I may not be very vocal about it, but I have been working hard on my writing. There hasn’t been much to tell… But recently, I got a little something for my efforts, so I’m just going to leave this right here:
If you want to read a little more about the contest, here are the details.
Being more plugged into the KidLit community means I’ve been finding and entering all sorts of contests, but after my less than stellar results from the Fall Writing Frenzy contest (read: I didn’t win, though I did have fun writing it!), I was more cautious about posting stuff here.
The next contest I entered involved writing a story that was (1) Halloween themed, (2) under 100 words, and include the words scary, slither, and treat. Here was my entry.
How to Trick-or-Treat if You’re a Snake
by Abigail Mumford
My fellow friends with ssscales. Learn from my mistakesss.
(1) Craft costume. Ssstart with a sssock or an empty toilet paper roll.
(2) Make map. Choose houses with low doorbellsss.
(3) Ssscare people. However, if you dress like Gumby or a giraffe, the ssscreams won’t be as loud.
(4) Take treatsss. Note: if mice give you a bellyache, sssteer clear of those lollipopsss with gum in the middle.
(5) Consume candy. There’s no way to hold a bucket, ssso you must eat it immediately.
(6) Ssslither home. Don’t forget to brush your fangsss before bed!
Word count: 95
The results are finally in and – spoiler alert – I WON HONORABLE MENTION for great humor!!
Thanks to Susanna Hill and her team of judges for this honor!
It’s been awhile since I’ve written on my blog, but the Fall Writing Frenzy competition has unleashed some much needed inspiration. The rules? Write a 200-word (max) story based on one of fourteen pre-selected photographs. Here’s the photo I chose:
Fall. Credit: Daniele Colucci for Unsplash.
RED
I crouch and examine the way the puddles mirror and break the light draining from the sky. I wonder if I can replicate it with my paints. The buildings are blue with twilight, as am I.
Where is Grandma?
The concrete, foreign beneath my feet, offers no clues or pine needles scenting my search. My hunt becomes as twisted as the braids hanging beneath my hood.
A soft growl from behind shoves me down the nearest alleyway.
My breath huffs out in too visible clouds. This is a terrible hiding spot.
I hold my breath and peek around the corner. My only company is the gurgle of the storm drain flush with rainwater and the howl of the wind down the empty streets. A paper napkin skitters by like a mouse.
I flinch when a red light turns on. Vivid and violent, staining the sidewalk purple.
It beckons me.
The doorframe is splintered by water and time. My fingers trace the intricate, roaming lines of the doorknob. A wolf’s head, edged in silver, is warm against my palm as I turn it.
My grandmother’s voice, gravelly and strange, echoes nearby, “Little Red Riding Hood! Where are you?”
The end.
Good luck to everyone else who’s entered, but especially to my critique partners: Hannah, Kristen, and Patti! Check out all the entries here. A big, huge heartfelt thank you to Lydia, Kaitlyn, and Alyssa for hosting + judging this competition!
I’ve known Maga my entire life, but I didn’t really know her until 2007. After Jobo’s unexpected death, loneliness became her new roommate and knowing the shape of it too well, I started calling her weekly to check-in, check-up, check on her. Unless I was traveling out of the country (upon which I would send her a postcard), I faithfully called and she dutifully answered.
“Hi, Maga! It’s Abby.”
“Hi, Abby, dear.”
It was the same start to nearly every conversation. Wild travel adventures or quiet quarantine life, Maga was always an attentive audience. “I will always be interested in what you’re doing and where you’re going,” she said. And she meant it. Even this past year with no travel and nothing of note to talk about, Maga always thanked me for calling and for having such a cheerful voice, but it’s me who was grateful for the warm reception she gave me. It’s a rare breed who’s happy every time single time you call.
In August 2016, I began keeping track of our calls, scribbling notes on whatever was nearby trying to capture the cadence of her words. Sometimes the junk mail envelope or notepad was lined with a month’s worth of calls. Sometimes it held just one. I never knew how talkative she’d be or how fresh her memory. She wasn’t aware I was taking notes or recording the emotional threads on my blog (heck, she didn’t know what a blog was), but I think she would have gotten a kick out of them. Most especially because she also always kept a pen and paper nearby.
