#i once read a letter my great great grandmother wrote to her daughter about marrying a belarussian... could NOT be me lmao

[merrymerryquitecontrary]

Young Empress Vader takes the throne when her father dies in their fight against Sidious. Without the only family member she has ever known, and overcome by grief, she doesn't last long...

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TRIGGER WARNINGS: 1) major character deaths 2) suicide

So this is an old, old fic I wrote back in 2015 when I was still experimenting with what I want from my SW fanfiction, the result was a lot of Dark/Sith Leia raised by Vader and a lot of death and grief and angst...

I actually wrote two versions of this fic, this and another with a slightly happier ending but with way, way more angst and grief. So I'll post the second version of this, perhaps tomorrow morning. I’ll also post it on AO3 when it’s out of Bad Publishing Glitch Time (12-5am UTC apparently has a dating glitch that makes new fics appear far behind older ones)...

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“Lord Vader and the Emperor are dead. I am Empress Darth Leia Vader. Lord Vader’s daughter,” the girl calmly explained to the Red guards who had been waiting outside the throne room while she and her father were with Sidious. Black stained her cheeks were her eyeliner flowed with tears. Her eyes were an eerie yellow colour, but they were not puffed nor red from her earlier crying. She was scowling, waiting for them to acknowledge her as their new Master.

***

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” the woman asked, entering the small mausoleum.

The veiled girl turned around and her dark brown eyes looked up to the intruder.

“I am in mourning,” she said quietly, her voice slightly trembling, gazing once more at the newer of the two graves. “I could ask the same of you,” she added as an afterthought.

“I once loved him,” the woman said, coming closer.

“Half the women and girls in the galaxy did,” she said, shrugging.

“He loved me back.”

“He only ever loved four women. Since his mother and wife are dead, and we can rule out you being his apprentice, because she was an alien, and I am the last one, you are wrong,” the girl said quietly, turning towards the exit. She’d had enough of people disturbing her in the place where she could remember her father.

“Exactly who are you?”

She paused at the doorstep and glanced at the stranger.

“I’m his daughter.”

With that, she turned for a final time and with a swirl of her black cloak, she left the small building and fled into the shadows, using the Force to mask her passage.

The woman ran out just a few seconds after the girl, but she saw no sign of her. She slowly walked back inside, to stare at her own grave and that of her husband’s.

Did that girl really say she was our daughter?

***

Empress Vader was a strong and cunning leader. She was just as ruthless as her Master when it came to dealing with betrayal, failure or plain ignorance.

Within a year of her reign, there was no Rebellion left in the galaxy. All opposition was mercilessly removed.

***

“Father,” came the soft whisper of the young woman standing in the dark desert. “I have fulfilled the task we set ourselves. The galaxy is in order. There is no more chaos. The people live in peace. I am no longer needed. I want to rest. I want to go where you are. I have nothing to live for. There is no more love for me. You were the only person I ever loved and you were the only person who ever loved me.” Her voice broke. “I can’t go on any longer,” she sobbed. “I’m tired. I want to leave. I want to rest.” A tear escaped out of her left eye and dripped down her cheek. It was clear and bright, not stained with black is her tears once were. Her brown eyes looked into the darkness of the Tatooinian night as she fell to her knees. “All of this is eating me alive from the inside. I need rest, a long rest,” she cried, spilling her heart and soul in the dry, harsh sand of her father’s homeplanet. Her raw emotions echoed across the Force and she curled up, not minding the irritating grains that got into her hair and clothes. She sobbed into her hands, grieving for the father she lost and the life they could have had together. She was all alone in the galaxy and nobody would ever care for her – not with her reputation of the Sith Empress.

As she slowly calmed down, gathering her wits about her, she reached to her belt and detached her father’s lightsabre.

She stared at it for a moment. It had claimed many lives before. She never used it herself. For her, it was a reminder of her father and her task. The last time it took a life was by her father’s hand.

Now, the first time and only time she would use it, she would take her own life.

She pressed the activation plate against her chest, under her left breast. Igniting, it would pierce her heart, killing her instantly.

She placed her thumb on the activation switch. One tiny move and she fell to the harsh sand, lifeless.

The Force cried out at losing another of its children.

A teenage boy stirred in his sleep in a hut in the Jundland Wastes.

***

To: Pooja Naberrie, Senator of Naboo

From: Darth Leia Vader, Empress

Senator Naberrie,

I write to you in a very important matter.

You are surely aware of who your aunt, Padmé Amidala, was. You know she died, bearing child. The thing is, she gave birth before dying. She was married to Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker and she bore his child. Anakin Skywalker chose to serve the Dark Side, becoming Darth Vader.

I am the child of Padmé Amidala and Anakin Skywalker, known as Darth Vader.

After my father’s death eighteen months ago, I took the throne of the Empire. I brought order to the galaxy. I have fulfilled the task my father set me. I am weary of living. It is now my time to join him.

