Tag: writer

Plea to Voters of California

Proposition 50 has been presented as an act of leveling the playing field so that we can preserve our right to choose how voters are represented.

My writing does not usually seem political, but I do write to fight for my principles. I feel that voting is more than a right; it is a citizen’s responsibility to let their voice be heard. 

Like Governor Newsom, I know that sometimes to fight fire, one has to use fire. 

It’s a common practice here in California. We stop the spread of wildfires with controlled burned defense lines. Ranchers in the northern counties will back-burn safety belts around valuable grazing land. Fighting fire with fire is a proven safety practice.

Controlled fire is good for the land and has been practiced in California for centuries. Some of the cover-crop foliage plants of pastureland need fire to burst seed shells. Grasses need some of the more invasive and noxious plants eradicated to make room for roots that capture the supply of scant rain. Fire has its purpose.

So now I find myself offering information about Prop.50 and the upcoming special election scheduled for November 4, 2025. 

First, a small back-story.

Gerrymandering is like a noxious weed that popped into the political pasturelands of this country in the early 1800’s. It was designed to redistrict voter populations to favor one side or the other, thereby allowing politicians to choose their voters, rather than the voters choosing their politicians. That is the very reason the practice was planted:  Politicians Get to Choose Voters instead of Voters Choosing Politicians.

In 2010, Californians added an independent commission to enact redistricting according to current census population data. This is the best way to make sure elections are fair. However, very few states have independent commissions building districts according to the census data. Texas is one of the many that doesn’t. Without restrictions in place, like the ones California created in 2010, politicians can easily grab elections to meet their own desires and manipulate district maps for their own power. 

Unfortunately, a decision made by a Texan governor to honor a federal executive’s request has changed maps at a time when maps aren’t changed for any reason other than to support politicians’ interests.

This year the executive branch of our federal government asked the governor of the State of Texas to gerry-rig their representational districts so that five more representatives could support and favor the decisions made by the present executive branch of the federal government of the United States of America. These decisions are being made without checks and balances as constitutionally ratified by our Founding Fathers. The Texan executive branch made the changes as requested without consulting the will of the people of Texas. This tipped the scale to favor politician decisions rather than decisions of the people, nationwide. 

Governor Newsom has called upon California to rebalance this decision by creating a special election whereby the people of our state decide whether or not to stand with him as he tries to fight fire with fire. 

In my opinion–we are a United States, a united people, not the minions of the federal executives nor the minions of the Texan executive branch. I am terrified of the authoritarian firestorm that is quickly raging across the United States.

I grew up believing the PEOPLE of this country choose their representatives to protect THEIR interests, not the executive branch’s interests. While it is true this government is a republic and not a democracy, we still hold democratic ideals expressed through those representatives. Representation is the will of the people. That means our will, our needs, our wants and wishes. US. The United States electorate. 

Is the will of the people being honored by current requests of our federal executives, or are we being plagued by a wildfire of gerrymandering? And will fighting fire with fire create a defense line?

In California, the will of the people will be heard when we choose whether or not to fight fire with fire on November 4, 2025. Is California’s 2010 enactment of an independent commission for redistricting going to be in the best interests of the people at this time, or can we look away temporarily to back-burn a defense line? Which is the best course of action?

Here is the flame thrower that a yes vote will give us, word for word. (I have taken the liberty to highlight in bold–key words.) 

Proposition 50 August 27, 2025

ACA8 AUTHORIZES TEMPORARY CHANGES TO CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT MAPS IN RESPONSE TO TEXAS’ PARTISAN REDISTRICTING. LEGISLATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. 

• In response to Texas’ mid-decade partisan congressional redistricting, this measure temporarily requires new congressional district maps, as passed by the Legislature in August 2025, to be used in California’s congressional elections through 2030. 

 • Retains California’s independent Citizens Redistricting Commission and directs the Commission to resume enacting congressional district maps in 2031 after the 2030 census and every ten years thereafter. 

