A Ticket to the Past, Elizabeth Towles [ebook reader below 3000 txt] 📗

in the bed, muttering our son’s name and enough expletives to last a lifetime—and me, getting a headache from holding in the giggles rocking inside my head. I did a lot of throat clearing, pressing my lips against my teeth… and sighing.
The cuffs finally came off the next morning when our neighbor came to the rescue with a hand saw, and all the while having a good laugh at the churlish look on my husband’s face. The story ran rampant throughout the neighborhood in a matter of hours. For weeks, John was greeted as—how’s the prisoner holding up these days? Laughter soon followed.

Another call for me went out; I stepped near the ladder.
With the package of rolled straw mats filling my arms, memories of warm days, the aroma of coconut tanning oil and giggling teenage girls sunning on the upper deck, walked across my mind.
Then, a large paper bag, holding four green rubber horseshoes, was dropped into my hands. My thoughts soared to yard games, boyish laughter and voices, both husky and high, dependent on stage of growth. I hugged the memories close.
On the bottom step, John placed my cosmetology case, scarred at the corners; its contents used for styling hair on those special prom dates, sometimes taming curls—but then again, sometimes not.

Years chronicled milestones as a bingo game, a favored Chinese checkers set, and several scrabble boards, all bearing signs of much-used handling, landed in my grip.

The roots of our marriage lay in the vast collection filling half the room. The items however, could be disposed of, but their intrinsic value of daily happenings bonded my husband and me in ways that only the two of us could share.

Overhead, the rustling noise stopped. I saw John’s head pop out.
“Here’s one more thing,” he said, passing me a very large, black garbage bag, the sides bulging out in all angles. Grappling with the bag, I felt the skeletal edges of empty clothes hangers, dozens perhaps—a final testament that life had spread out in other directions.
Dark vacant closets now held only the whispers of hurried searching hands and along the walls inside, the scent of energetic beings no longer warmed the air.
I slipped that thought to a safe-keeping place in my mind, knowing full well that the living goes on. It simply takes a different path.


Elizabeth Towles
December, 2009
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Publication Date: 12-24-2009

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