drabble: the box in the back of the closet

Sorting through the detritus of my grandmother's estate, I find the box with the teddy bears. Both are musty and dusty and dull with cobwebs that have been collecting for decades. Dad's bear is badly worn, missing an eye and an ear, its stubby tail only half attached, legacy of four brothers living in the same bedroom. My bear is still intact, softer and fuzzier, still smiling gently, a memory of comfort during my parents’ split.

I can't bring myself to throw them out, so now the two bears have a new box in the back of a new closet. There won't be a third.

Tep, please tell me you had no idea such EXCELLENT drabbles would come of this topic...

Well, I know the quality of writing all y'all produce in general. Hell, I bet I could make bellybutton lint a topic and the drabbles would kick ass.

And then, I was trying to be organized and put shit away last weekend, which involved throwing the Guest Linens (from SA's visit) in the back of the closet when they came out of the dryer, and a shoebox on the floor of the closet caught my eye. Now, all this particular shoebox held was sandals I had worn in a wedding, but I hadn't realized the box got shoved over to that side of the closet; I thought I had taken all the ill-chosen wedding shoes to Goodwill back in January.

And it just got me thinking along the lines of "What's in the box at the back of YOUR closet?"

OK, I can't claim to stick to the 100 word limit because I don't count, but anyway...

Gifts

It was a special occasion to explore my mom's closet. Behind her dresses and shoes, which I can still smell, was the box. Covered in 70s orange floral contact paper, it was a treasure box to us in New Mexico. A plastic thermos smelling of salt, shells from shores we'd never seen. A cowrie shell before we knew what to call it was the coveted piece, to wrap our tiny fingers around, tuck into. Shells I still cannot name. Creatures only seen in National Geographic. The plastic lobster claw bottle opener from Maine, the handmade wine corkscrew with my father's name burnt into it by his grandfather. A hand carved russian dancing bear older than they, the swedish kroner, the Japanese bills. The musty stuffed dog of unknown origins, a terrier, I think. The leather horse on wheels, dinged with age, squeaking wheels, stories of Sweden. All carrying scents of a wooden age, scents that made us feel safe and loved and special. Scents from all over the world. Carried for decades all across the continent, from beyond the continent.

Did they know they were giving us the gift of flight? Of explorations?

I have my own box now.

That's wonderful, sarameg. Made me smile.

And I can't believe I totally left out the heavy old black dial phone! The one made of ...that stuff. Mid century, pre-plastic. Can't recall what it is called. Thermolite? I know the smell though. They still have it. Some of the other stuff is gone. I loved getting access to that box.

I swear, I do these drabbles to recover buried memories. (ooh, the spool wheeled trains! The poured iron dog figures and cannon replicas and lead deposit from my grandpa's shop. This stuff was largely from my parents' childhood and travels. Pure gold.)

The one made of ...that stuff. Mid century, pre-plastic. Can't recall what it is called.

Bakelite.

Yup. We've got one sitting on our telephone stand. It's, err, hardwired to the wall, so I'm not apt to move it.

It's almost sad that modern folk have no experience with the old fashioned party line, ie, one phone line for several households. You learned your own ring and resisted the temptation to pick up the phone very quietly when it rang for the folks up the road *again*.

This reminiscence brought to you by the mention of the bakelite phone.

Prayers of the People (100 words)

Her rosary sits in a box on my closet shelf, untouched for a decade. One day, net-surfing, I see the words again, and her voice is in my ear, her loving hands upon my shoulders. I weep, uncontrollably, the way I did at that endless memorial, so wracked by tears I could not pay her proper tribute. I reach out, claim my faith, claim the struggle, grapple with a God I don't nderstand and can't always honestly claim to love. But by any God you care to name, I loved her. For me, God has always worn my grandmother's face.

I know that all y'all know that the drabbles can be fiction

See, I'm glad you posted this, because I haven't been doing the drabbles and want to start, but I don't like writing only non-fictional autobiographical stuff, and I wasn't sure if made-up stuff was allowed.

And your drabble made me laugh: My step-mother sent me all my stuff that was still in my old house (hers now), including a box with my homecoming corsages. I'm from the part of the world where girls get decorated like prize heifers for homecoming, so these were masses of 3-foot-long ribbons with random shit attached to them. Little gold football helmets, horseshoes, things like that. One of them had a rabbit's foot.

Let me tell you, when your husband pulls a 20-year-old skeletal rabbit claw off of the grease spot it's stuck to, he's going to want an explanation.

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So, writerly types: help me? On a whim I submitted a story for a contest. Wrote it in a couple days, mostly because I don't do enough creative stuff anymore and wanted the exercise. It got selected for publishing (don't they know I can't write?), but the editors have asked for revisions. What works for you when revising a story? I've revised term papers and government reports, but I've never let anyone see my creative writing before, so this is new to me.

The editors comments are slightly helpful in some respects, but, and this is the weird thing, they've decided that the anthology will be fantasy/sci-fi stories on the original contest theme. So they want me to make my story fantasy/sci-fi. And provided no insight as to how I might, or what they saw in the story that made them think it could work as fantasy/sci-fi.

I had a brief urge to stick in a telepathic dragon and call it good, but I'm now thinking there will be serious re-writes. What if it comes out way different than the story they originally selected?