Carolina Woman magazine is delighted to continue almost 20 years of hosting its annual Writing Contest. As always, it was near impossible to choose the top dogs. So, prize-winners were published last month; staff favorites are below; and crowd-pleasers will run in July. Keep those pens and keyboards at the ready. It’s never too early to start creating for next year’s competition.
– Debra Simon, Editor & Publisher
"Mothers Are Always Right"
fiction by Teri M. Brown of Calabash
I grab the bulletin and hastily read the front page. I am definitely at the right place. Thank goodness! My GPS has been on the blink for days and the last ‘left’ turned me in the wrong direction. Now that I’m finally here, I glance at my watch and shake my head at my tardiness. I’m a full hour and a half late. What will everyone think?
The long line snakes through several rooms and disappears into the main lounge. I skip the queue, choosing not to heed my mother’s advice about patience being a virtue. Instead, I walk past persistent attendees who inch forward one shuffle at a time, desperate to see the honored guest.
I worry that someone will pull me back into the line insisting I wait my turn. However, my brashness doesn’t arouse even a modest protest. In fact, no one looks in my direction. I’m both pleased and bothered. You’d think at least one impatient soul would roll their eyes or mutter under their breath. “Everyone is too busy worrying about themselves to worry about you,” my mother always said. Based on today’s crowd, it seems she had a point.
As I weave in and out, I catch snippets of conversation among the guests.
“I’ve heard she’s wearing that lovely blue suit, the one with the tiny white flowers on the collar.”
“Blue?” I mumble. Someone needs to inform her stylist that blue is not her color. Of course, if I’d been on time, I might have been able to make a recommendation such as the red scoop neck dress or even the black and purple floral. Anything but the blue. And those tiny flowers? Have we transported back to the 90s?
I hear my mother’s words as if she is standing beside me, “If you are not 10 minutes early, you are late.” I wonder what 90 minutes behind schedule makes me? Tardy? Delinquent? Slothful? Meeting expectations?
“Her children are all here. Even Randi. You remember her, don’t you? The black sheep who was kicked out after the trouble with that Harrelson boy?”
I pause in my forward pursuit, hoping to look nonchalant rather than nosy. Two ladies who look familiar – Grace? Angel? Something Biblical – continue in a not-so-hushed whisper.
“Trouble? More like pregnancy and a stint in a convent.”
A third woman chimed in. “Nope. She was running drugs across state lines. Her stint was in the slammer.”
They were all wrong, but as my mom always said, “It will all come out in the wash.” And my extreme tardiness kept me from trying to explain the whys of Randi’s behavior to these gossiping busybodies.
“I’d rather be at the dentist getting a root canal. I hate these things.”
A root canal? Surely such a statement is offensive. Why are there so many nods? I hurry past mumbling, “Don’t come if you don’t want to be here. A root canal of all things.”
At long last, I reach the front of the line, grimacing at the blue dress.
Without further ado, I climb into the casket. My mother was right when she said I’d be late to my own funeral. Thankfully, she can be happy I left the house wearing clean underwear.
"One Task at a Time"
nonfiction by Jayne Jaudon Ferrer of Greenville, S.C.
Now they tell us.
Remember a few years ago, when we first started doing twenty things at once, how the "experts" assured us that the human brain was more than capable of "multitasking?" Turns out they lied. Not intentionally, I'm sure—we're only as informed as our last million dollar study—but the latest million dollar study says multitasking is not the panacea we were led to believe. (Do they really think anyone who has ever tried to drive a car while talking on a cell phone, eating lunch, and shuffling through radio stations, hasn't figured that out yet?)
Of course, mothers completely skew the data on studies like that. We moms have been multitasking ever since Eve tried to keep Cain from killing Abel while hanging onto her fig leaves and whipping up a little apple cobbler for Adam's lunch. I'm sure it's no coincidence that "mother" and "multitask" both start with "m." (Do not even go down the path about "men" starting with "m," too, or we will have to get into things like MENtal anguish and MENace. Just work with me here.) Show me a mother who isn't juggling at least half a dozen tasks at any given moment and I'll show you a rank imposter! Doesn't matter whether said children are small or large; mamas of grown children seem to handle as much fallout as mamas of babies. Of course, instead of making runs to Wal-Mart for poster board at 10 PM, they tend to make runs to the bank as soon as it opens, but the gist is essentially the same.
In any case, in the face of all this new evidence that multitasking is not doing anything beyond making us all nuts, I am declaring summer—with its slower pace and reduced number of deadlines—a time to focus on one task at a time. Whoa! That sound you just heard was the collective gasp of a gazillion people saying, "It can't be done!" And it's true: the world as we know it may indeed come to a screeching halt—but hey, put on your Adventure Barbie hat and give it a shot. Besides, if the world comes to a screeching halt, maybe we can all catch up!
