The Will to Love Now In Paperback!

My little novelette, The Will to Love, is now available from Amazon in paperback as well as for Kindle! It's a story about unrequited love, true love, and destined love, with a rattlesnake thrown in. Here's the prologue and the first few paragraphs of Chapter One so you can take a quick look at it.

Prologue

Daniel knew he was dead. He seemed to be hanging in darkness somewhere far above the hospital. But he could see every detail through the ceiling as the EMTs worked with his body on the gurney in the emergency room—one forcing air into his lungs and one pounding his chest while Dr. Agnew charged the paddles to try to jumpstart his heart.

The doctor positioned the paddles. “Clear!” The body convulsed, but after an initial blip, the trace running across the EKG screen returned to an erratic line.

Dr. Agnew turned to the nurse who was adjusting the defibrillator. “Again.”

Daniel watched his body convulse yet again, and the line again jumped, continued with a few spasmodic blips, then settled into a flat, steady progress across the screen. The doctor stood frozen, paddles held ready to use. “He isn’t responding.”

The nurse turned to reach for a nearby tray of syringes.

“No. Don’t.” The doctor lowered his hands and shook his head slowly. “We’ve already resuscitated him once in spite of his advanced directive. It’s time to let him go.”

The nurse blinked to hold back the moisture gathering in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I know you were friends.”

“Damn!” The doctor thrust the paddles at her and stalked out, sorrow twisting his features.

“Too bad,” said one of the EMTs. “Heard he was a pretty nice guy. Donated a chunk of money to upgrade the cardiac care wing when his wife died.”

“He was. And we failed him.” Still holding the paddles, the nurse wiped at her cheek with one forearm.

The scene began to fade as Daniel felt himself float away into a swirling gray mist. Where the hell is the tunnel? And the light I’m supposed to follow?

He heard a chuckle. No—sensed it. Puzzled, he turned to find out who was laughing at him, and saw a dim glow in the distance. Was that the light? As he moved toward it, the glow grew brighter until he realized he was in a church. Shadowed pews on each side of a broad aisle seemed to be filled with people. Was this his funeral? If so, the people looked awfully damn happy, and he didn’t see a casket. Instead, a minister stood in front of a flower-laden altar, and in front of him…

It was his son, Dan! Older, maybe by ten years, and dressed in a tux. He stood facing a girl with tousled red hair topped by an ornate veil that spilled down the back of her simple, form-fitting—and a very nice form it fit—wedding gown.

His son must be getting married. He was sure he’d never seen the girl before, but she looked familiar somehow. Like someone he’d known once, a long time ago. He wanted to get a better look at her, and found himself drifting around to look into her face.

A shimmer in the air above and behind the young woman began to coalesce as he realized who the young woman resembled—Virginia, the girl he’d fallen in love with fifty years ago, the girl who’d left him wanting to die because he couldn’t imagine living without her. The slanted eyes were the same aqua green, and that slim-waisted, full-hipped figure was identical.

He looked back at the shimmer and gasped as it took the form in his memory. Not the graying, stooped Virginia he’d seen in recent photos, but the young, vital woman he’d known. She smiled at him, filling him with the same deep ache as when she was seventeen and he twenty, and he heard her voice: It’ll be OK, Daniel. It wasn’t our time. It will be theirs.

Then darkness fell and he was sucked into a whirlpool, spun and battered and spewed forth into hard, brilliant cold. He gasped as pain shot through his body and his eyes flew open to see a wide-eyed nurse jump away and collide with the table near the gurney, sending a metal tray crashing across the floor.

“Oh, my God! He’s alive!” An alarm started to shrill, bringing feet thudding toward him.

I am alive, he thought, with some surprise. And I have a lot to do before I die.

Chapter One

Mandy lowered her suitcase to the floor and stared around the entry—or foyer, she supposed it would be called—of the mansion where the taxi had dropped her. The foyer was bigger than the combined living room and both bedrooms of her cottage back in Illinois. The floor under her Walmart luggage looked like marble.

Double doors opened opposite a wide staircase that curved up past a multi-tiered crystal chandelier, and a gray-haired woman wearing an elegantly tailored suit strode out, head down, examining something on a clipboard. Mandy cleared her throat, and the woman looked up with a slight frown. Her eyes traveled from Mandy’s tousled copper-colored hair, down her Star Wars T-shirt, to her worn jeans, and ended on her Reeboks before returning to the freckles sprinkled sparsely across Mandy’s pug nose.

