Something I am working on

[Cellar Door]

Of what use are dreams in the twilight of our lives, that moment when we realize everything, nothing, anything we have done has been for naught, that the world around us will continue drudging along even after we are gone? For that matter, what use is love now? When all the world seems painfully beyond our reach and our dreams and loves have fallen like a leaf in autumn, the answer is resolute and final and, appropriately, in my mother's voice: “Child, (or name) you weren't worth nothing”.
Eva Kutelridge was a hard woman, as only a hard woman could have given birth to six children, including myself, and successfully alienate every one of them. She, being the only child of a disgraced Presbyterian minister, had long ago learned to deal with disappointment and alienation. It must have come to her as no surprise when her children responded to her in the same manner. I can still see her cold blue eyes at this late hour, a whispered testament to all she had endured. Perhaps all of our lives are reduced to a whisper in the end.
Eva lived the whole of her life on a small farm deep within the hills of (place). Her mother had died, or ran away when she was quite young, she never knew which, as the story changed depending upon who was telling it. I suppose it did not matter much to her; my mother always had an air of finality about her- black is not white and gone is gone. Whether through death or an act of willful abandonment, my mother had no mother. This is something I cannot fathom; my mother always made her presence felt, a high matriarch judging, passing out severe sentences for minute crimes and trespasses. I always felt her and her cold blue eyes- even now I feel her, though she has been gone for decades.
I never met my grandfather, but I can imagine the brutality of him. Like all country men (it seems as though men in the country are larger than city men; perhaps it is because they have more room to grow), large and mountainous, with great fingers and a booming voice, his brutality was not intentional; rather, it was a part of him, like a prickly beard or a rough shirt. Perhaps a great circling hug that was a little too tight and the scratching tyranny of whiskers on a child's face. Mother had only ever described him as a large, hardworking man with a loud voice, and that he fancied cigars. She was not a woman who spoke of hugs.

[Cellar Door]

Is this crap? Should I quit while I'm ahead?

[Amylian]

It is lovely; the way you observe things around you is very interesting and I'd like to have this part in my writings. However, I think Eva Kutelridge, your mother, has had some awful experience in the past that she can see repeating itself in you, that is, you didn't introduced her as your mother, but instead, you introduced her using her name, which leaves me wondering what has happened betweeen you two...(looking forward to know)

Additionally, all the characters seem to be running around a circle of brutaliy and harshness, wow, I can't imagine myself living around such a family (Pardon my tongue). So, dreams must have been impossible to achieve if things go unwanted, I'd say.

Keep up the good work and you can visit my threads,too, anytime....

[PhilLFM]

This is not crap! Keep writing! This is really good i relate quite alot to this as i am a natural depressive and relate especially to the first 4 lines as that is how i feel quite a lot of the time, although i force optimism upon myself alot these days. However i didnt really have that bad an upbringing my parents were quite warm for the most part but i definitely do relate to the relationship to the central character(you i presume?) and the family in many ways. Great piece of writing

[Cellar Door]

Thanks for your encouragement, Phil and Amylian. Although this is not about my life in particular, I am trying to write as though it is. Hopefully, it will be a part of a larger story... we'll see. ;)

[Cellar Door]

Seeing as how I am the last, I must tell the story, and, like all good stories, I must start at the beginning. But how do you begin to tell of things that are much larger than you, things of which you have no knowledge, or could not possibly understand? Yet tell I must, for that is my duty as the last. So now I must vow to tell a story much larger than myself and my small part in it. I must try to tell of many lives, loves, and dreams through the filter of my own. I only pray that I may begin to do them justice, for after I close my eyes for the last time, no one else will know the story. It will stay with those who are dead, and they will keep their secrets.

The meager farm that housed Eva all her life was a small, slight blemish upon acres of rolling, fertile, and verdant soil. It's four wood walls serve as a setting for most of the story, and as such deserves description, something it is not worthy of otherwise. The front of the house is deceptively small; upon first glance it appears to be a one room shack rather than much of a house at all. It's one window with it's tattered red gingham curtain seems to wink at passersby, although not many people happen to pass by the Kutelridge homestead. So the one-eyed house sits, winking at visitors who barely give the home a second glance. Like all farm houses, it sits with a small, sagging front porch and the stereotypical broken swing, badly in need of a fresh coat of paint. Whatever the color the house was painted when it was new, the walls hold no trace of it now. Only brown, dingy remnants of paint peels cling desperately to the house, praying for salvation.