• Establishes state policy supporting use of fair, independent, and nonpartisan redistricting commissions nationwide. 

Summary of Legislative Analyst’s Estimate of Net State and Local Government Fiscal Impact: One-time costs to counties of up to a few million dollars statewide. County costs would be to update election materials to reflect new congressional district maps. 

A few million dollars seems like a lot to each of us as single individuals or even for a single county, but there are 58 counties in the state of California, and California is the 4th biggest economy in the world. Our legislators would not have agreed to this if we couldn’t afford it. The important issue is that we get to see the maps before we vote, and then we get to vote for or against it, unlike Texans who didn’t have that choice. Their legislative and executive branches made their choice for them.  

This is a pivotal moment: My opinion about this is–Please Vote. If this country becomes authoritarian, we will not get that chance again, and I have seen this president say, “Don’t worry. When you elect me, you will never have to go to the trouble of voting again.”

Let that sink in. 

As a voter, election outcomes don’t always match our wishes, but at least right now, for this special election, we still have the right to express our desires. We have that choice. We declare our own needs and wishes, and in doing so create our own destiny. What do you want?

A no vote says you want our independent redistricting to stay as it is.

A yes vote lights a torch to back-burn defense lines for an authoritarian fire that seems to be headed our way. 

It is up to us, each of us, to declare our choice by voting in the November 4, 2025 special election. (@1000 wds) 

Stuck in a Box

From a very young age, we look at the reflection of ourselves in others’ eyes. If someone takes the time to see who we really are, we know ourselves. We learn to trust and love our core being. Instead, I fear, most of us see how others measure us against cultural standards, especially women in my generation, the first generation to deal with contrived image saturation in visual media. 

Recently, I went with friends and family to see Barbie, a movie about a doll designed to perfectly depict a contrived image of beauty that saturates television, magazines, book covers, and advertisements. We all expected fantasy, a perfect woman in a perfect world gone awry. What I didn’t expect was a profound statement about the way each of us as women see ourselves. We need to sit up and take a look at this.

As the movie progressed, Weird Barbie was introduced. Just the mention of her made me sit up. When I saw her I thought, “My God. This is the first time I have seen myself depicted in the media.” I can’t say it’s the equivalent of the reaction that women or men of color have, but it certainly was a reaction that I couldn’t ignore. 

I saw myself. 

Weird Barbie. 

Huh. 

This set off a chain reaction. I started to remember and notice things I never had before.

As a young prepubescent woman, I didn’t hear sex ed in school, nor did I hear it from my mother. She never spoke of such things. I believe my father worried about me because my self-esteem was poor. He taught me how to be a woman with his Playboy magazines as examples. 

He loved me, but that was not the right approach for a little tomboy that developed quickly into a BIG girl at age ten.  

To say I wasn’t ready is a gross understatement. I loved climbing trees, riding horses, playing imaginary games of hunt, shoot, and capture, playing the saxophone in marching band, swimming, tennis, jumping (I loved to jump off roofs and balconies). You name it, my blossoming got in the way of all I loved to do. Big breasts were the bane of my existence.

Later, when I was old enough to have crushes, I learned from magazines that men liked big-bosomed women. 

Why didn’t they like mine?

What turned them off? My legs? My teeth? My hair? My eyes, hands, feet, intellect (I was a smart girl.) Was it because I didn’t do girly things? I didn’t play with dolls or other girly toys. I felt uncomfortable in dresses.I found lizards and brought them home. I had a pet crawdad. Once, I had a pet fly. I continued to ride horses, to play tennis, to swim with a team, and chuck hay bales out of a barn. I talked to frogs.

I was weird. 

I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be the stereotypical girl that boys sought. I had breasts, dammit. 

