Eclosion~~by John Nedwill

In theory, by the time this blog entry is published, England will have passed another milestone on its route towards a new normality. Like may other countries, the UK has dealt with the SARS-COV-2 outbreak with a combination of lockdowns, testing and vaccination (with varying degrees of success). The current strategy of the government is a programme of controlled relaxation of restrictions, carried out in stages. On 12th April, all shops – both essential and nonessential – were allowed to open. So, this means that as well as supermarkets, pharmacies and hardware stores, those of us who live in England are now allowed to go to stationers, book shops and other places. Cafés, bars and restaurants are also allowed to serve people – provided it is a takeaway service or customers are seated outside.

When I was talking with my mother, who lives in Northern Ireland and is subject to different restrictions, she asked me what I was looking forward to. I thought for a minute, then came up with three things.

First off, I’m looking forward to being able to go to the butcher that I have used for many years. They are based in the local market, but the market building was closed as it contained a number of businesses that were deemed ‘nonessential’. Over the years I have got to know the staff at the butcher, and the service is good. Before the restrictions, I would often chat to the people behind the counter and exchange news and gossip.

Next door to the butcher is an ice cream stand. They sell their own ice cream and it comes in flavours that I have not been able to get anywhere else. Yes, it is significantly more expensive than the ice cream in the freezer section of the supermarket; but it is definitely worth it.

Finally, the local bookshop will be open. I have been able to buy books by mail order (unlike the meat and ice cream), but there is something about being able to go to a bookshop, to browse the shelves and to discover a book through serendipitous accident rather than through an algorithm.

In short, what I am after is variety. After a year of working at home, after months of lockdowns and ‘stay at home’ orders, I am looking forward to getting out of the house and experiencing life again – even if it is just the small pleasures of seeing people, tasting new things and being back in familiar places.

(Editor’s note: eclosion is the act of an insect emerging as an adult from the pupa or as a larva from the egg.)

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OMP Admin Note:  John Nedwill is a writer, OMP Network member, and a regular #OneMillionProject Blogger.  His work can be found on Wattpad.com and in the One Million Project’s Short Story Anthologies published in February 2018.

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Our short story anthologies written by over 100 writers are now available (links below) with all proceeds being donated to the charity organizations our group supports.

If you are a Kindle Unlimited member, you can read the complete anthology for FREE, and KU proceeds are donated along with the proceeds from the sale of our anthologies.

Our volunteer authors love to see reviews, and every review helps to make the One Million Project’s books more visible to Amazon customers, assisting us in our mission to raise One Million Pounds / Dollars for EMMAUS Homeless Programs and Cancer Research UK.

LINKS

myBook.to/OMPThriller

myBook.to/OMPFantasy

myBook.to/OMPFiction

myBook.to/OMPVarietyAnthology

Reintegration~~by Søvn Drake

(Editor’s note: The day this article appears is Easter Monday in the 2021 Christian calendar. I didn’t plan it like that, but it seems appropriate, given the article’s theme.)

Life changed last year and it will never be the same.

Now I find myself wondering how will it change again as we reintegrate ourselves back into the world. Perhaps as we reunite with loved ones with whom we have been separated from for so long, we will be gifted with more appreciation for life.

My husband and I are physicians, and as such we were fortunate to be vaccinated in the first wave. As soon as my mother was fully vaccinated, we swabbed our son’s and his best friend’s nose, threw them in the car, and drove 1382 miles from Seattle, Washington to Boulder, Colorado. We left at the end of online school on Friday and arrived at my mother’s before it started on Monday. My son’s school has been online since March 23rd, 2020. For twelve months he has only played with his best friend in a socially distanced manner outside wearing masks. They were limited to riding bikes, kicking a soccer ball, or snowboarding.

Since reuniting, they have giggled cheek to cheek watching episodes of the Simpsons during our twenty-hour haul across the American West. They climbed rocks at windy rest stops, ate burgers together in their own hotel room, and learned to play poker which they love. After twelve months of online gaming (grossly surpassing the amount of screentime any child should ever have) they haven’t been on their iPads once since getting to Colorado outside of their lessons. They huck rocks into the pond that lies behind my mother’s house, play hide and seek, and build forts like my sister and I used to.