The Will to Love Now Available for Kindle

My novelette, The Will to Love, is now available for Kindle. It's a sweet romance with just a touch of paranormal, and appropriate for age 15 or 16 and older. You can find it here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KRQ3EG4

Cobwebs in my Brain--and a Poem

Cobwebs are nearly a feature of the decor in my house. I hate cleaning, and my theory is that as long as the spiders stay up there and catch flies, we can coexist. But this morning I woke up with cobwebs in my brain. 

Not the kind made by spiders, of course, but the kind made by staying up too late and getting up too early--plus taking a couple of medications that say, "Do not operate heavy machinery while taking this medication." 

Which brings up a question: Just what qualifies as heavy machinery? Heavy is pretty subjective, don't you think? I assume I'm allowed to use my blender and not allowed to drive an end loader. But in between lies a vast category of machinery that's "a little bit heavy" or "almost heavy" or "heavy, but not quite heavy enough to prevent the taking of medications." What about my car? Is it heavy machinery?

This morning I opted to let Hubby drive to church--that's how cobwebby my brain was. I also opted not to volunteer to run one of the television cameras--a job I sometimes do because everyone else is too busy or too lazy or too intimidated to tackle it. (It isn't that difficult if you have more than four hours of sleep. A college class in studio production helps, too.)

A long afternoon nap cleared the cobwebs out of my head. Wish I could clear the cobwebs out of my house that pleasantly.

On a more serious note, I'm sure I've used this here before, but with the prompt for this week being "cobwebs," I couldn't resist. Besides, it's one of my favorites of the poems I've written.

Love

Is like the silken touch of cobweb

Against the cheek,

And often just as absently

Brushed away.

Two Shall Become as One—Intertwined Wedding Rings

           The overlapping wedding rings on my parents’ tombstone aren’t gold, of course, but aside from color, they look much the same as the photo that was the GBE2 prompt this week. 

            My mother selected that tombstone when my father died in 2005 at the age of 85. The leaky heart valve that kept him from becoming a pilot in the Army Air Corps finally gave out.

            My mother hardly knew what to do after that. From the age of 17, her life had been devoted to him.

            Neither of my parents came from happy circumstances. My father’s mother died when he was 15. His father was left with seven children, from 17 or so to just a few months old. He did what he had always done—he left them while he went to find work in the Texas and Oklahoma oil fields.

            The children lived with relatives while my father tried to finish high school. Finally he and his younger brother left the girls with an aunt and uncle and hopped a freight train to join their father and find work.

            My mother’s father was a barber—a good one, I’ve been told. My grandmother was only 13, one of a large family trying to make a living off a small farm in the Midwest, when they married. She had her first child at 15 and was told she probably wouldn’t be able to have any more.  About 15 more years passed before she did.

            I don’t know when my grandfather started to drink, but I know he was dangerous when he did. Fortunately, he didn’t usually stay home for long. Unfortunately, every time he returned, my grandmother had another child—until his mother gave her the money to divorce him. 

            By then, my grandmother had four young children to rear at a time when government aid was nearly non-existent. She worked as a cook in a restaurant all day and ironed for people most of the night. Her oldest son helped as much as he could, but he had a wife and two daughters of his own. So to lighten her burden, my mother dropped out of school at the age of 16 and went to work as a waitress.

            Then oil was discovered in Illinois. Drilling in Texas and Oklahoma was showing down, so my father came with his father and stepmother to try their luck in this new area. They often stopped to eat at the restaurant where my mother worked. My mother, now 17, shapely and with a bubbly personality, didn’t care for the boastful older man, but the 20-year-old with the baby face and curly hair was quiet and cute and seemed sweet.

            Her boss noticed and said, “Bet you can’t get a date with him.”

            My mother responded, “Bet you a quarter I can.”

            A week later she collected the quarter. A month later, they married. My father had been 21 just about a week, and my mother was a few months shy of 18. World War II had started, money was scarce, and they expected my father to be drafted any time. Instead, my father joined the Army Air Corps and started training to be a pilot, then a navigator when the leaky heart valve was discovered. The war ended just as he finished training.

            My parents went on to build their own house, own their own electrical contracting business, and raise two daughters. When he was in his 40s, my father passed his GED with flying colors and went to work as an electrician for a large university. They had a long and happy retirement before my father’s health began to fail. They were married 64 years. 