As a teenager I felt comforted by The Velveteen Rabbit. It wasn’t  because I loved soft, worn things. Rather, it was because I felt pitted against my culture’s vision of ‘ideal woman’ and didn’t believe I fit it. I thought if I could allow myself to be loved, to get shabby with attending to others’ needs, it would prove I was worthy. 

It turns out, life doesn’t work that way. 

I practiced yoga to keep perfect proportions. As I aged, I found it was more meditative for me. Recently, I learned a new way for me to practice meditation. I found it in a book called, belonging here: A Guide for the Spiritually Sensitive Person, by Dr. Judith Blackstone. In it, she teaches a technique to fully inhabit one’s body. During it, one focuses breath in the feet. I couldn’t do it. 

I didn’t acknowledge my feet. 

I really only noticed them when they hurt. 

As I moved my breath into my ankles, it was easier to focus, though I worried I didn’t have the delicate ankles I was supposed to have.

Then I moved breath into my legs. 

With devastating clarity, I realized I saw my legs as objects – not part of self – objects! 

Did I classify other parts of self as objects? My hair? My hands, my eyes, my breasts, hips, belly? OMG! My neck, my chin, my nose? Is there anything about my person that wasn’t an object to be presented and judged as worthy, or in my case, not?

Then it occurred to me. If I have this problem, do other women my age suffer this way? How about men? Do men suffer this way? 

I suddenly resented Mattel for not giving us Weird Barbie before this, because now I am old and can never become stereotypical again. 

My daughter asks, “Why would you want to be?” 

That’s an excellent question. I can only answer that I have spent a lifetime worrying about it. Am I good enough? Am I thin enough? Am I desirable? Are my breasts big enough? Are they too big?(Yes, dammit.) Do I meet the code that others impose upon me?

Why, indeed, should I worry about this?

I fear I am not the only one with such self-conscious judgment. What can be done?

For me, seeing Weird Barbie has been a god-send. 

While I resent Mattel for not presenting her earlier, I am also grateful she has finally made her appearance. After meeting her, I am beginning to see my own body as the finely tuned instrument it is. Without it, I could not produce the tone I have when I sing. Without it, I could not have birthed my babies. Without it, I could not have fed them for as long as they needed. Without it, I could not have jumped off roofs, or out of trees and felt that exquisite moment of flight. Without it I wouldn’t feel the pain of a stubbed toe, or the caress of ocean waves. Without it, the cool evening breezes wouldn’t thrill me as they have. Without it, I wouldn’t remember what it is like to touch another human, or pet my favorite cat, or feel the earth beneath my bare feet. Without it, I couldn’t smell the deliciousness of Spring or see the vibrating color of a bright orange rose.

When I asked my daughter if she remembered her Barbies, she said, “No. I didn’t have Barbies.”

Trust me. She did. I know. I spent hours making clothing for them. 

As we talked more, she did mention she had dolls that rode her Breyer horses. I looked it up. The Barbies in her day had knees that bent. 

She had Barbies. How Barbie looked did not define my daughter’s self-image. If anything about Barbie defined something for my daughter it was what she did. 

Barbie rode her horses. Nothing more. 

Nothing less.

Looking back, I don’t think boys turned away from me. I am fairly certain I turned away from them because I didn’t believe I was stereotypical enough. Physically, I may have been, (I have breasts, dammit) but, psychologically, I am Weird Barbie. I don’t claim that proudly, I just am. I always have been. The image I see in a mirror does not define me. 

The Barbie movie says it best. If you get a chance, watch it. I’d be interested to hear about any awakening you might have had after the experience. Now, wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone were to design an Old Weird Barbie with saggy bits? And a Ken to adore her?

Fig Leaf

My neighbor worried that my fig tree was giving up. There were several reasons: I cut her back so she doesn’t have to work so hard while Californians ration water.  She lost the shade to which she was accustomed when the large companion tree that sheltered her was trimmed. As a reluctant gardener, my plants fend for themselves. I am not heartless, instead I am desperate to help conserve our water supply, so I wait and watch wondering what grows here naturally, and hoping some of it will be good to eat.  

