Life's Path by Eleanor Stem

Me in a past life

What makes us chose certain things in life, or walk down a particular path? I married my high school sweetheart after some thirty odd years, but it took a long time for us to reunite. Apparently, he had things to do, and I know I had things to do. I married a completely different person, had two children by him. It was a difficult time. I was glad when he suddenly left. 

Back in high school, I told my sweetheart I wanted to write, but life got in the way, like the unhappy marriage and subsequent divorce. After almost a decade, I went from a homemaker to being suddenly thrust into the business world. 

Because of what I went through and the resulting memories, I loathed the area I lived in with the crime and heat. Suddenly, women started to knock on my door who said they thought my ex-husband would marry them after the divorce, but didn’t. “If you want revenge,” more than one confided, “I will help you.” 

Life experiences force us to learn. I wanted nothing to do with revenge, even though my ‘ex’ had one helluva mean streak. He played ugly mind games, manipulated others, and lied. I knew to seek revenge would only lower me to his level and harm my spirit. At any rate, he didn’t care how his actions affected me. Any karma he garnered, he would have to work out on his own. I would not help him. 

I said, “No thanks” to those women and closed the door. I changed my phone number, had it unlisted, then when it became too difficult to bear, I sold everything, lock, stock and barrel, and moved. During a weak moment, the ‘ex’ gave me permission to take my children out of the country for a year. This generosity didn’t last, of course. 

Me at the psychic's

The preparations to leave took a solid six months. I went to a psychic who told me we would live on a hill and I would find love. 

I retained a few things and sent them to my brother across country. Once school was out for the summer, I packed the boys in the car and followed my goods to my brother’s house. From there we flew out of the country. 

I made an effort to separate myself from the hurt, the betrayal. The long distance helped a great deal. The boys and I settled into our new home, far from the strife of rejection. I finally started writing that book. 

If one is on their correct life path, experiences come effortlessly, as if dropped from the sky. It was that way for the preparation to leave and relocate. The area in which we moved was in a recession. People were out of jobs. For lack of housing, grown children lived with their parents. Within a week, we found and moved into a furnished house located on a hill, the owners of which were on a year’s sabbatical in the country I had just left. Our paths had coincided. 

 I did what I had wanted to do all my life—write. The boys could run and play as I had done when a child, and as my parents demanded of me, I told them, “Return when the streetlights come on.” 

Yes, I may have run away, but the experience was liberating. I was no longer reminded of my ‘failings’, how ‘stupid’ or ‘slow’ I was. I could concentrate on my novel. I immersed myself in the past, walked the cobbled lanes, and fell in love with my hero.  

After a year, the boys and I moved back, but we went to the area my brother and his wife lived. I had started healing from an abusive marriage. I went to work, and my boys went to new schools. Life moved on and I eventually ran into my high school sweetheart. We are now married. 

My high school sweetheart & me

So what does this mean?

My high school sweetheart and I were meant to be together, but it took a while. Before we could be with each other, I had to put closure to a few past life experiences. One was the relationship with my first husband in a difficult marriage. Where I had once treated my spouse poorly, this life I was treated poorly by the same entity. I did not want to make this a cyclical matter (what goes around, comes around) scenario, just wanted closure to the bad Karma I had created. I forgave ‘ex’ but I’ll never give him another chance. I’ll never be with that spirit in another life. 