“I like to jot down little items like that. Catch up on things.” It was one of the facts I cherished because there we were, separated by thousands of miles, and yet, mirror images of each other with our note taking.
I knew the arc of her story (only child raised by a single mother, graduated high school, then college, married college sweetheart, had four kids, lots of grandkids, zillions of great grandkids), but the details were what fascinated me most and what I tried hardest to track down. She was usually content to stick to the present, but occasionally, I’d get a bit of history out of her, like why she and Jobo started sending $2 bills to each grandkid for Valentine’s Day.
“It was a crazy idea, I guess. We have so many grandchildren and it didn’t cost us too much to do that. Plus, $2 bills are unusual and neat.”
Her sense of humor often caught me off guard and made me laugh that much harder for it. In one roundabout conversation that started with her European travels, we got sidetracked by the bright, round, full moon outside. Me: “What do you think it was like to walk on the moon?” Maga: “Well, once you get there, there’s not much to see or do.” Or another time when she made sure to keep me humble: “I was just watching TV. It was sort of dull and I thought of you.”
Some nights, it felt just like two gal pals gossiping. Such as the time I detailed how my sibling’s family had been brought down by a stomach bug and Maga replied, “He didn’t mention anything of the sort to me. I guess one doesn’t really talk about unfortunate things like that. But you and I can talk about it privately.” It was a quick and dirty conversation short on epiphanies or life lessons, but it was one of those silly talks born from regular contact.
“I just need to know when it’s Tuesday because that’s our day. That’s always been our day,” she said. “You and me. We understand loneliness.” And because of that, even if we didn’t have much to say, the quiet was just better together.
Sometimes that quiet was punctuated with her eating her dinner as we chatted. And, of course, dessert was a must. “I like cookies. Always have.”
Sometimes it was the big things she said that I filed away, but mostly, it was all those tiny moments together that added up to one grand story.
What started as a spur of the moment idea transformed into a decades long relationship that filled my life in ways I never saw coming. I treasure the glimpses I got into the matriarch of this family and my heart hangs heavy at not being able to learn anything more. I will, though, always be comforted by one last similarity. Our love of the sky at sunset. This brilliant sky greeted me on the morning of February 5, 2021.
I didn’t yet know Maga had passed, but as I viewed the flat, endless gray sky mere moments later, I instinctively knew she’d had a hand in that beauty. Those colors painting the sky just as our phone calls added color to my Tuesdays. That even though a global pandemic had kept us physically separated this past year, she’d reached out to touch me one last time.
“Good luck and take care and be good.”
Her voice, while no longer just a phone call away, will always be inside my heart.
I haven’t been able to talk with Maga because she’s no longer talking. It’s another step in the transition from living to… not, so I faced my second Tuesday without a conversation with Maga with a heavy heart. My mom is traveling out tomorrow, so I’d made her promise to facetime me while there so she could at least hear me one last time.
Imagine my surprise when Caregiver M texted me this afternoon and said Maga was alert and she (CM) would facetime so Maga could see me, as she seemed to enjoy calls with her children this way. I, quite literally, dropped everything and embraced this golden opportunity.
At first, it was a little startling because of the awkward angle, but knowing the aerobatics CM likely had to go through to hold the ipad screen so Maga could see it, I swallowed my scared. And, by the end of the call, I was used to the shape of the underside of her nose, and I focused instead on her lips that twitched into a smile and her eyes that would dart to the side. Plus, the sunshine melting onto her bed lit up her hair in the most delicious way.
Her first smile came when I asked what she’d eaten for lunch and CM replied, “Ice cream.”
Maga’s always had a sweet tooth and the news of her lunch delighted us all.
I nearly fell off my chair when Maga quietly uttered her first, “No” in response to CM asking if she was tired and wanted her to hang up.
But the best part, by far, was when her hand blocked the screen and CM narrated that Maga was reaching out to touch me.
Abigail Mumford 