Who will survive the new, harsher conditions? 

My Black Mission fig leafed earliest. The first inflorescences began to bud late this Spring. 

What makes her so successful? 

Figs have fed hominids and others throughout history. Uniquely adapted for harsh conditions, it grows where other plants fail. Technically, that which we call a fruit is actually an enclosed collection of flowers. Stem growth forms a bulb within which this cluster of flowers develops. Each blossom is destined to become a single, tiny drupelet. Encased within a protective womb, they do not need to fight heat or dry conditions. Some species, forming both male and female flowers, do not need assisted pollination. Others invite a miniscule female wasp into their chambers to spread pollen while she lays her eggs. These flowers then grow into a cluster of drupes, all encased within their pristine environment. (No worries, the babies escape before we eat the figs.)    

This year, a few flowers ripened early, oh so sweet. I await the others. My fig  thrives in this hot, dry climate and can live a century. Planted during my lifetime, she will be my companion as long as I am here. 

On Monday July 17th, Shari, one of the members of the writing group to which I belong, threw us this prompt: fig leaf.  A short ten minutes later, we had the following offerings. I am thrilled to present my writing sisters and their responses to her prompt.

Fig Leaf – Shari Anderson 

When I was a young child, my father planted a grapevine and a fig tree in our backyard. It was

biblical 

“Every man under his vine and his fig tree” 

inspired. 

I don’t remember the grapes –

maybe they never fruited, but the figs were juicy and delicious. The leaves of that tree were 

wonderful, 

unusually shaped with lots of rounded edges, sensual, with female curves.

Why a man, under his fig tree? Why not a woman? Why not just the fig tree itself, shapely,

verdant, simply divine?!

But, my favorite backyard plant was a wild cherry bush, which we used as a hideout, gorging ourselves with fruit while fighting off attacking pirates.

Fig Leaf – Dianne McCleery 

The other day, I had to duck under fig leaves to reach Valarie’s front door. And I loved it. I love the hugeness of fig leaves. I love their shape. And, of course, I love to eat figs, especially since they are really flowers, not fruit. I’ve always appreciated adding pansies or nasturtiums to salads, but their tastes are “eh,” not like the deep deliciousness of figs. Yes, I am a fan.

Fig Leaf – Joyce Campbell 

The fig leaf reminds me of an outstretched hand

Welcoming and offering a space to land.

Winged beings pause there, some large and some small,

And those with vibrations I can’t see at all.

Hidden below in the cool of the shade

Sprout tiny green nuggets, a prize for their fame.

Soon to be wrinkled and golden with age,

Dried to perfection a treat with no shame.

Fig Leaf – Anne Jeffries

As far as I’m concerned,

Eve’s “transgression” freed humanity 

From an unconscious tunnel of an existence.

Imagine Utopia:

Yours different than mine, I suppose

But however that flowered garden is laid out before you

Without the snake

Slithering it’s SINewy offerings

There is no Will

No humanness at all:

Our choices and failings, our triumphs and joys, our sufferings and lessons.

Eve took us, perhaps out of our pure animal nature.

She gave way for the fig leaf of shame

To eventually free us from innocence

Fig Leaf – Amel Tafsout

Covered with a gentle morning frost.

Stretching your fingers to many directions

The lines of your open palm

Go back to the beginning of creation.

Your soft green color soothes the sight

Attached to the blessed tree.

You share shade generously.

You hold your sweet biblical fruit with care.

Then leave with the wind.

Blowing to a new world

Moving with lightness

Dancing your way freely

Ending on Adam’s private part

Covering up Humankind

Living in the complexity of reality.

Afternoon Delight – Barbara S Thompson

Do you remember the scene from

A Woman In Love

When the meal slowly unfolds 

at the garden table

like luscious lovemaking?

As guests

caress and stroke

kiss and swallow plump red grapes,

black olives and

cheeses, soft and hard.