My high school sweetheart and I did what we had to do between high school and our empty nest years. I dance through life now because I truly hope the bad slate from a past life is scrubbed clean. As hard as it was, I feel my spirit is much brighter for it.  

~~~~~~~
Many thanks to Wiki commons, Public Domain

 

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A Character in His Own Words: Arthur Darvey

by Kathy Fischer-Brown

I am not a monster! Think what you will. Actions are not the sole basis by which a man is judged. Like anyone else, I have feelings. I experience pain, I am amused. Sometimes I act upon these feelings in ways others don't understand. But that does not make me a monster!

 

Once my life was pleasant. I lived at “the hall” with Mama and Papa, and my half-sister Emma. Ours was a life of ease and extravagance, and I wanted for nothing.

And then one day, he began to cast aspersions on my dear Mama. He said he had reason to believe that I, who adored him, was not his son. He said their marriage was a sham, that it had been forced upon him, and that he was legally wed to another—albeit in a tawdry Fleet Street affair, without bans or a license—and that he’d been deceived into thinking the wretched woman was dead.

It all came to a head when his meddling lackey discovered the whereabouts of this woman and her bantling girl, Anne, who, he insisted, was his child by that dubious union. Papa petitioned for a divorce, though Mama had connections of her own in high places and promised to use them. She'd drag his name and reputaion through the mud before she'd accept his conditions.

While the battle dragged on in the halls of Parliament, Mama took me to live at rundown, draughty old Wollascott Cottage—I loathed it there—because she, the bastard, had taken her place in my rightful home. At Esterleigh Hall…as his daughter…with all the benefits and advantages that once had been mine.

Was I wrong to feel rejected, unloved? While she—ingrate that she was—appreciated none of his largesse and went out of her way to make my father miserable. Oh, she languished—poor Anne—mourning her mother’s death, harboring ill will for our father….

Before ever setting eyes on that whore's child, I detested her. I dreamed of hurting her…and worse. Much worse. But, I ask you, I was a child then. Why should I be held accountable for childish thoughts and whishes?

I must admit I was frightful at our first meeting. I was bored. Was it my fault? The encounter was unexpected, and I was not at my best. I'd been having a bit of sport with my new bow and arrows, and a mangy cur of a stray dog. Who cares about such things, anyway? They're more of a nuisance than anything else. But she took offense. Who could have imagined a low-born chit such as she to have been endowed with a bleeding heart?

Years passed before we met again. At the masked ball at Carlisle House in February of ‘73. I must say her costume was intriguing. Arria, a Roman woman married to Claudius Paetus, a senator or some such who, having been dishonored in the eyes of the Emperor, was presented with a sword with which he was to take his own life. The story is quite fantastical. When Paetus faltered, Arria took the weapon, plunged it into her chest, and then handed it back to him with the words, "non dolet," which means, "it doesn't hurt." What rubbish! There was a painting on display at the time...by Benjamin West, I believe. A heroic depiction of love and honor.  Quite popular among the romantic-minded...or the simple-minded. Being the dolt she is, she became infatuated. She made it herself—the costume—out of old draperies and curtain ties, and a bolt of violet-colored silk. The color matched her eyes...such lovely eyes....

Enough of that. Let me just say it was a simple thing for us to steal away without drawing attention to ourselves. And she was far more trusting and naive than I ever expected. I was overjoyed to find her so...accommodating.

I could have killed her that night. I wanted to so intensely I could taste it. When I think of the opportunity wasted and the satisfaction postponed, I regret my hesitation most profoundly. I actually had my hands around her throat. Such a slender neck…. I could have snapped it like a twig. But I was a cat toying with a mouse. You can't imagine how the sensation empowered and invigorated me.

I do believe I frightened her, but she was too much the fool to show it or admit to it.

We met again a number of times over the next few years. She opened her soul to me. The fool. She took me into her confidence. Those moments, however, never proved auspicious.

The time will come, though. I vow on my mother’s good name. The time will come when I take my

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retribution on Lord Esterleigh’s daughter…and when I do, I will not squander the chance.

She will know then what it means to be afraid.

Non dolet, indeed!


Kathy Fischer Brown is a BWL author of historical novels and The Return of Tachlanad, her newly released epic fantasy adventure for young adult and adult readers. Check out her Books We Love Author page or visit her website.

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The first house I remember well was on Cemetery Street. The high windows of our little 1850’s brick house had a view of the historic local cemetery, complete with the sunken stones of the early settlers and poor folks, as well as Victorian obelisks and rich-family crypts. It was all sheltered by a fine stand of tall hardwoods—maples, beech, sycamore, Kentucky bean trees, and oaks. I often stood up on the couch and peered out the window across the street to see a funeral in progress, the black cars, the black dresses, hats and sad, slumped demeanor of the mourners.  At certain times of year, people arrived and filled the place with flowers—Memorial Day, particularly. We often walked there, Mother and I, with whatever dog we had, sharing the peace with our silent underground neighbors.

Always having an active imagination, I drew many pictures of the cemetery, my notions about  the underground life of the dead, so thickly tucked away just across the street. My parents, of course, found that a little odd, but it seemed perfectly straightforward to me. All those husbands and wives that I’d seen, their gravestones sitting side by side, I figured, were still there, only now confined to a spot beneath the ground. I always drew little rooms, with tables with decorative flowers on top, and sofas and chairs, a picture on the wall and, sometimes, even a pet. I thought it must be a little lonely and boring for them to never be able to go outside anymore, to be staying forever in that underground haven, which was all I could make out of the much talked about “heaven.”  It made perfect sense, when I first heard about ghosts, that the dead might wish to come out and walk around in the cemetery. I spent a lot of night times looking out the front window around twilight, hoping to see one. After all, I took walks there, under those aged trees, listening to the birds and breezes, and it was always pleasant.

(Here's an Egyptian queen enjoying her own little room inside the pyramid, playing Backgammon for eternity.)

 

For the early part of my childhood, I lived in that rural Ohio town, with a close-knit family around, which made all holidays great fun, but Halloween was special in its own way. My younger cousin, Mike, and I were often dressed to compliment each other—one year we were cowboy and cowgirl, on another we were Raggedy Ann & Raggedy Andy. Once we were Spanish dancers, complete with hats with bobbles dangling beneath the brims. My cousin, now a big time politician, had in childhood a pronounced lisp. I remember him carefully explaining to someone who’d asked that we were “’Panish-tan-sers.”  Our costumes were hand-made by grandmas and loving aunts and we showed them off at what seemed to us an exciting costume parade for children which was held annually at the high school.

 

I also remember one night of trick-or-treating with some older children who lived up the road, away from the cemetery. They were the kind who weren’t entirely to be trusted with a smaller kid who wasn’t a family member.  That night's costume had been spur of the moment, so my mother had turned me into a ghost in an old sheet with a pillow case head. The head, as we ran door-to-door in the darkness, kept slipping, so I couldn’t see.  I was gamely trying to keep up with their longer legs in the darkness, but they only laughed and ran ahead. I remember falling and rolling head-over-heels down the steep grade next to the last house on the block, splintering the warm popcorn ball I’d just been given. Then I had to untangle myself from the sheet. After I escaped from that, though, I was surrounded by night. The  only porch light seemed about a mile away.  It was so scary to be left alone in the darkness that I abandoned my goodies and ran home as fast as I could. 

 

~~Juliet Waldron

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