SUMMER FICTION WRITING COMPETITION!
Dear Readers,
Reading your stories has given me great hope for the future of our craft. It’s incredible how talented and erudite you all are.
I am hosting a new summer writing competition.
The theme of your stories should be RELATIONSHIPS, in the broadest sense of the word.
You have until the 18th of July 2023 to get your stories in.
Please post your stories on this thread.
They be should be no more than seven-hundred and fifty words.
Because of the amount of reading that will have to be done, the competition will be for paid subscribers only.
Write with freedom, without inhibition.
Your loving writer,
Hanif xx
A Healing Bath
Ilona loved baths as far back as I can remember. Maybe they helped calm her anxiety. Maybe she never trusted showers again. I don’t know, we didn’t discuss the reasons for this preference.
As a child she didn’t want me in the bathroom when she bathed. It didn’t seem fair; she was always there to hover over me — I think she feared I’d drown. Imagine drowning in ten inches of water. The shallow tub in our apartment did not seem at all dangerous.
One time, when I was five, I heard the water running; the bathroom door was ajar. It was easy to peak inside. The tub faced away so that your back was to the door. I was quiet, I observed her without detection. Inside, I saw mother spooning up water to her face with her beautiful soft hands - she sighed “ooOoooOoo” like you’d sooth a baby. My mother was in her mid-thirties, her hands were punctuated with firm blue veins and her perfect fingernails bright red; long slender fingers dancing like silky underwater plants in motion. Her face was smooth — creamy and taught, she was skinny and pale.
Then I saw her naked back. As she ran the washcloth over her neck, then across her shoulder blades down to her lower back I saw some shiny shimmery pinkish shapes, like fossils you learn about in school. They looked like worms of varying lengths, some one inch some five inches but not bigger. I wondered if she was made of stone but giggled to myself knowing she was soft, not hard that way — but could sometimes be mean and scary.
My mother had but a few simple habits and desires. She was steadfast in her love of long comforting baths. When she grew old she couldn’t care for herself and moved to an elder care home. Time had altered her - her mind was soft; her body plump.
The care staff were very kind. Most were obviously immigrants, usually in their twenties or thirties — Mother asked about their homelands, their histories. Her favorites bathed her twice a week in the luxurious tub with jets, which were at first scary to her but then quite exciting.
I visited her often, right after work as the building was located on my route home. Sometimes we had dinner in the community dining room. The care staff knew me and welcomed me and politely repeated their names until I knew them too.
Several months after she moved in, I was approached by Andrew who’d been nominated to be the spokesperson on behalf of mom’s care team.
“Judy, can we ask you a question about your mom?”
“Yes, of course, anything - is everything OK? I know sometimes she’s difficult.”
“Oh, no - not at all. She is most kind to all of us and wants to talk about our lives. We wonder what language she is speaking to us when not in English?”
“Yiddish, or maybe Hungarian. As people age they sometimes fall back into their native language even if they stopped speaking it years ago.”
“Oh, sure that’s probably right. But Judy can I ask you another question please?”
“Yes, what’s up?”
“Your mother’s back. It is full of scars. Deep ones, like trenches. We care for many people but have never seen a back like hers. What caused such marks on her body?”
“Ah, have none of you asked her?”
“No, we wouldn’t want to make her sad.”
“Ask her — she would love to tell you her story.”
The next time I visited, I was greeted by the care team. They pulled me aside before finding mom in her favorite chair watching TV.
“Judy, your mother was in the world war. She was a teenager and they killed her parents and beat her with a whip to make her work harder in the factory.”
“Yes, this is true.”
“She said she was a slave, she and her sisters nearly starved to death because they were Jewish people. After she was set free she came to this country.”
“That’s true as well.”
“None of us knew this was so recent a history of the world. Now we’ve learned this from your mother.”
“Did it make her sad to tell you about it?”
“No, she said she was happy to help us to learn something new. Then she held Amara who cried in her arms. She is from Ethiopia and escaped a war to come here. Your mom said to her: “We are the same, aren’t we?”
I realized after the first contest that writing for a contest is not my thing. I really enjoy reading what others have written. This is a good thing. Thank you for doing it.