April Flash #12 (catchup, retrograde)
based on prompts by:
Amygdala: pastry shop; bikini bottom; forbidden garden
I grew up around the corner and up the hill from an old pastry shop run by an even older woman a grandmother type, always ready to rush you and arthritic knees a steaming cup of tea (as I grew older it was coffee) a donut or muffin, a warm hug and a long talk. I spilled my secrets to her, growing up rain or shine, after school found me in that darkened room, sometimes with a smile glow shining across my face, sometimes tears rolled down my cheeks. She was always sympathetic. A few times I saw others there, others who may share the same solace, the same appreciation for the listening ear. Sometimes they would leave out the back way. When I asked what was back there, I got a pat on the back of the hand and a warm smile but no answer.
I went off to college that year, studying a double major, spending my time not in the library but wrapped up at the beach in a bikini bottom and a lounge chair, soaking up the sunlight and watching what the tide brought in. I tried to tell my secrets to the waves, but they laughed at me, before rolling back out to see just as quickly as they had come in. They didnt keep secrets well. I tried to tell a flock of seagulls, once, thinking they might lend a listening ear since they took the time to snatch my sandwich right out of my hand. I was mistaken. I made the error of trying to tell a boyfriend once, and he was no longer under that label for very long after. My roommate didnt know. No one did, really. As the semester wore on, I found myself thinking more and more about that small, dusty pastry shop, where flour filled the air and it smelled consistently of baking bread, sugar and grandmother. Rose petals and sweet water. I started dreaming of the faded pink wallpaper that was peeling off the walls like it was trying to escape out into the sunlight. I started imagining the cracked, chipped china that sometimes bit my lip when I took a sip. I started feeling the texture of the deeply grooved wood. By the time the winter break arrived, I was anxious and determined. I dropped my bags of laundry off at home, briefly waved at my parents and headed down the street. For the first time I could ever remember, there was a closed sign on the door. The grandmother had passed away the night before. I wept there, on the sidewalk, before walking around the block to the back, I found the door unlocked, and cracked open. And there, in the back room where I had never been invited, I found a treasure trove of secrets. Papers, everywhere pinned to the walls with pictures, little handwritten notes in the spidery writing of the very old. It was a forbidden garden full of secrets that had been told to her. She wrote them all down so she could remember. So she could be empathetic and not succumb to the memory loss I never even knew plagued her. I cried every night over break. But upon returning to school, I resolved that I would be as good a friend to those I held dear, as that little old lady whose name I couldnt even recall if I ever knew that I would learn the lesson of my youth and carry it forward into adulthood. Maybe some day Id have my own secret pastry shop full of the smell of coffee, rose water and baking bread. Maybe, someday.
new prompts: warming trends; ice queen; lantern light