Vivid {Five Minute Friday}

Linking up with Gypsy Mama this morning for 5 Minute Friday. 5 Minute Friday is where we write for five minutes flat on a given topic, no more, no less, no edits. The prompt this week is "vivid." Here goes:

Start.

Memories come vivid, like technicolor flashes at the most surprising times. Never knowing what might trigger one, a sight, a smell, an outing. Doing something with the kids.

The smell of lemony body wash in the shower, the one I used the day of her funeral. The one I had bought for her last birthday, 2 weeks before she died, never to be used. The wash we found at her house, in the bathtub, along with the last clothes she ever wore, washed and hung there to dry.


The pickle ornament we hang on the tree in December, the way it sparkles all vivid in sunlight. Remembering the days long ago when my sister and me scrambled to find that pickle on the tree in hopes of a small prize, Mom hiding it so delicately in branches of evergreen.


Playing boardgames with the kids, vivid technicolor memories flood in of laughter over Chinese Checkers, mom moving shiny black pegs, fingertips greasy from chips and chocolate milk. Her laughter soaring loud and contagious, like a flock of migrating geese honking their way south.


Vivid memories. Memories to treasure for always.


Stop.

My son, Adam, finding the Christmas pickle on our tree this past Christmas, carrying on the tradition my mom started

Mom's Chinese Checkers board