Grandson's first birthday wishes

Grandson's first birthday wishes

fiction
edward w pritchard


Ordered by your Mother not to buy you a present for your first birthday party today I'll impart advice to sit with the Love and comfort  I give each time I am blessed fortunate enough to spend a few hours chasing you about as you perfect your walking and understanding. Fret not little King I'll slip you a cookie, vegan of course, with no sugar the next time we exchange vowel sounds standing in front of a mirror down at Quaker Square were we spent some time together way back in early Winter 2016 before the oat silos where torn down, you grew into a man, and I disappeared into your distant memory.

First listen more than you talk to those around you during this the next year as you face the daunting and extremely fascinating challenge of learning to talk to be understood and hearing to understand. From your Mother's parents may you harvest eternal curiosity with the nuances of words and symbols, spoken, written and sung and the intricacies between our language, our dreams, our Culture and the invisible Universe that sometimes is easy to forget and difficult to understand.

For your tenth Birthday Love and worship your Mother and smile kindly at your Father when you best him in a race. Play the piano with your uncle and grandmother when they sing you happy birthday. When you are twelve sleep outside on hard ground in the wind and cold, capture breakfast food from a Lake or stream and tramp joyously about the hills and valleys enclosing your environment.

For your nineteenth year be polite to your elders, kind to your girlfriend and respectful of your neighbors. Stay busy, value rare time alone, and stop and brush snow off your Mother's car in an early morning winter storm.

to be continued

and me, your grandfather, what was I like at about 65 years old coming to grips with my mortality?

here is something I wrote, some what related to how we are born, bloom and eventually die and must eventually pass on,

when the circus packs up and steadily moves out of town

when the circus packs up and steadily moves out of town

fiction
edward w Pritchard

Us farmers, store keepers, women and children milled around a long time after the circus packed up and steadily left town. The ground shook from the trump of the elephants, the squeak of the wagon wheels carrying the fat lady and the fire eating boy could be heard for a long, long way off and you could see the red hair of the world's tallest man for over a half mile before the entire circus retinue was out of sight; steadily traversing Cario hill off southwest to Carterville.

For four glorious days our lives were transformed by all the performers of the three ring circus but now the strongman who wrestles a giant bear, the woman who trains miniature horses, and the rest of the troupe are all gone; off to the next venue. 

Back to our lives tomorrow.