I have named you my heir and successor to the throne, as my closest blood relation and a fellow politician. You will be the Empress. It will be announced within a week, when my aides declare me missing, presumed dead.

By the time you get this letter, I will be on Tatooine, my father’s homeworld, the place where Anakin met Padmé, the place where my grandmother died. I will end my life there, in the desert. You may organise a search for my body, if you wish to. I don’t mind either way. I’ll be just as happy lying out there in the desert of Tatooine forever. If you do find me...bury me at my father’s side, under the name of Leia Amidala Skywalker. That’s what I would have been called, if things had worked out differently. If my mother and father lived.

Well, I guess that’s everything you need to know. As Empress, you can do whatever you want with the galaxy. You can make it into a Republic, if you wish to. I know that’s what my mother would have wanted.

I wish I could have known you and your family.

Goodbye,

your Cousin Leia.

Pooja Naberrie dropped the datapad into her lap.

Her Aunt’s child had lived. She had a living cousin. She was terrified of the implications – Aunt Padmé had been married to Darth Vader; the man who was buried in the family’s mausoleum was Darth Vader. The Empress was her cousin. That ruthless Sith Empress was her Aunt’s child.

And now she was on her way to die, or was already dead.

She grabbed the pad and rushed out of her room, slamming the old-fashioned door wide open. She ran downstairs to the large sitting room where she knew she would be. She always spent most days there, reading, writing, knitting, and sometimes, only staring silently out of the window across the lake.

She spent a great amount of time doing the latter during the past one and a half years, after Anakin Skywalker had been buried in her own mausoleum, by her side.

This time, Aunt Padmé was sitting reading a book out of a datapad.

“Pooja”, she laughed. “What’s the matter, I don’t remember the last time you were in such a hurry.”

Pooja didn’t laugh at her aunt’s jibe, instead saying: “I got a message from the Empress. You need to read it,” she added, handing her aunt the datapad.

The older woman’s eyes grew wider and wider in shock, then terror as she read.

“Do you think it’s true?” the Senator asked her aunt.

“Yes. Yes it is. She once told me herself. I was in the mausoleum and she was there. I asked her who she was and she said she was his daughter. She then disappeared before I could stop her. I never saw her again. I had no idea it was the Empress,” Padmé said through a constricted throat.

“What do we do now?”

“We must go to Tatooine. We need to find her, as soon as possible. Maybe it’s not too late yet. She named you her successor. You might be able to gain control of the army. We need as many people as we can to search for her in the desert. You’ll go to Coruscant immediately, see what you can do there, I’m going to Tatooine. You’ll need to tell them about this message, that the Empress is going to die if they don’t let you take men to Tatooine to find her.”

“Right. I’ll go and get packed.”

“So will I.”

***

There was a troop of Royal Guards awaiting her on the palace’s landing platform.

“Empress Naberrie,” the head of the Guards greeted her, bowing.

Pooja’s eyes widened. Did they already know that she was to be Empress? Was her cousin already dead?

“I need two hundred troopers to find Empress Vader.”

“Empress Vader is dead. Before she left, she had trackers implanted in her body – they transmitted the information that she died suddenly in the past ten hours.”

Pooja suddenly felt lightheaded. So her Aunt’s child was dead now. Dead before she could meet her mother. Before her mother could meet her child.

“Then we will search for her body,” she decided.

“We can easily find her using the trackers.”

“Then show me how to and I will go alone,” she replied.

Within half an hour, she was on her way to Tatooine to meet her Aunt and find her cousin’s body.

It was before noon when she arrived on the desert planet.

She managed to find Padmé in one of the smaller canteens.

“Did you manage?” the older woman desperately asked her niece.

“Auntie... I am the Empress. Leia is already dead.”

“No.” The sorrow in Padmé’s voice made Pooja’s throat clench. She hugged her Aunt closely.

“I’m sorry, Auntie. They said she had trackers implanted so they would know. I have the equipment to find her using them.”

They sat together in silence for a few minutes.

“Let’s go then,” Padmé said.

They rose and left the building.

Padmé had already rented a speeder for her search, and while she had been travelling across the desert for a few hours the previous day, she did not find any trace of her daughter.

This time, using the trackers, it only took them two hours to reach the place where Leia’s body lay.

The girl was sprawled out on the sand, her dark brown spread out on the ground in a strange halo around her head. Her eyes were closed, but there were dirty tear tracks where dust had clung to her cheeks while the tears where still wet.

Her hand fell to one side, and the deactivated lightsabre was just next to it, where it must have rolled out when the girl died.

She seemed peaceful, as if she were only sleeping, but the burnt hole in her heart bore witness to the truth.

Padmé fell to her knees, reaching out to stroke her daughter’s hair. As she touched her, she broke down, sobbing.

Pooja keeled next to her Aunt.

“Why did she do this?”

There was nothing Pooja could say to ease her Aunt’s pain. Only recently she’d found out that her husband had lived for years and died in separation from her, and now she found out she had a child and that child committed suicide.