It is not until one wanders around the side of the house that some of the secrets of the house are revealed. A victim of the surgical imprecision that comes along with new additions hastily built to accommodate a rapidly growing family, the house has no perceivable form to it anymore. Rather, the house is a monstrosity of new additions jutting out from every angle able to support the weight of new development. The ending result is a nonsensical arrangement of rooms, and always, the smell of fresh lumber. The home gave the air of something not quite finished, a work in progress, if you will. As such, the family took its undertones from the house, and we became a work in progress, continually destined to never be finished.

But back when Eva was small, as though she could ever be small, the house was only a one room shack. Her father, driven out of the ministry for his affair with Eva's nonexistent mother, was destitute. He had no money or income to speak of, save for the fertile acres that roll around the house. He was even too poor to develop that, as no other man in town would allow my grandfather credit to buy the machinery and labor necessary to begin cultivation. So Eva and her father lived forever stigmatized by his love and indiscretions.

In my youth I imagined my grandmother as a woman with flaxen hair and shining, green eyes, even though my own hair, like my mother's, was quite dark. In my head, she would wear fine dresses of silk and velvet and was the envy of every man and woman in the town. She was always smiling, and had a soft, lilting laugh, musical and frequent. Such are the fancies of young girls. I also imagined she fell in love with my grandfather the first time their eyes met. My grandfather, at the time a fledgling minister, with dark hair and dark eyes, tall, sturdy, and solid. Their love forbidden, I imagined, by her father, a rich man, like a mayor or a banker. He would have no minister for his daughter, the jewel of his life. Yet young love cannot be derailed or denied by strong words and threats. So the beautiful girl and the handsome minister succumbed to temptation, resulting in the conception of my mother. I quite frequently imagined the wrath of her father, and, upon the birth of young Eva, sent his daughter away and locked her up in a tower guarded by a witch or a dragon, depending on what struck my fancy at the time. Their real story, I learned later, was something quite different, but the imagination of a child is a fierce thing and such fancies cannot be lightly abandoned, nor should they be.

And so, in my naive childish mind, my grandmother was continually banished by her cruel father, and my poor grandfather, perpetually broken hearted, lost his love half a million times. I even made the folly once of telling Mother this particular fancy, the story I had concocted and told myself so many times it seemed like truth. Her punishment was quick and severe. Pregnant at the time with one of my siblings, as she always seemed to be throughout my childhood, she moved surprisingly fast. My eyes clouded from the impact of her wooden spoon upon the back of my skull. I fell to the floor, gasping with shock and pain. I staggered away, worried about blindness amidst her continual shouts of me being a filthy liar, a wicked child who tells lies, and on and on it went. That was the one and only time I ever told my mother anything about what went on in my ceaseless daydreams. I was four or five years old.

The life Eva lead with her father in that house was fixedly different from the life I lead there. From an early age Eva was both mother to herself, daughter to James, and housekeeper to them both. She would ceaselessly prattle on and on about how good we kids had it to me and my brothers and sisters because we had her, and all the things she did for us that she used to have to do for herself. It was one of her favorite lectures, to remind us all that we were ungrateful, she a martyr, blah, blah, blah. It is with more than a twinge of bitterness that I recount these memories, but the story must be told. It is more Eva's story than anyone else's, for she marked us all in her own way, for better or for worse. Ironically, she became a type of stain on all our lives, one which we all tried so hard in our own way to remove or bleach away. In this, my brothers and sisters and I are the same; we have all failed.

[Amylian]

Seeing as how I am the last, I must tell the story, and, like all good stories, I must start at the beginning. But how do you begin to tell of things that are much larger than you, things of which you have no knowledge, or could not possibly understand? Yet tell I must, for that is my duty as the last. So now I must vow to tell a story much larger than myself and my small part in it. I must try to tell of many lives, loves, and dreams through the filter of my own. I only pray that I may begin to do them justice, for after I close my eyes for the last time, no one else will know the story. It will stay with those who are dead, and they will keep their secrets.

First, I am sorry I was late; I had to do tests, research papers and stuff so I was off.
Well, the opening is simply original; I like you being honest and all. It really can grip anyone easily, no exaggeration in here.

However, you still call her "Eva" and not "Mother" and one describing her or what surrounds her, you use this gloomy language, unlike, as a comparison, your grandmother that you describe her and all what is related to her using flourishing, bright language. I still insist on the point there might be a big issue between you and your mother that hasn't been unfolded yet, guess we have to wait to buy the novel. However, the protagonist reminds me of a fictional character and it is the one in "The Glass Menagerie" where (I forgot his name) always get bothered by his mother (forgot her name too). I need to read it again, methink.
All in all, and again, I am really sorry for replying so late.

[Cellar Door]

Thank you for your response, Amylian, and no, it is not very late. I am glad you read it. Thanks again!