I Don't Want To Know About That Client's Week (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, BeThere2Day, and Sandee at Comedy Plus.     

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Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and has become a moveable feast of word or picture or music prompts to encourage us to write stories, poems, or whatever strikes our fancy.    

This month, the prompts are being provided by Sandi and are being posted by Elephant's Child.            

Sandi has given us a selection of quotes this week (I look forward to seeing where they take us):

• "I will forgive this."
• "Let me help."
• "Tomorrow you will see."
• "How will I know it's you?"
• "You will."

 

And/or 

• "Those chains will break."
• "Tell me."
• "It's a lie."
• "Tomorrow."
• "Again."

and/or

I (Elephant's Child) am going to continue to add a further challenge to the mix.  Charlotte(MotherOwl) has assigned a colour to each month of the year.  This month it is pine green and if you can include it in your Words for Wednesday contribution each week in January she and I would be very grateful.

"Again!" the child giggled, a sound of normalcy in a situation anything except normal.

Her tired mother feigned an enthusiasm she did not feel and pulled the pine green blanket up over her head again, allowing the child to pull it off.  As the blanket fell away, she would make a silly face and the child laughed, over and over.  Eventually, though, it had to be bedtime, and the game did wear both of them out.

Once her daughter's eyes closed, the somewhat bleary-eyed mother crept out of the tiny bedroom they all shared and into the slightly larger main room.  Her son had finished his dinner and the schoolwork she'd given him from the books she'd scrounged and was watching the only over-air broadcast channel they could get on the old TV, a rerun of a "Battlestar Galactica" episode.

Knowing he was watching out of boredom and not really paying attention to the show, as she went past him toward the tiny galley kitchen area she asked, "Do you want to wash or dry tonight?"

Without a word he got up and grabbed a dishcloth, thus answering her question.  She knew he was brooding about something and working side-by-side would be the most likely way to get him to open up.

After a few minutes of sullen silence as the sink slowly filled (she was singularly unimpressed with the water pressure in their current "accommodation"), he began.

"Do you know what the kids were saying today?"

"Tell me."

"They were saying this isn't going to end, this is how it's always going to be."

"It's a lie."

"But how do you know?  Mom, how do you know it's not true?  How do you know we're not always gonna be living like this?  War, and evacuations, and never knowing where you're going to be next, if you're going to be with your family, if they'll be alive or dead or have enough to eat, how do you know?

"And how do you know anyone will ever be trustworthy again?  They call it a civil war, it ain't civil, it's horrible, you don't know who's on which side or who to trust."

She kept silent, waiting, sensing he wasn't through.  He wasn't.

"Some of the older kids are talking about running away and joining the fighting, and some of them, I don't know which side they'd join!

"I hate this!  I hate the fighting, and the running, and I hate not being old enough to join the resistance, and I hate having to be quiet even if I disagree with someone because what if they tell the wrong person and I get in trouble and they kill me?  I almost wish they would."

"You don't really wish that, do you?"

"No, not really, but maybe it would be easier."

They were quiet again for a moment, and she said, "Today isn't all there is, it won't always be like this.  Wars always end, you've studied history, I've made you do it, after all.  Someday it will end, and some semblance of normal will be restored."

"Yeah, it will, someday, but someday isn't a day in the week, as you always used to tell Dad when he'd say he'd get around to doing something someday."

They both smiled at the memory his words evoked as they started putting the few dishes away.

"Even when it's over, will the hate end?" he continued.  "How long were people angry at Germany after World War Two?  How long did the American North and South dislike each other?  When does the hating stop?"

"Those chains will break."

"How?"

"They break because you choose to break them.  When someone else chooses to commit a hateful act, you choose to use the phrase, 'I will forgive this,' and you do it.  Not because you condone the act, but because you aren't going to let their actions control your response and you leave justice in The Almighty's hand.

"When you see a so-called enemy in distress, you say, 'Let me help,' and you help.  When a day gets to be more than you can take, you say, 'Tomorrow,' and you believe it will be better.  Instead of saying to yourself, 'It will never change,' you say, 'Tomorrow you will see.'  You do these things because they lift you up and make you the man you want to be.  They make you a man like your Dad was."

The two of them sat at the table.

"What if I lose you like we lost Dad?" he asked.  It was the heart of what he feared most.

"Then you hold your baby sister close and you take care of each other, and you remember to look for me the same way we look for your Dad.  We find him, don't we?  He's in the books I make you study, you know how he loved learning.  He's in the phrases we use, just like a few minutes ago when we talked about 'someday,' he's in your sister's smile."

"That's for sure," he said, smirking.

"I'll be there, too, just like he is."

"How will I know it's you?"

"You will."

They sat, each with their own thoughts, for a few more minutes.  

"It's been a long day, I'm heading to bed.  Don't stay up all night watching TV, okay?"

"But Mom, who can resist a marathon of corny old scifi reruns?" he asked, grinning.

"As your Dad would've said, 'Try really hard, okay'?"

They both smiled.  "Thanks, Mom."

"You're welcome."

