Write On
By:  Esther of Kent

This is a special collection that Esther has shared with us. She is working through Judy Reeves excercise book for writers called "A Writer's Book of Days" where the writer works out each assignment daily. We have Esther's first two assignments and then a longer piece. Enjoy.

Topic for Today: Write about something to hold on to

Assignment 1 by Esther Whittle of Kent

Instantly, I think of my trust in the Divine Master’s most Basic Laws. This world would not exist without them. They are Free Will and the Law of Cause and Effect—simple as a song from the heart, and complex as the mystery of Life.

In the beginning, God wallowed in eternity. Meanwhile all Its dear Souls slumbered lazily, uncaring and unaware of anything. Why? You might ask. They had nothing to care about. They had no passion. The worlds of the physical universe were not yet their dream. Souls had Perfect Peace, something we mortal beings yearn to hold on to. All Souls had Free Will, but they didn’t really value this basic Divine Law.

Eventually, God realized that Its multitude of Souls had used their right of Free Will to belazy. “Hummm…” It mused. “These lazy dears need to experience Physical Life!”

The world of matter came into existence with a huff of Divine breath. There are now countless stars, planets, moons, comets, asteroids, black holes, novas—and the laws of quantum physics. Quantum physics is a scientific way of explaining the Law of Cause and Effect. This law allows both gravity and black holes to exist, providing that there are eleven dimensions. I find this an awesome idea to treasure dearly.

God is nothing, if not the ultimate scientist. Trust in this basic law is surely something to hold dear. We cannot grasp it in the clutch of our sweaty hand, but it is surely worthy of holding in our hearts.

And what will you use your Free Will to hold on to today?

Topic for Today: Silence

Assignment 2 by Esther Whittle of Kent

Adults are fond of this quote when irate with a small, energetic child. The child gapes up, seeing the flaring nostrils of the adult. He stares in confusion. Silence only last a moment. The adult, lacking patience, remains irate for much longer.

For an adult with an autistic spectrum brain structure, Silence is a necessity. Too much noise is painfully disruptive. Attention Deficit Disorder often creates challenges that annoy people with normal brains. Our brains absorb too much information—especially background sounds. Even a refrigerator’s motor can be an overload of sound.

The MUTE button works wonders when very noisy commercials are aired on television. You know what I mean, those irritating commercials with the sound gain pushed to the upper decibel limits. The program may be broadcast with the sound gain barely functional. Then the station broadcasts an advertisement for something that nobody should ever buy, such as sugary cereals, or antiperspirants with toxic levels of aluminum compounds. Overload!

Scientists and the media concentrate on the challenges of dealing with an autistic child. Not one word do they utter about adults in middle age who fall into the autism spectrum. Yet, we certainly exist. Forever, we silently struggle to adjust in a world of aliens who ignore our existence. Too bad, we look so very similar those weird alien creatures with normal brains. Should we always be silent about our superior brains?

THE HAPPY WIFE
By Esther L. Whittle

Note: This is my version of a tale that I recently heard at a party. I’ve embellished it a bit to make it my own. I felt that there were a few things worthy of changing.

Once there was a very happily wed wife. She loved taking care of her home and gardens. She devoted many hours every day to keeping her home and gardens in perfect order.

To please her husband, she kept her body in slim, athletic shape and cooked him fabulous meals every evening that he was not working late. (He devoted his life to earning a fabulous income from his shoestrings to wealth business.) Her whole life centered on her devotion to home and hubby. Both of her adult children had happy lives. The days of pinching pennies and buying clothes at the thrift shops were now ancient history. She could not be more comfortable with her lifestyle. Her world could not be more perfect.

One day, she came home from shopping to discover her dearly beloved husband in bed with a sexy young thing. She gasped in shock and burst into tears at the very sight of them romping about in her marriage bed.

The blond, not being shy, leaped from the soiled sheets and served the devoted wife with divorce papers. While she was standing there in shock, her scoundrel of a husband informed her that he was going to the Bahamas with his lover.

Visions of the airline tickets flying off into the clouds sailed through the wife’s inner vision. She had recently agreed to order the tickets at her husband’s request. Her vacation clothes were in the bags at her feet as she learned of his treachery

"I want you to pack up your things and be gone by the time we return next month," he icily informed his now catatonic wife. "You're no longer young and pretty enough for a macho man like myself. I need a sweet young thing in my bed."

He waved a hand towards the rumpled sheets and said, "And I do mean this bed. Understand?"

His wife merely stared at him in stunned disbelief.

"By the way," he said, reaching for an envelope, "here's some settlement money so that you have funds to find another place to live and get by on until you find a job. I took your name off our joint checking account on the way home."

The lovers slowly dressed as they shamelessly kissed and cooed over each other, totally ignoring the cast-aside wife of thirty years.

The next morning, the woman called a lawyer and arranged to have the lawyer review the financial settlement offered in the divorce papers. Luckily, she was able to get right in and had a very successful chat with her lawyer. She left the office with some sense of relief, knowing that she would heed her lawyer’s advice about community property. Somehow, her husband’s lawyer had not listed a few important items in the divorce petition.

She then visited the bank and cashed out their savings bonds that she had secretly purchased with spare grocery funds over the past 30 years. Most had matured, anyway. The second, rainy-day savings account was still in her name, too. She cashed that out before leaving the bank.

She opened a new account at another banking institution near her new apartment with the proceeds. These funds, added to her Mad Money Trust Fund gave her a comfortable sum upon which to enjoy her new life. The fact that she had never had to rely on the savings set aside for her by her grandparents many decades ago now gave her a comfortable financial cushion.