In slow, sultry nibbles.  

Alan Bates leans back in his chair

with heavy lidded eyes

 preparing to explain 

the proper way to eat a fig,

It is an English garden after all.

When Eleanor Bron selects a smallish fig

piercing it’s base with one long, elegant finger

splitting it open to reveal the pale purple fruit within

Heavy with seed and fragrance

Slowly she opens her mouth 

biting into the flesh 

her soft moan echoing around the table.

Fig Tales – Betsy Rich Gilon

Ancient one, your leaves flutter,

The desert wind  murmurs,

Camels leave footprints.

Would I have felt

The stories you tell,

Had I bitten into your flesh

Fig Leaf – Symbol of Shame? – AV Singer

Protection from sun

Invitation to hunt

hidden treasures,

Oh, fig leaf,

Why you?

           ∞

Fingers of mercy

on palm so large, 

how long

must you

hide me?

           ∞

Figs ripen

hidden behind

green curtain.

Why is this 

forbidden?

Please connect in the comments, or by clicking on the Like button. For more information about figs, follow these sources:

Sources:

https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/42/5/article-p1083.xml

https://www.thespruceeats.com/history-of-figs-1807598

M is for Mirage…

(Author’s Note: Sara Myers is a character from a novel I copyrighted twenty years ago, called The Shaman’s Mirror.  I am considering revising it.  Let me know if you are intrigued.)

Sara Myers never did anything like this. For fifty-six years, she had been a “good girl”, seemingly put on this Earth to do what was expected of her. Now, her children were grown. Her divorce finalized a few weeks under a year ago, and her new man had proposed. She was not ready to accept it. The Sonoran Desert surrounded her as she drove toward her best friend and a chance for a little late-in-life adventure. It was a rash decision, so unlike her. This trip punctuated the possibility that she was not firing on all cylinders.

The desert flowed past as she sped south toward Tucson on Interstate-10, a monotonous stretch of nothingness as far as she could see. Her mind dredged up memories of her latest dreams. She had always been psychic, but this last round of dreaming had upset her enough to follow Patrice’s advice to leave her life behind her, at least for a little while.

The specters from the dream would not leave her alone. What did they want? The cave was new. The dead weight of a man lying on top of her was a new twist as well, but the man himself was not. Three times, he had visited her slumber, standing before her naked and glistening, trembling in want with need no less than hers. As he approached her, awe and wonder lit his face. She wanted him, and reached out for him each time, but as she did, he disappeared; replaced by an awful, bony, and weathered old man dressed in shabby deerskins and feathers. Claws and teeth hung from cords around his neck. His hair, most likely bug infested, was long and matted. He seemed to be a mixture of races, representatives of which kaleidoscoped across his features. Interrupting luscious dreams of carnal bliss, he had approached her every time she dreamed of her beautiful lover, waking her at some god-forsaken hour. It was always the same. At the end of the dream, he shook a horrid, rattling staff in her face and croaked, “Now is the time.”

The time for what? She had no business dreaming about beautiful, younger men, that’s what time it was. It was better to keep her mind focused on Carl, and his proposal. She sighed.

Behind her, the sun sank into the Sonoran, the hills behind Tucson shimmered in the heat. She rubbed her sweaty hand on shirt but her clothes were damp with sweat. She was shaky. She took a deep breath and grabbed the wheel so tightly that she drove like an old woman barely in control of her car. Good grief, she needed a rest. A sign to the right said Denny’s – one mile. At the next exit, she pulled off the freeway.

There were only two cars parked in front of the restaurant and none in the lot on the east side where it was shady. She headed for it, turning into a small patch of cool, cast by the building.

He came from nowhere – bam – in front of her car as she pulled into it. She slammed on the brakes as he slapped her fender with both hands.

“Oh no,” she cried.

“Hey,” he yelled. “What the hell?” He slapped the hood of her car again. He flipped his middle finger at her, and then stormed away.