The drive–through long–is a beautiful one and a route I drove in my 20’s and again in my 30’s. The stark western landscape seemed more breathtaking on this trip than I remembered. Perhaps I appreciated it more because I’m older now and I write so am always on the lookout for detail. Maybe my senses were primed because I haven’t traveled in a year. But I think I saw things differently because of how our lives were irrevocably altered in the last year.

After crossing our own local mountains, we traveled through rolling barren hills in Eastern Washington covered in shrubs. We crossed an Oregon mountain pass as a blizzard swirled around us. My trusty Subaru trekked on through an ever shifting landscape brushed with snow. Sunlight pressed the contours and jagged edges of hillsides into stark relief in fantastic and unpredictable ways. The olive-colored Oregon landscape turned to a wild west movie-worthy brown terrain in Idaho. Inspiring mountains peaks and a full rainbow highlighted our drive through Utah. The desolate dry wasteland in Wyoming finally succumbed to dazzling yellow fields as we neared Colorado. My husband and I were awed by our country’s vastness, its gorgeous large swaths of emptiness. It felt as if we had never really seen the stunning beauty of America before, and it had a powerful effect on our psyche.

We weren’t sure we were going to make our journey on the ludicrous timeline I had set, but when I realized we were only three hours from my mother’s house I was filled with a yearning to see her I hadn’t felt since she went to the hospital for the birth of my little sister when I was three. I refused to stop overnight in Laramie despite my husband’s protests. My son too wanted to push on through to his grandmother’s (previously my grandmother’s) house where we both have wonderful childhood memories.

My mother hadn’t hugged anyone in a year.

My mother is in her 70’s and has been in good health. An introvert who has never enjoyed socializing in large groups, she spends most of her days gardening. Women in our family are campers, outdoor women, and pack rats. She has two girlfriends she walked with daily throughout the pandemic. So while I worried about a lot of things last year, I never worried about her. She was so happy we made it Sunday night and didn’t have to wait one more day to embrace us.

But when I hugged her I realized I should have worried about her more. I should have called her more, Facetimed with her, sent pictures, and thought about her more than I did. She was lonely. I woke up early the next morning because I wanted to be with her, talk to her about the mundane details of life, and drink the cheap coffee she drinks, instant Nescafe. My grandmother also drank it and I’m too much of a Seattle coffee snob to ever purchase it myself. But I always drink it here when I sit on the sofa watching the Rocky Mountains change color in the sunrise. It pairs nicely with this house and all the memories I’ve accumulated here throughout my life.

Nescafe has always tasted good here, but this year it tastes divine.

I sit here in my grandfather’s old bedroom writing, his doctorate in Natural Science dated July 1944 hangs behind me. The shelves are filled with photo albums and transcribed family letters dating back to the turn of the last century. I’m home, surrounded by family and I appreciate it more than I ever thought I could.

Yesterday the Centers for Disease Control officially announced vaccinated people can be indoors together without masks. So as you and your loved ones get vaccinated and finally finish that long, painful, lonely wait, cherish the reunion with friends and family. We once took so much for granted. Now we may see the colors of the world brighter than we ever have. Perhaps as writers we will overcome the brain fog and writer’s block that has plagued so many of us during these dark times and capture with our pens the beauty of life’s simple pleasures like never before.

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Søvn Drake is an emerging writer who can be found haunting coffee shops in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. More about her and her writing can be found at: https://sovndrakestories.wordpress.com

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Our short story anthologies written by over 100 writers have been recently published (links below) with all proceeds being donated to the charity organizations our group supports.

If you are a Kindle Unlimited member, you can read the complete anthology for FREE, and KU proceeds are donated along with the proceeds from the sale of our anthologies.

Our volunteer authors love to see reviews, and every review helps to make the One Million Project’s books more visible to Amazon customers, assisting us in our mission to raise One Million Pounds / Dollars for EMMAUS Homeless Programs and Cancer Research UK.

LINKS

myBook.to/OMPThriller

myBook.to/OMPFantasy

myBook.to/OMPFiction

myBook.to/OMPVarietyAnthology