Here are the rules; from now until Labor Day:
1) Eat no more than one meal a day in a moving vehicle.
2) If you are watching a program on TV, you may not get up during the commercials to wash dishes, walk the dog, pay bills, do your homework, clean out the closet, or fold the laundry. (You may, however, get up to get a snack that will undoubtedly enhance your viewing experience.)
3) When you are engaged in conversation with a real, live, in-the-flesh friend or business associate, you may NOT talk or text on your cell phone. You may not answer it or even look at it to assess the merit of interacting with that person over the one in front of you.
4) Once you utter the words "I am going to bed," you must go directly to bed. You may not do the Family Circus/follow the dotted path routine of completing thirty-seven different chores on the way there. Go DIRECTLY to bed (you should have brushed your teeth BEFORE making that declaration, but, yes, you may make ONE quick stop in the bathroom) and curl up with a good book or a good person—your choice.
5) Sit absolutely still for five minutes a day. This will not kill you, I promise. Do it in your car, on your front steps, on a bench in the park, or wherever you can carpe minutae. Stare at the clouds, watch a puppy play, study passersby, or simply be—while you enjoy the bliss of being momentarily idle.
You follow these rules for the next few weeks and I can pretty much guarantee that your brain—not to mention your blood pressure—will be in far better shape. Who decided we all have to get where we're going so much faster in the first place?!
Summer only happens once a year. Don't miss it!
"The Glen"
fiction by Erin Holberg of Asheville
I promised you I’d never love another. But this place where we’ve lived has made me a liar.
The sea is my home, where each of my lives starts and ends–the salt gritty on my skin, the salt filling my lungs. But this glen, this has become my love, because of you and how I can still smell the sea from here.
I remember when we married. When I wore ivory lace, and you were draped in the deep green wool of MacDonald tartan. The people of your past. The same people whose blood soaked this earth, the Glen of Mourning, and it’s almost as if I can hear their voices now, ghosts lucky to be born of a place so beautiful. But I find it all fitting, because today, I miss you most and have come to quiet that calling.
You never asked me to do this, and I’m old, but I climb. Climb high over ground that is dark and rich and ancient and holds more memories than the tin safely stored in my pack. And when I finally reach the summit, I see the land open around me, see the valleys and lochs and the path that I’ve climbed, and feel the wind tease the graying strands of my hair. It’s a breath I take then, closing my eyes, and there’s the sea. I can smell it. And it’s time, I know it’s time, so I open the tin and let you join the wind. Let you drift off to a distant place, a place I will never find.
After you’re gone, I return to Ballachulish. To our tiny cottage with the wrought iron gate, and I sit in the garden. I watch the bees gather on the foxgloves. Watch the sun set behind Beinn a’ Bheithir. And while this is my love, and you were my love, the wind has spoken, and it’s time I go home.
I wish I didn’t have to start over. Wished to be with you forever. But only one of us is capable of forever, and we both know wishing for what can’t be is for fools. So when the sun is gone, I leave our tiny cottage and the gate and the garden, and take myself down to the water where I slip back beneath, the salt filling my lungs.
"Alaskan Landscape"
poetry by Patricia Joslin of Charlotte
This is an ekphrastic poem written about the collage by Rebecca Vaughn, a North Carolina artist.
Your other-worldly vessel with portholes
and tall funnels seems out of place in this
pristine wilderness. Imagine yourself alone
in the bow of a seal-skinned kayak
as you cruise through Prince William Sound.
The Chugach Mountains gleam in the bright
white morning light. Soft yellow, maize,
golden rays stretch across the horizon,
warm your fingers and toes, though
the sights and sounds around you
are so magical you don’t even notice the cold.
The air smells fresh with a faint aroma of pine.
Ahead you spot orcas as they play in the bay’s
blue-gray waters. Starboard, sea otters splash,
create turquoise ripples. Evenings have been
too frigid to stay outdoors longer than an hour
to view the moon rise in dramatic splendor over
distant peaks, watch deep magenta shadows give
way to blackest night. Perhaps Northern Lights
will paint green and teal trails across the stars.
Tomorrow you will hike Alaskan paths, search
for brown grizzlies catching salmon in the shallows,
find rose-toned Alpine Azaleas just beginning to bloom.
"Seeds in a Field"
poetry by Maureen Sherbondy of Durham
Somehow, I’ve moved up the stairs
of generations. How did that happen?
Inside is a sixteen-year-old girl falling
in love with spring flowers—azaleas,
crepe myrtles, daffodils, and a boy
with eyes the color of Delphinium.
Those three sons were once untilled
seeds set in a faraway field
I’d yet to discover. My mother
now totters at the top of the staircase,
alarmed by that damn clock
ticking away on the old, cracked wall.
And crawling on the marble floor
is my child’s toddler,
trying to maneuver his new body
up that very first step.
Coming next month: Crowd-pleasers!