Day 850: 5 Minute Freewrite: Monday - Prompt: chirp
No one could tell by looking on Monday morning that Mayor Garner of Big Loft, VA had experienced a complete breakdown over the weekend. Nor would they have guessed it was occasioned by the chirp of a bird.
The mayor had stayed downtown with his cousin through the week, then gone down to see his parents on Friday night, then driven home at last to his “miserable little house” in a quiet neighborhood of Big Loft.
His soon-to-be ex-wife had dubbed the house that when she had threatened to leave him.
She also had spent every morning doing the things she did to compensate for being in that space – her television shows showing what others enjoyed, what her husband was surely going to provide her once they made it to the top of Big Loft's political and social life.
Those shows had been enough to drown the chirping of birds way off in the fields across the street, so, for the first Saturday in 20 years, Mayor Garner heard those chirps, and thought it was the most beautiful sound to wake up to in the whole world.
It thus simultaneously occurred to him: he was indeed at the top of Big Loft's politics. It had only cost him 20 years of his life to get there, 20 years missing out on the beauty of life because he had thought he knew better than God, and had married a woman interested in status for her good looks and money.
Mayor Garner crumpled to his knees by his bed, the whole terrible ordeal of how his marriage had ended, and how it had begun doomed from the beginning, coming down on him. In this time he confessed and repented of his sinful choice, so it was valuable time, but he had to come apart completely to get to that point … he spent pretty much all day sobbing on the floor, and then crawled back into bed and did not know anything until Sunday morning.
Mayor Garner had returned to his refuge in his cousin's apartment that day, and that cousin had helped him get his mind and heart back together well enough to function on Monday.
Only the most observant noticed: a bird chirping from its nest atop City Hall attracted the mayor's attention as he was coming back into City Hall after a meeting … and tears had come to the mayor's eyes before he walked on.
Photo by James Wainscoat on Unsplash
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Thank you!
And there's your theme of redemption. I really feel this man's pain and relief, and wish him a healthy and happy life from now on, with of course the trials we all go through, if we are lucky to be given such fruitful life experiences. I hope that makes sense. When a story really moves me, and this one does, I start speaking from my heart and it doesn't always make sense.
Thank you for reading ...
What you said makes sense to me ... and Mayor Garner will be around ... another figure in Big Loft now on the side of the redemption ... remember this started with Big Loft in all evil at the end of The Posture of Innocence. And at that time, Mrs. Selene Slocum-Lofton was all evil as well ... but you notice what is happening? And you notice ... who else's life is getting itself together with all these people orbiting him? Notice how our "Angel of Death" is getting to be the man of peace he wants to learn to be? Yeah, Captain Lee will always have those deadly reflexes, but if you've read "Lame,", even there we have a case in which he is getting gentler to the contrary world, at least by his standards!
Redemption is going on every hour of the day ... it's always going on somewhere in the world of Lofton County, too ... at some point this year I'm going to flip the script 160 years backward, but you know that even there, it's still going to be going ...
I'm here to deliver the Tuesday prompt so please write us another!
https://steempeak.com/hive-161155/@mariannewest/day-851-5-minute-freewrite-tuesday-prompt-hot-water
Hot water ... oh, this could go in so many directions...