My Two Blessings

Zanzibar  Zanzibar hopped into the car and headed up the coast.  Yesterday he’d been fired, for nothing really, he told himself.  X’rays revealed a tumor so he used it as an excuse for his behavior.  Winding down the lonely road, he smiled and thought of Clover, the dunderheaded dog behind the factory.  Very stupid, but oh so brave.  Undoubtedly he should have taken the dog, but they kicked him out fast, only gave him time to clear his locker.  Trash talk, that was all.   Seriously, why had Blakely looked so appalled?   Really, who takes jokes literately? Quite the moron and he hadn’t been the only one.  Proud of his little ditties and songs, Zan had made a poster and hung it in the break room.  Oops!  No way he could have known Blakely or Singleton had minorities in their families.  Maybe he should have kept his mouth shut, but he’d never been too good with that.  Lazy, his dad said, too lazy to think, to...

Proust invokes the Past  “Taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remained poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”  ~Marcel Proust  It’s on the tip of my tongue, both physically, mentally and emotionally.  A taste, a scent, that takes me back. But back to where?  A fleeting memory of time past. So amazing how smells and flavors catch me unaware, make me stop and reflect.  There have been many times over the years, a scent wafts past my nose and I’m taken back to high school, or an old house, a day on the lake, or a moment of grief. Honeysuckle takes me back to my first home in Texas and sipping on a honeysuckle bush outside a friend’s house.  I can see our block, our neighbors, all long forgotten, ...