wp-plugin-bluehost domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home4/susangib/public_html/blog3/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6114SCARECROWS AND STRAWMEN<\/strong> From the window over the kitchen sink he watched her and his heart sank, settling like a stone skipped over a pond. He felt the surface ripples circling outward to the edges of his being and fade away.<\/p>\n She stood in the garden, the hoe left lying as in death where she\u2019d dropped it. Her body thin in clothes that hung on her, her arms outstretched, a living scarecrow. He couldn\u2019t help the thought. He closed his eyes in shame.<\/p>\n \u201cJulie! Julie?\u201d he called. But even as he did he turned to go and get her. At times like this he wasn\u2019t sure she heard him.<\/p>\n \u201cJulie,\u201d he said softly, not wanting to startle her as he walked up behind her. He came around to face her. She was smiling and he knew it was not for him but for some other world and being that only she could see. He gently brought her arms down to her sides and led her back up to the house. She never fought him anymore.<\/p>\n He sat her at the kitchen table and set a cup and saucer at her place. It was from her Blue Willow collection, the only one she\u2019d still touch. He filled the teapot, set it on to boil. It wasn\u2019t fair, he thought, and this time he genuinely meant it wasn\u2019t fair to her. She looked to him, at peace, but elsewhere. It struck him that she\u2019d likely found the escape for all humanity, an answer to the stress of living. She went through the motions of sipping the half-cup of tea he\u2019d poured out for her.<\/p>\n He brought her upstairs and washed her hands and brushed her hair and put slippers on her feet. He helped her lay down on the bed. He hoped she would sleep. He hoped she would wake up as herself. He left the door halfway open, went back downstairs and after a little while, went back to writing.<\/p>\n She slipped out of bed and went to sit by the open window, staring at the ferocity of the sudden late afternoon rain, the gentle flickers of lightning that preceded a deep rumbling roll. She wondered if it could find her, reach through the window and illuminate her too, like the sky. Or the small Virgin Mary light she had on her bedstand as a child. She stood up and crossed her hands over her heart, staring up at the rain. That\u2019s how he found her.<\/p>\n The cruelty was that sometimes she was normal for weeks at a time. He often thought that with the gradual dip into insanity, he could cope better. Get used to it a personality at a time. Scarecrow or Mother of God, it didn\u2019t matter, but it was the Julie that peeked through in between, stayed long enough for him to ache with love of her, then disappear into somebody else.<\/p>\n It was that, that in and out of his reality that she flitted through like a butterfly, stopping to sip of him but eluding his reach, it was that which gave him his poems and his stories. The collection would be named \u201cJulie, in All Her Colors\u201d but it meant Julie, as she splinters into forms.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SCARECROWS AND STRAWMEN Word Count: 539 From the window over the kitchen sink he watched her and his heart sank, settling like a stone skipped over a pond. He felt the surface ripples circling outward to the edges of his … Continue reading
\nWord Count: 539<\/p>\n