Picture 2
Michela Walters’s Picture Choice: Both
Title: Rising Tide
Water, it is said to be a life giving force and without it we would all perish from the earth. In reality, my worry is more of having too much of a good thing. The water has been rising for the past two hours as the storm roars towards my beachfront home. The basement is already a lost cause, and I helplessly pull soggy box after soggy box upstairs in hopes that my little cottage will still be standing when all is said and done.
The bottom falls out of the waterlogged box i’m carrying, dropping all my precious memories from my trip around the world, onto the basement stairs. My youthful and eager face stare up at me, a reminder of a time when I still believed the world could be a better place and that my life was going to be springtime and roses all the time. I chuck the remnants of wet cardboard over the railing, into the murky water below and slump onto the steps, thumbing through images of pyramids at sunrise, chickens on a bus rumbling through a rural Indian village, a rave in Germany and a sea of crazy outfits in Shinjuku. The images swirl in my mind, remembering how independent and strong I felt doing something so crazy as backpacking around the world after college. Now,after a vicious divorce and a life with not much other than my solitary freelance writing career, I have to wonder where I took a wrong turn.
“Probably in Albuquerque,” I mumble, a nod to my childhood Saturday morning cartoon addiction.
I stand up, knowing my time is running out and stomp up the stairs to find some sort of bin to put what’s left of my youth.
My phone beeps, signaling the storm warning bulletin I need to listen to but am afraid to do. Grabbing a trash bag from under the sink, I load it with all the memorabilia and load it into my gassed up car. There’s a lot of things I will leave behind and pray will be okay, but these mementos are not one of them. I’ve only just realized in the last five minutes that if I’m going to enjoy life and not just let it pass me by, I need to grab hold of the sense of wonder and enchantment from my youth. I haven’t a clue how I’m going to do it, but know I have a long and slow evacuation ahead of me to think about it.
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Michela Walters is a wife, mother and book enthusiast. She is currently attempting her hand at writing her first romantic fiction novella. You can read her other stories on her blog: michelawalters.wordpress.com
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I need to grab the reins of my life more often. Perhaps what I need is a real shake up, like your heroine.
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