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Today is:

Anniversary of the Founding of Lima  -- Lima, Peru

Confession of St. Peter -- Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, and Anglican Christian

     Feast of the Chair of St. Peter -- Roman Catholic Church (celebrated as the founding of the papacy)

Feast of Neith -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (goddess of war and hunting)

Four an' Twenty Day -- Scotland (24 days after Christmas)

Hair Dryer Appreciation Day -- no history on this, but if you love your hair dryer, more power to you

Jazz Day -- Jazz gets recognized, it plays the Met!

National Lay Awake and Whisper in the Dark Night -- another one i can't fathom or find out why it even exists

National Peking Duck Day

Revolution Day -- Tunisia

Royal Thai Armed Forces Day -- Thailand (former Siam)

Santa Prisca Day -- Taxco, Mexico

Thesaurus Day -- birth anniversary of Peter Roget

UFO Day -- see the history section, 1644

Unsliced Bread Day -- from this day in 1943, until the war ended, US bakers sold only unsliced bread loaves so no steel had to be diverted from the war effort for slicing machine blades

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity -- Christian (from the celebration of the Confession of St. Peter to the celebration of the Conversion of St. Paul, Jan. 25)

Winnie the Pooh Day -- birth anniversary of Winnie's author A.A. Milne

Anniversaries Today:

Wesley College, Melbourne is established, 1866

Henry VII of England weds Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV, 1486

Birthdays Today:

Jason Segal, 1980

Dave Bautista, 1969

Jesse L. Martin, 1969

Jane Horrocks, 1964

Kevin Costner, 1955

Bobby Goldsboro, 1941

Davis Eli "David" Ruffin, 1941

Curtis Charles (Curt) Flood, 1938

Ray Dolby, 1933

Evelyn Lear, 1931

John Boorman, 1930

Constance Moore, 1920

Danny Kaye, 1913

Cary Grant, 1904

Oliver Hardy, 1892

A.A. Milne, 1882

Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, 1856 (The African-American doctor who performed the first open heart surgery.)

Thomas A. Watson, 1854 ("Come here, Watson, I need you," said Bell)

Peter Mark Roget, 1779

Daniel Webster, 1782

Daigo, Emperor of Japan, 885

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"The Jeffersons"(TV), 1975

"Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour"(TV), 1948

"The Nose"(Shostakovich' opera), 1930

Today in History:

Emperor Huizong abdicates the Chinese throne in favour of his son Emperor Qinzong, 1126

Francisco Pizarro founds Lima, Peru, 1535

The first documented UFO sighting in America, by some very perplexed pilgrims in Boston, 1644

Pirate Henry Morgan defeats the Spanish defenders and captures Panama, 1670

San Jose, California is founded, 1777

Captain James Cook stumbles upon the Sandwich Islands (Hawai'i), 1778

The first elements of the First Fleet carrying 736 convicts from England to Australia arrives at Botany Bay, 1788

Electro-Magnetic Intelligencer, the first US electrical journal, begins publication, 1840

Dr. William Price attempts to cremate the body of his infant son, J. C. Price, setting a legal precedent for cremation in the United Kingdom, 1884

Modern field hockey is born with the formation of The Hockey Association in England, 1886

The X-ray machine is exhibited for the first time, 1896

President Theodore Roosevelt sends a radio message to King Edward VII: the first transatlantic radio transmission originating in the United States, 1903

The first shipboard landing of a plane (Tanforan Park to USS Pennsylvania, flown by Eugene B. Ely), 1911

English explorer Robert F Scott & his expedition reach South Pole, only to discover that Roald Amundsen had gotten there before, 1912

Japan issues the "Twenty-One Demands" to the Republic of China in a bid to increase its power in East Asia, 1915

A 611 gram chondrite type meteorite strikes a house near the village of Baxter in Stone County, Missouri, 1916

The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City hosts a jazz concert for the first time. The performers were Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridge and Jack Teagarden, 1944

Willie O'Ree, the first African Canadian National Hockey League player, makes his NHL debut, 1958

A Disengagement of Forces agreement is signed between the Israeli and Egyptian governments, ending conflict on the Egyptian front of the Yom Kippur War, 1974

Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires' disease, 1977

Phil Smith and Phil Mayfield parachute off a Houston skyscraper, becoming the first two people to BASE jump from objects in all four categories: buildings, antennae, spans (bridges), and earth (cliffs), 1981*

The International Olympic Committee restores Jim Thorpe's Olympic medals to his family, 1983

Boerge Ousland of Norway becomes the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unaided, 1997

The Tagish Lake meteorite impacts the Earth, 2000

Sierra Leone Civil War is finally declared over, 2002

A bushfire kills 4 people and destroys more than 500 homes in Canberra, Australia, 2003

The Airbus A380, the world's largest commercial jet, is unveiled at a ceremony in Toulouse, France, 2005

Hurricane Kyrill becomes one of Western Europe's deadliest storms, 2007

An amateur astronomer in Peterborough, England, discovers a new, Neptune-sized exoplanet, 2012

For the first time ever, lifeguards in Australia rescue endangered swimmers with a drone, using it to drop a rescue pod flotation device, 2018

Indonesia's parliament approves bill to relocate its capital to Borneo and change the city's name to Nusantara (archipelago), 2022