I have continued 28 Gears -part 3 but I probably won't use those as #Fridayflash pieces because I actually want to learn to write short stories. So I'm hoping I'll still be able to manage a story a week even with school starting.


Catholic Guilt and Lima Beans

The sound of the trains always reminded me of my father, but I couldn’t hear that music right now. Sitting here in the small white washed waiting room I scanned the walls for distractions in the silence. My father was undergoing triple by-pass heart surgery behind closed doors while I sat here waiting, just as I would sit when I was younger, waiting.

He worked for the rail line that wasn’t far from our house, so at night I would listen to the trains coming and going, feeling as if my father was always near by, even when he was gone for weeks at a time. My mother would tell me in the morning if my father was due back or not, then I would wait, toy train whistle in hand. I had convinced myself that he was a conductor; it was what I told all my friends. But really he went around repairing the tracks, sometimes being sent to parts of Canada I had never even heard of. He always came back to us.

One year he won the company lottery for a set of four tickets that let us ride the train all the way to British Columbia and back. It was my favourite summer ever.

The wall across from me had the generic calming country side painted, signed by a Canadian painter I felt like I should have recognized. The adjoining wall held a cross and a bible verse that I also believed I should have recognized.

I should have known it because I was raised on Catholic guilt and lima beans. My parents would have me dressed in my Sunday best and take me to church, then sometimes they would take me to confession and I wouldn’t know what to say. They told me to ask for forgiveness but I didn’t know what I had done wrong. Were there rules I had been breaking? So I repeated the words they wanted me to say and set goals for myself to be a better Christian. But I guess I really jumped the track on that one.

And now here I was again, sitting in my Sunday best that hadn’t been at its best since yesterday morning when I had first put it on. This time I knew what I wanted to ask God for, but I couldn’t bring myself to dream so loudly.

The lima beans were grown by my mother in our back yard. She loved them; put them in all kinds of recipes. These days I avoided them like a plague. Sometimes I wonder if my father wouldn’t be as sick if he had eaten his instead of feeding them to our dog that lurked under the table.

The sound of the only door in the room being pushed open derailed my nostalgic thoughts, the doctor I knew to be working on my father’s case came through the door, looking for me. And I was afraid because I couldn’t hear the sounds of the train bringing my father back to me.