Skip to main content

Barbara, Mary, and Little Lucy


Chapter One

Barbara was wearing such a lovely hat! As she walked through town, she spied her own reflection in the large storefront windows.

A sign said, “Hand Painted Portraits – Capture Your Image.” And wanting to remember her lovely mood on this lovely day, Barbara stepped inside The Franklin Artist Studio.

Before she knew what happened, she agreed with Mr. Franklin that he should paint her portrait. After drawing her silhouette on the canvas, the artist jumped up and went out the front door. He quickly returned with a flowering branch, cut from a crape myrtle shrub.

He told his sitter, “Hold this leafy-green branch in both hands. It will add balance to the painting.”

Barbara smiled, “I’ve always loved crape myrtle. It reminds me of my childhood home in the South.”

Mr. Franklin checked a notebook on his desk. “Ok, let’s see. Come back every Saturday morning for the next three weeks.” Barbara was shocked. “Really? That many times?”


Chapter Two

The next day, Barbara was shopping for a sweet treat in the candy store with her daughter Little Lucy. Looking toward the rear of the store, Lucy laughed and pointed her finger. “I see something very special back there.”

Barbara’s mouth was watering. She asked, “Is it chocolate fudge?” Lucy shook her head from side to side. They walked down the aisle.

Mary, Barbara’s friend, was standing next to a special machine with a stool inside. She was counting the change from her pocket. Mary muttered, “twenty-five, fifty, seventy-five, a dollar!”

Lucy climbed up on the stool just as Mary inserted her coins in the machine. All of a sudden, a bright light flashed. Lucy smiled a big smile and quickly the three of them took turns in the photo booth. A few minutes later, the pictures shot out of a slot on the side of the machine. Mary said, “Oh these pictures are pretty cute!”

Barbara said, “This is a much quicker way to get a portrait. But I wish I was still holding my crape myrtle branch.”

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Genealogy: it’s about connection

Each one of us has two parents, four grandparents, and eight great-grandparents. For every generation you go back, the number of people who procreated, to eventually make you, doubles. When I first started out on my genealogy journey, these numbers astounded me, and still do. I love to think about my DNA stew. It feeds my soul. Playing with numbers Let’s assume each generation makes a baby at age thirty. Perhaps the age should be 16, 18, 20, or 25, but whatever, I picked 30 for this exercise. After all, in the past, people started having children earlier than today, but they also bore many more children and did so over a period of 10, or even 20, years. Stick with me for this simplified and fictional example: For a child born in 1960, there were two parents who were born about 1930. The baby’s four grandparents were born about 1900. The baby’s eight great-grandparents were born in 1870. (You see, I'm doubling the number of grandparents and going back 30 years at the same time....
5 comments
Read more

Holy cow, it’s costmary!

Recently while helping my sister, Kit, move to a new house, we found an inte res ting old bible belonging to “V. H. Reinhart” in the bottom of a moldy old box. I’d never seen a bible like it. The left-hand column is written in German and the right, in English. Victor H. Reinhart, born in 1885, was the father of my step father, Wilbur Reinhart, and I knew from oral family history that he was a Mennonite minister. Inside the bible we found a single, brittle, pale green leaf and immediately recognized it. I said, “Holy cow, it’s costmary!” (Tanacetum balsamita also Chrysanthemum balsamita)  Because I’m passionate about both genealogy and herb gardening, this discovery was a bit like taking a beautiful old painting to the Antiques Roadshow and finding a signed copy of the Declaration of Independence behind it. Costmary’s (now obsolete) common name is “bible leaf,” having been used as an aromatic bookmark since the time when a bible was likely the only book in the house. The volat...
7 comments
Read more

Retirement lasagna

So far I don’t like retirement. I keep thinking of a well-known Hemingway short story called Hills like White Elephants . In it the main characters listlessly tour Spain .  She points out to He, “That’s all we do, isn't it -- look at things and try new drinks?”  For me, like for the woman in the story, “everything tastes of licorice.” What I mean is that everything is nice, but there is a sameness to it. I feel like an uninte res ted tourist, passively observing my own life. It’s only been a few months, but most days I’m watching the clock by 9 a.m . The wash is done, the spices are alphabetized, and the house plants watered and pinched to perfection.  I hate this. So around  noon  I start thinking, I could make a nice lasagna for our son, for one of our nieces, for an elderly neighbor … a nice lasagna for somebody. Maybe I could make a nice lasagna and simply freeze it?  It's pathetic. It turns out that work is my dream retirement...
4 comments
Read more