home by ten."

I stop, turn and stare. "Ten? The movie doesn't even start till 8."

"All right, eleven."

I'll be 21 in three months. I've never had a curfew--but then, I never went out in high school. I'm the only other one in the house since Daddy died, and not for much longer.

It's too late to remember your last child and try to hang on.

Do y'all ever worry about people taking your ideas? Because my mother just warned me to be careful sharing my manuscript.a. I had not really considered this. b. It made me laugh because, uh, I would have given some of the people with whom I shared it something more intimate, if they wanted it.ETA: I didn't tell my mother that. We don't need to be...that close.

Not really. If anyone ever out-and-out stole my very words, I could prove they're mine and take legal action. As for the ideas--well, if you gave any ten of us on this thread the same idea, we'd end up with ten very different novels. Which isn't to say I wouldn't be bummed if someone beat me to market with one of my more gimmicky high-concept ideas (say the baseball time travel or the Peninsular War werewolf story), because then I'd seem like an imitator following a trend rather than an author following her muse. But I still don't worry about it, except to spur myself to write faster, dammit.