            After he died, my mother moved to a condo near my house. We went out to eat, we shopped, and we took trips together before she started to show symptoms of Lewey Body dementia. She never stopped wanting to be with my father, even in death, and saw him frequently during that last year. She died in 2008 at the age of 86.            

           

First Love--A Postscript

Because my prose usually comes from my slightly off-kilter view of the world, while my poetry usually comes from deep within, I just had to do another post with these poems. I blogged Valentine for Autumn last Valentine's Day, but this is the first time I've published viewpoint.

Viewpoint

“Youth and beauty fade away,"

 I’ve heard the poets sing,

 And God, I know it's true.

 All that's left of my youth and beauty

 Now, my love, is you.

 I see the lines etched in my face,

 My mirror tells no lies.

 But love of my youth,

 My beauty clings-

 Reflected in your eyes.     

Valentine for Autumn

Come, walk the night with me

And feel the silken touch of mist

Cool upon the warm bare flesh of arms entwined.

Come, walk the velvet darkness.

Follow sparkling fireflies through the wood

And wade the dewy grass with naked feet.

Come, stay the golden autumn night

Till dawn strokes the sky with nacre pink,

And we will walk together all our nights

Until the winter snows.

copyright Angela Parson Myers 2011

Books, Horses, and a Fullback—First Love

Geeks did not exist when I was in high school.

Well, we existed, but we were called eggheads. Introverted and shy with dishwater blond hair, bad skin and hay fever that lasted from April till the end of October, I really had little interest in boys because they were—well, boys. Seemed like they were interested in only two things, sports and sex. I never cared much for sports. 

But like many adolescent girls, I did love horses. Unfortunately my family had neither the room nor the money for a horse, and that love remained unrequited. So I spent most of my time with books, which I had learned to love even before I loved horses. The result was that I was a pretty good student. That’s why I took chemistry. And the combination of that love of horses and chemistry led to my first real love.

No, really. Chemistry can happen.

All year I had walked into class with a friend and sat down in the second row in front of a contingent of football players who completely ignored us. We had nothing in common with football players, who, I thought, tended to be not very bright and interested in only two things (see above). One day, for some reason I’ve forgotten, my friend turned around to them and said, nodding toward me, “She loves horses, but she doesn’t have one.”

One of the football players I’d noticed a couple of times before, even though I wasn’t really attracted to tall, dark and handsome guys, looked very thoughtful and replied, “Oh, that’s a shame. I can get hold of a couple of horses any time I want, and I’m not that interested in them.”

And this very shy, introverted egghead, blurted out, “Is that a proposal?”

Not long after, he asked me for a date.

We were 16 and 17. He wasn’t intimidated by a runny nose, a few zits, or good grades. He had a wacky sense of humor and a wide-ranging curiosity, and he used up all his aggressiveness on the football field. We were married at 20. He studies science, and I study literature; he leans right, and I lean left; he likes country music, and I like classical. I won’t even tell you how many years we’ve fussed, argued and debated everything from what to have for dinner to the space-time continuum, but I will tell you it’s never been dull, and we’re still married.

He will always be my first love.

copyright Angela Parson Myers 2011

Valentine for Lovers of a Certain Age

Valentine for Autumn 
(to my husband)


Come, walk the night with me,
Feel the silken touch of mist
Cool upon the warm bare flesh of arms entwined.

Come, walk the velvet darkness,
Follow sparkling fireflies through the wood
And wade the dewy grass with naked feet.

Come, stay the golden autumn night
Till dawn strokes the sky with nacre pink,
And we will walk together all our nights
Until the winer snows.

© Angela Parson Myers 2011

Grandmothers Who Weld

I tried to learn to weld once. Not because I wanted to, but because the company I worked for decided I was surplus. Instead of laying me off, they offered to train me for another position. "Cool," I said, not realizing how ironic that was.


I'm told many women make good welders. I'm not one of them. I discovered by trying to weld that what I had thought for years was good concentration was really just an ability to drag myself back to the subject after my mind wandered--and with it, my torch.


But two good things came out of my experience: a humorous essay, which I'll share down the road if it doesn't find a home elsewhere, and this poem. 


Welding


Those who know you at work
Call you cold steel,
But I know you better.
My passion, a molten pool,
Follows the seams of your body,
Sealing them to me.
We craft our love
Steel strong and solid,
And when done,
You still glow with heat,
And I am burned by the sparks.


copyright  2011