Kristine E. Brickey

This little piece came from a place I didn't know was there until I was sitting in Sozo's meeting room with MMWG last week. During another writer's sharing, I suddenly saw my Grandma (pronounced Gra-maw) Brickey sitting in her favorite chair, me and other grandchildren strewn around the floor at her feet. We were listening as she told stories. I jotted down a few words, and kept listening to my friends read. The next prompt was, 'I Needed...'   I loved my Grandma Brickey so much. She was feisty and brave, tender and strong, and though there wasn't much about her life that was 'easy', she always had love and laughs for us. Grandma, this is for you and all of us lucky enough to have you watching over us from the Heavens. I Needed... One of my favorite memories has me sitting at Grandma’s feet, her stories flowing over me. I needed her words, words that painted movies in my head. Uncle Miles as a teen, sliding down the mountain side, a shovel for a sled. My...

The woods called to me, whispers from my childhood. I drove past Charlie’s Apple Orchard, missing the gravel and potholes now that the road was blacktopped. Paved roads now. When I was a kid, it was all dirt until you hit the main roads to the south and east. I remember how Tracy C. and I had to trot her little Shetland mare from her house, her driving the cart and me as safety lookout, until we made it the short distance from her house to the dirt.  Before I knew it, I was pulling into the driveway. There were more houses now than fields, but I pushed away my melancholy and got out of the car. The woods used to be so far away from the house, I thought, as they now loomed too closely behind the barn. The ten acres had seemed so massive, and we loved going so far away from the house as kids, taking the fenced grassy lane along the hayfield until we reached the woods. Now, it took me less than a few to step inside the coolness of the woods. My siblings and cousins spent entire days o...