Lilies aren’t always enough

Jessica sat at the piano, looking out at the globe lilies growing wild in the pasture that filled the view through her front window. Fairy lanterns. The stuff that fired her dreams when she was a young girl growing up near the shadows of Yosemite valley. Now, so many years later, time and gravity had taken their toll on her dreams as much as her figure. She wished she could run to the fields and throw herself down into flowers the way she did in her youth. Those days were gone.

She returned her focus to the student sitting on the bench beside her as he plunked the ivory keys, concentrating with puckered brow. When she’d imagined her retirement it had not been like this. She’d worked in an office for 40 years, saving diligently, investing and planning, setting up a target date fund and following the glide path defined by her financial adviser. But no one had anticipated this recession they were now experiencing or the collapsing stock market; or maybe they had but she hadn’t appreciated the implications.

The thought of glide paths reminded her of the vacations she couldn’t afford, the trips she wouldn’t be taking. Instead, she was forced to keep working, in a modified capacity, maintaining enough income to pay bills and keep the pantry stocked with soup and crackers. This wasn’t living, this was surviving, and barely that. With the back of her hand she brushed away the tear that threatened to fall, vowing to rest in the meadow of lilies when today’s lessons were through.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Wendryn challenged me with “Globe lilies and glide paths: include them in your piece.” and I challenged MRMacrum with “He was the sort of person who pulled on doors that said “push” and could never remember his own number, so it was no wonder that….”

Images from Bob Ellis and VeggieBoards.