A part-time job at her husband's biggest competitor's company would take care of daily living expenses. She had already had a very favorable chat with her new boss within an hour of her husband departure for the Bahamas.

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Once she found an apartment, she packed up her personal belongings and took a few precious treasures from the house. These items were mostly expensive things that she had treasured over the years. Enough furniture to be comfortable in her new home was the least that her cheating mate could grant her, she reasoned. The lawyer had assured her that the house and contents were still community property.

Finally, the packing was finished and she sent the movers off to deliver her belongings to her new home.

"I'll be along shortly," she told the movers. "I want to finish cleaning up here before I leave. My husband told me to leave the keys inside the house."

The movers agreed and said that they wanted to grab some lunch, too. They set a time to meet at the apartment later that afternoon.

As a final farewell treat, she sat down at the scarred dining table that she had long ago delegated to family room when her baby left home for college. It had now reclaimed its old place in the formal dining room.

She dined lazily on Champaign, caviar, shrimp scampi, crab, a modest selection of gourmet cheeses, and her favorite side salad. For dessert, she treated herself to fresh strawberries and rich, double-dark chocolate ice cream. The no-longer devoted wife took her time and savored every bite of her meal. 

When she had eaten her fill, she gathered up the leftovers and cleaned the kitchen until it sparkled. Her last act of cleaning comprised of stuffing the leftover caviar, shrimp tails, crab shells, and small bits of goat cheese inside the curtain rods in every room. She especially delighted in filling the thick bamboo curtain rods in the master bedroom with a dozen shrimp tails, several empty crab legs stuffed with generous portions of caviar and goat cheese. As she turned to leave the bedroom, she paused. She grinned. There were a few bits of goat cheese and a dab of caviar left. 

Carefully, she slit small seams in the box springs along the edges and deposited the final gifts inside. She used the rescue sewing kit from her new designer bag to sew the slits closed. Finally, she smeared the last drops of juice from the shrimp and caviar on the drawer bottoms of the solid-teakwood designer chests in the master bedroom.

Done, she washed her hands at the sink in the master bathroom and dried them on the old towel that she left for the sweet young thing to enjoy. A smirk lit her face as she drove off in her new car. Her cheating mate's new Mercedes and her old SUV made a great down payment for her shiny new red sports car. After all, her name was on the titles, too. The divorce papers said nothing about the cars being solely his.

The lovers returned to their love nest, relieved that his wife had gone, as ordered. For the first few days, they were delighted with their new freedom to live in sin without his wife in the middle. They gave not one thought to her as they frolicked in the king-sized bed. He felt a twinge of remorse upon discovering that his trusty Mercedes was no longer parked in the garage.

"Let her have it," the sexy blonde urged. "You promised to buy me an Alpha Romero, anyway."

He laughed and they dashed for the bedroom--again.

A few days later, they started to notice a terrible odor permeating their favorite rooms in the house. They told the new maid to give the house a thorough cleaning. Alas, the odors only got worse!

As the weeks turned into months, the divorce became final, they wed; but their friends refused to visit the newlyweds. The smell was getting worse all the time!

They replaced the very expensive carpets. They eventually got rid of the leather sofa, chairs and their stinky king-sized bed. Still, the odors haunted them. 

The maid quit. (The first wife never had a maid.)

They put the house on the market, but one sniff of the awful odors sent any prospective buyers running for the hills. Eventually, the local real estate agents refused to show the house.

Desperate, they cut the asking price in half. The new wife was pregnant and in tears as she gagged away in the maid's bathroom. Something had to be done!

They got high-interest-rate loan from the bank and cashed out his retirement accounts to purchase a more modest home. The new wife threatened to leave our hero unless they vacated that awful nightmare of a house.

What was a man to do? The odors were now making him ill.

About a year later, the former wife called to see how the newlyweds were getting along. She sympathized with their battle to sell the house. In fact, she offered to buy the house from her former husband.

"I loved that house," she sighed. "But the divorce settlement barely leaves me with enough money to live on. I’ve had to go back to being very frugal. I could give you a small down payment, I suppose.” She quoted a price equal to about ten percent of the market value. “I can get that much if I cash in my term life insurance.”

The former husband balked at such a meager stipend for the five-bedroom manor. His new wife, holding their cranky babe, urged him to let her have the house for that amount, plus payment. She suggested a payment that seemed steep to the old wife.

Quickly, she rejected the payments. “After all, at my age, all I could manage to find is a part-time job,” she said. Most employers want young, experienced people. Even you refuse to hire anyone over thirty-five,” she reminded him with an edge of sarcasm. “Do recall that I’ve never had to work since you made a success of your business. I've had to return to college for my Masters. And do recall that I did most of the upgrades on that house over the years. I planted all the shrubs and fruit trees, too.”

In the end, they grudgingly agreed to sell her the house for the cash that she offered.

"I really miss my old bed and those wonderful teak chests in the master bedroom," she sighed while they were signing the final papers a few weeks later after escrow closed.

"We got rid of that old thing," the new mother snapped, bouncing her fat little cherub. "With the new baby and the exorbitant loan payments, we had to downsize to a tiny two-bedroom shack."

The husband glared at his wife, but held his tongue. The sex was now on a asyou earn it basis.

The ex-wife managed to keep her face blank, but inwardly smirked. She pleaded that they at least leave the curtains and basic furnishings. "If you can spare them," she said, glancing about her old living room with a longing gaze.

Spitefully, they refused. "You got everything that you're entitled to in the divorce settlement," he said. When they removed the last of his things, they even took the curtain rods.

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