Two Very Short Stories

from September 8, 2009

Honor Bars

My mom is moving, perhaps her last move. She has so much stuff that it is taking me too many Saturdays to drive down to where she lives to go through it all.

We come across an embroidered handkerchief that has 1919 embroidered on it, with little flags. “What are the flags?” I ask my mom. “Honor Bars,” she says. Her friend Pat is staying with her for a few days. Both Pat’s husband, Chauncey and my dad, Dan, were in the Navy during WWII. My mom says, “Dan never did get all his honor bars.” And Pat agrees, “No, those boys didn’t get all their honor bars.”

These women were not bitter, but talking about the reality of the WWII vets. My dad was 18 years old when he shipped out. I know that there was nothing in his life that could have prepared him for the life he lived at sea. Later that same day, my mom found my dad’s navy ‘whites’ in a trunk. Mostly I can’t believe she’s saved all this stuff, but I feel a strangeness also, at all the stories in the stuff. All the stories I want to hear, I want to write, I want to tell. To not be lost; the stories that are my mother’s life, my dad’s life, and also, my life. Perhaps that is what makes me cry as I drive home.

The very short story about the candy dish.

Most of my mom’s beloved nice things are on her dining room table with little pieces of tape on them. The tape says one dollar, or fifty cents, and a few pieces say five, or ten dollars. These are the things that did not sell in our two garage sales. These are the things that I wince over a little as I see them spread out on the table. On the last day I was down to help my mom, before she was going to call the antique dealer, and then Salvation Army I noticed on the corner of the table, the candy dish. And suddenly I remembered this dish filled with mixed nuts when ‘the gang’ was coming over to play cards. I remembered the card parties, with Pat and Chauncey, and the other couples that were friends of my mom and dad’s. The evening when my mom would put on lipstick, after dinner.

I wanted to take the dish, but I didn’t want to take the dish and in the midst of the memories the fight over stuff began inside of me. My mom was sad over all her things being liquidated, trying to stay brave about the move. She wanted ‘stuff’ to stay in the family, and I’d already taken a few pieces and I am trying to constantly downsize, so that instead of taking care of stuff; I can write and spend time with my friends and family.