She was tired and shaky, but not so shaky that she would miss seeing a pedestrian in front of her car. She must have blinked or blacked out because for one second, he was there in front of her scowling, and the next he was gone. Panicked, she looked all around. The door of the restaurant was too far for him to have reached it without her seeing him go in. He wasn’t stomping toward one of the other two cars in front of Denny’s.

Maybe he fainted.

She opened the door and jumped out. The Arizona heat rammed her like a blast from a rocket. He wasn’t on the ground. He wasn’t anywhere. She needed to find him to give him contact information.

She honestly had not seen a single soul in the lot when she pulled in. She must be more exhausted than she realized. Sinking heavily back into the seat of her Sentra to grab her purse, she singed her arm on the doorframe. All decorum lost, she licked the burn on her arm and blew across the pain. The landscape around her car was crowding her, hot and sharp, just like her dream. The area was junky and spoke of decay. She couldn’t take a deep breath. Good grief. What had she done?

She grabbed her purse, rolled the windows down, and then decided this was not the side of town to leave windows open. She knew her car would be a bread oven when she got back into it, but she didn’t want to take any chances. People were obviously lurking about.

There was something familiar about the man she’d almost hit. He was tall, and had to bend down to slap her car. His jacket was soft and worn, and matched the soft cinnamon of his hair. His hair struck her as particularly beautiful, but her mind had not registered much else. It happened so fast. He was in front of her one second and gone the next. She lurched to the shelter of the restaurant looking for the man she had hit.

A waiter approached her. “Are you looking for your people,” he asked. He had a friendly smile.

“No,” she replied, then she added, “Yes. Well…he’s not mine, but I almost hit a man out there, and I want to be sure he is okay.” She looked at every seat in the restaurant. He wasn’t in any of them. “He’s about six feet tall, cinnamon colored hair, rumpled, you know?” She pulled at the hair on the top of her head. “I think he was carrying a briefcase.”

“Oh, that sounds like The Professor. No, he hasn’t come in today. Actually, you’re the first new customer we’ve had in here for about,” he looked at his watch, “thirty-six minutes.”

“Thirty-six minutes?” she said, dumbly.

“Here,” he nudged her toward a seat at the counter. “Cool off. People see all kinds of mirages and phantoms in this heat.”

“But he slapped my car. I heard it. I, I…I felt it.”

“Like I said, all kinds of mirages and phantoms. Hey, if there’s no one on the ground out there, you’re good to go. I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.” He handed her a menu and poured her a glass of water. “I’ll be right back.”

She sat down. When he returned, she ordered her usual hamburger and fries, then changed her mind and switched to a cool chicken salad and iced tea. She shivered under the air-conditioning. It was more than just air that chilled her. She was tired, and stressed from driving, and she was seriously wondering if she’d made the right decision. Dear God, she had almost hit a man. She could turn around and take the highway back to her safety net. A voice interrupted that thought, an old voice she’d heard too many times; the old man from her dreams croaked, “Now is the time. The desert…where truth cannot shelter itself…” She could actually hear the horrid staff rattling.

Cripes. Turning around was something she absolutely could not do.

The waiter set a doily right in front of her, followed by a full cup of hot water with a slice of lemon floating in it. “You’re dehydrated. Drink up. It’ll help the shakes,” he said.  Then he winked, “It will scare away those phantoms. I’ll bring iced tea with your food.”

She took a sip. Her body was grateful, if not for the water, then for the heat of it. She took another, and then another.

The waiter smiled at her when he walked by.

She kept looking over her shoulder to watch for the cinnamon haired man, but he was definitely gone. She took another sip of the soothing hot lemon water and watched the waiter as he cradled her salad on one arm and brought her iced tea in the other. She would eat, get in her car, and drive to Patrice’s house and forget about this. He was just a phantom, a mirage dredged up by her heat-addled brain.

