My Dear Readers,
Disclaimer:
What I write is fiction/fantasy/fairy tales for adults. None of my characters are real, no one was injured during the production of my stories and just like on T.V., they all get up when the scene is over, have a beer, remove the makeup and go home, ready to return in the next chapter, all the boo boos healed.
Votes and comments are as always gratefully received. E-mail will get personnel response if you remember to leave me a return e-mail address.
Enjoy.
Dom Woolf
My dad died of a heart attack early this year while I was away at college. It wasn't really unexpected he was in his mid seventies. I returned home over spring break to help mom finish cleaning out the house before she sells it and moves into a much smaller place.
Mom is just thirty nine, she met and married dad when she was seventeen and he was fifty two. It was one of those May-December romances that lasted twenty two years. Dad had been in good shape until two years ago when he had his first heart attack, he really never recovered so it wasn't a big surprise when he died.
Mom was in great shape financially and physically for that matter. She was a yoga teacher in town three days a week and between that money and Dad's retirement that will be paid to her until she dies and the house dad had inherited from his parents that was fully paid off money wasn't a concern.
The thing was, it was a huge old house built when families had several generations living at home. Nine bedrooms, a living room, a full dining room and a breakfast room, a sitting room/parlor, four and a half baths, a kitchen that would do justice to a restaurant, walk in pantry, laundry room, two enclosed porches, full basement, and attic, in other words huge.
Mom wanted to sell it and buy a smaller house but first there was three generations of stuff to go through, discard, donate, or sell. So that's what I was looking forward to over my spring break. Whoopee.
Ok, Mom wasn't thrilled either but it had to be done. Fortunately it was one of those warm springs so we were able to open the windows in the attic and basement and air them out as we worked, still it was sweaty, dusty and hard work.
I was working up in the attic, going through seventy five years of old boxes of papers and photos and all the other stuff that gets shoved into attics and forgotten, when I found the box of antique jewelry from Grandma or maybe great grandma. I figured mom would want to see this so I headed downstairs to find her.