Wednesday, July 03, 2019

Words for Wednesday


I am hosting for the month of July 2019.

This meme was started by Delores a long time ago. Computer issues led her to bow out for a while. The meme was too much fun to let go, and now Words for Wednesday is provided by a number of people and has become a movable feast.

Essentially the aim is to encourage us to write. Each week we are given a choice of prompts: which can be words, phrases, music or an image. What we do with those prompts is up to us: a short story, prose, a song, a poem, or treating them with ignore... We can use some or all of the prompts.

Some of us put our creation in comments on the post, and others post on their own blog. I would really like it if as many people as possible joined into this fun meme, which includes cheering on the other participants. If you are posting on your own blog - let me know so that I, and other participants, can come along and applaud.

The prompts are here this month. Huge thanks to everyone who joins in the fun and/or comments.

This week's prompts are 2 lists of 4 words each:

Paddock
Bridge
Cane
Moss

and/or

Lilac
Espresso
Fountain Pen
Peroxide

You can use some or all of them.

Thanks and good luck and above all have fun!

Added later~

This is mine.


She hated it but Mother still demanded she dress in the old lady colour of lilac and purple and mauve. Fighting with Mother was distressing as she invariably cried. So she put up with wearing these awful colours. The doctor (and how lovely was he?) had said not to challenge her, just to roll with her desires, the dementia would soon take a further toll.

Twice a week she'd leave the horses after their morning gallop in the paddock, drain the full espresso pot of coffee in the kitchen to fortify herself for the long journey to Mossville where mother resided in her lilac room at the expensive Sunset Lodge. The home for those with dementia was luxurious. Mother was fixated on the colour and had been for some years. In the early days she sometimes forgot to wear it in her rush to make the long trek from the country and then Mother would refuse to see her or cry incessantly. With her Mont Blanc fountain pen she left a note for Paddy the horse trainer as she normally did when she left on errands and then took her cane from the hallstand as the dampness in the air was boring into her arthritic knee and climbed into her car, her mauve silk dress cool on her body.

She drove over the rustic bridge by the road, glancing at herself in the rear view mirror. H'm, not a great shade of blonde there, girlie, she told herself, the peroxide treatment was a little too harsh yesterday. She'd have to speak firmly to Maxine at the salon at her next weekly root touch-up. She sincerely hoped Doctor Cameron thought her hair was naturally blonde and wouldn't look too closely at it today.

31 comments:

  1. Not sure will get back to you.
    Merle........

    ReplyDelete
  2. Really? Could they really think that moving into the country, surrounded by empty paddocks and growing moss on her heart and soul, was a 'better life' for her? And they thought that lilac bushes outside her bedroom were sufficient incentive? She sometimes used a (very stylish) cane, but there was nothing wrong with her mind.
    This latest suggestion was a bridge too far. It could only have come from the peroxide blonde that Brad married. She wanted everything Denise had worked so hard for, and undoubtedly had ambitions on the high-rise apartment Denise called home.
    Denise picked up her fountain pen, and penned and underlined her succinct reply. Not happening she wrote, folded the notepaper and carefully addressed and stamped the envelope. Job done, she sipped on her morning espresso as she planned the weeks entertainment. Shopping, museums, dinner with friends, visits to new exhibitions, and more...

    ReplyDelete
  3. A very diverse selection of words. I'll see what I can do with them by Friday.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well, all I can say is that I love purple and have a purple muumuu hanging in my closet. Good story.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have a fondness for it too Gigi in all its permutations.

      XO
      WWW

      Delete
  5. Your story made my heart ache. Dementia is one of the cruelest of illnesses - for the person with it and for those who love them. I hope that Doctor Cameron can ease some of both of their pain (in v different ways).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is horrible EC and horrible on the children of sufferers as well you must make the best of things often and know they are basically no longer in the parents' minds. Heartbreaking.

      XO
      WWW

      Delete
  6. Clarisse poked her head through the lilac bushes surrounding the padock and gazed hopefully at the bridge over Rankns creek. Surely she would come today, the young woman with the peroxide hair who always smelled of espresso and chocolate. She was quite young, the girl, and Clarisse wondered why someone so young would need a cane. When she came she always sat on the moss covered stone by the paddock gate and wrote in a lttle book with a fountain pen. As the sun tipped over toward the west Clarice sighed gustily. "Not today. Not today." She turned and galloped off to the far side of the paddock where her stable mates waited in the shade. There would be no sugar cubes today.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That was a great selection of words used well in your story Dementia is a heart breaker.

      Delete
    2. An excellent (and unexpected) twist there.

      Delete
    3. What a lovely story with a twist at the end. I love the visual imagery you create I could see it all so clearly, a lovely scene.

      XO
      WWW

      Delete
    4. Awww! Let's hope there are sugar cubes tomorrow.

      Delete
    5. Such a peaceful scene. I hope for sugar cubes for Clarissa some day soon.

      Delete
  7. All good words. My tilted mind will think them over.

    ReplyDelete
  8. It's so difficult to watch a loved one go through such changes. Your story is very touching.

    Now that i'm home from work, i've written my story and it is right over here.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Skilfully woven and so real. My own mother loved the lilacs and mauves, but didn't wear them herself and thankfully didn't suffer dementia either.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you River, I remember the husband of a friend being fixated on an accordion when he suffered. He had to see it and touch it.

      XO
      WWW

      Delete
  10. Interesting intro to a neat set of characters, WWW! I wonder if there's more to the mother's obsession with the purple range of colours? I seem to recall reading, once upon a time, that the purple family of colour has a spiritual and rather out of this world, magical connection (a little bit of woo-woo, even). Dementia does, sadly, take its sufferers into realms where others never tread.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And T I think we forget that the sufferers are completely unaware they try and create a world totally comfortable to them.

      XO
      WWW

      Delete
  11. Dementia is just about the evilest disease ever. eating the mind, leaving the body but an empty husk. You described it so well.

    ReplyDelete
  12. It truly is. Totally cruel to the ones who love the victim and know that there is nothing they can do to bring back their beloved to reality.

    So very sad.

    XO
    WWW

    ReplyDelete
  13. Nicely done, Wise Woman! Mine is here and I've caught up with the last two weeks.

    ReplyDelete
  14. For the first time I got around to using the prompt words. I've enjoyed reading your stories all along. I've posted mine in Blondi's Blog (in the sidebar at my blog). I needed a kick in the keester to get this week's entry for Blondi written, and this worked well enough! -Kate

    ReplyDelete
  15. At long last I got my installment of Susan's story finished. Having summer holidays is a happy, but time consuming endeavour.

    ReplyDelete

Comments are welcome. Anonymous comments will be deleted unread.

Email me at wisewebwomanatgmaildotcom if you're having trouble.