Somehow, somewhere deep inside, she knew he was more than that. She hoped their first encounter would be better than this one.

E is for Egregious…

“…shocking, appalling, terrible, shameful; a glaring unpardonable error. I made an egregious error of judgment, okay? What do you want me to say? I’m sorry?” Jon backed up two steps when his stepfather’s face turned hard and angry.

Phillip said, “That’s enough, young man. Get to your room. Your mother will bring you dinner later. And forget about escaping out the window. It’s been screwed shut.”

“You can’t do that,” said Jon. “It’s a fire hazard. I demand egress from my room!”

“Jon, just go to your room,” said his mom.

Jon glared at his stepfather one more time before stomping to his room. He slammed the door.

Phillip said, “I’m torn between taking the door off the hinges, or getting one of those compressors that makes it impossible to slam it.”

Meghan shivered.

“Hey, hey,” said Phillip. His voice warmed as he soothed her. “He’s safe.” He rubbed circles across her shoulders. Phillip was her rock.

“I can’t imagine what gets into his head to run off like that. Sacramento, Phil. He went all the way to Sacramento this time. He lived with a homeless man, on the streets. What are we going to do? What if the police hadn’t picked him up?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Have you called Jack? He deserves to know his son ran away again.”

“Oh my. I forgot.”

“Here.” He took the wooden spoon from her hand. “I’ll stir the sauce. You call the ex.”

Meghan dialed her ex-husband’s number. He worked for Detroit PD, Inspector class, a continent away from Stockton, California. She prayed Jon wasn’t like his dad, mentally tormented with OCD or some other illness. She prayed he was just a boy with wanderlust, like Jack’s father, Hank, had said.

Her eldest, Rick, never did anything like this and he was Jack’s blood too, so…, “Hello?”

“Jackson Tyler.”

“Yes, Jack, it’s me, Meghan.”

“Did you find him?”

“How – how did you know?”

“Hank told me. I can catch a flight this evening.”

“No, no need. We found him. He was rounded up with the rest of the homeless people in Oak Park.”

“Oak Park? Sacramento? Oh, god. Is he all right?”

“He’s angry, Jack. I don’t know what to do with him. This is the second time he’s run away.”

“The second time? Why didn’t I hear about the first time?”

“We knew he was in town, suspected he was at a friend’s house. He was. Sometimes kids do this. I didn’t think much about the first time, but he scared me this time Jack.”

Jack didn’t answer right away.

He was estranged from both of his sons, but especially Jon, who didn’t understand why he left when they divorced. Jon was only three and a half when she’d kicked Jack out of their lives. She hooked up with Phil soon after. Truth be told, Phil was there waiting for her, otherwise she would not have had the courage to ask Jack to leave. Nobody else but the two of them need know that. It certainly didn’t factor in her youngest son’s recent behavior.

“Do you think it would do any good if I talked to him,” said Jack.

“No. He doesn’t really know you anymore.” She knew that had to hurt, but it was true.

“Still,” he said.

“No, Jack. Leave him be. I’ll ask if he wants to call you, but I know he won’t. I just wanted to keep you informed.”

She heard him sigh.

“Jack?”

“Yeah, okay, Meghan. Thank you for calling.” He hung up.

Was Jon’s poor judgment a delayed emotional response to his father’s absence? She didn’t think so. Phil was a lovely man, and a good father.

“Hon?” said Phil. “This sauce is done. Do we let Jon eat alone, or do we invite him to the table?”

She gazed at him. “I don’t know. What do you think?”

“Well, I don’t want him to have another reason to leave.”

“That’s the answer. Jon,” she said.

“But, I sent him to his room, told him you’d bring him dinner, later.”

“Then, that’s exactly what I’ll do. Gather up the plates and utensils. Let’s join our errant son for a picnic on his rug. I’m sure he has a story to tell.”

(Author’s Note: This is a backstory for one of my working titles, Broken.)