#Dark Leia #Vader raises Leia #Sith Leia #suicide #grief #empire #tatooine #star wars #starwars fanfic #angst #star wars angst #au fanfiction #star wars AU

[pocket-luv101]

Happiness || Chapter 7

Fandom: Servamp Characters: Mahiru, Kuro, Licht, Hyde Pairings: KuroMahi (main), LawLicht (side)

Summary:  Mahiru found a baby in front of his orphanage and he thought that it belonged to Kuro. But the infant could be the key to finding his lost mother. {Historical Romance// Family AU}

Ch.1 || Ch.2 || Ch.3 || Ch.4 || Ch.5 || Ch.6 || (Ch.7) ||

“Look here, Machi.” Mahiru shook a rattle in front of the toddler. She laughed and reached forward to take the toy in her tiny hands. Machi leaned forward a little too much and she almost flopped onto the ground. He caught her before she could hit her head on the ground and helped her sit up. He placed the rattle in front of her and she cheered.

“She has the balance of a baby deer and I keep worrying that she’ll fall on her face or something.” Kuro commented as he watched Machi play with the rattle. He had to wonder if she knew that they were referring to her since she pointed her rattle at him. He couldn’t understand her babbles but Mahiru seemed to be able to. Mahiru helped her move closer to Kuro. She pushed herself up but she merely swayed back and forth as if she was about to crawl forward.

“I wonder when she’ll start to crawl.” Kuro said. “Our father kept me separated from my siblings so I don’t have many memories from when we were this young. He thought we all needed to focus on our role in the family. I’m the oldest so he expected me to take the title of duke. If only he was alive to see me here instead of our country house.”

“That’s the role he wanted for you but you’re a better brother than a duke. You are close with Lily and Hyde respects you.” Mahiru knew that family was important to Kuro. He had told him about his past when they were together. “Machi will learn things at her own pace. I don’t know what kind of environment she lived in before but she’s thriving in your home.”

Kuro was certain that Machi’s smile was caused by Mahiru’s influence more than the house. He had the unique ability to bring out people’s best. He watched him lift Machi and lightly bounced her in his arms. The small gesture made her laugh and she clapped her tiny hands. She looked around and waved towards a pile of books. “Machi is a curious cat, isn’t she?”

“She’ll cause a lot of trouble when she starts to crawl. I don’t know if I can handle that.” Kuro said and chuckled lightly. He took a book and opened it in front of her even though she couldn’t read it. She struggled to turn the pages and crumbled the paper in her hand. “We should get her some children books. They might help her sleep at night.”

“I’ll be here to help you, Kuro.” Mahiru smiled at him. “You’re a night owl and I’m a morning person so we can split up taking care of Machi well. How about you read to her at night and I’ll cook breakfast.”

Kuro recalled the mornings they would share when they were lovers. He would wake to hear Mahiru humming softly as he cooked breakfast for them. After they broke up, he missed those simple mornings. It felt right to have Mahiru fill his days again but he reminded himself that he couldn’t forget the reason he left. Life with him would be difficult for Mahiru and he deserved better.

A knock on the door pulled him out of his thoughts. They weren’t expecting Hyde to return until the afternoon since he offered to help the orphanage. Kuro wondered if one of his siblings had decided to visit like Hyde had. His butler went to answer the door and Kuro stood to greet the visitor. He didn’t recognize the woman the butler escorted into the room though.

“My, you have grown so big, Ash! Where is your brother, Lawless? He wrote me a letter but he isn’t here. I thought I taught him better manners than to leave his elders waiting.” She said and patted his head. Her eyes fell onto Mahiru and asked, “Are you going to introduce your nanny to your friend here?”

“Reika?” Kuro hadn’t seen the woman since he was a child so he didn’t recognize her immediately. They sat on the couch and he told Mahiru: “This is Reika. She was my siblings’ nanny and she helped raised us after our mother disappeared. Reika, this is Mahiru Shirota. He’s my lov— my friend. Mahiru is helping me with a few things.”

“And what about this tiny girl? I don’t remember raising this little one but she must be a Servamp. She has red eyes.” Reika said and pinched Machi’s cheek. While she wasn’t hurt, she began to cry and turned to Mahiru. He started to comfort her but then Reika took her from him. She cooed down at Machi. “Don’t cry.”

Machi only sobbed louder and Mahiru attempted to take her back. The woman turned away from him and he bit his lip in frustration. He didn’t want to yell at her but he could see that the stranger was making Machi more uncomfortable and scared. He was also worried he would accidentally hurt Machi if he took her back by force. Mahiru was glad when Kuro spoke up.

“Can you hand her back to Mahiru? Machi isn’t good with strangers.” Kuro nodded towards Mahiru who held out his arms for Machi. Reika appeared reluctant but she placed Machi in his arms. Her tears slowed to a stop as he rubbed her back and comforted her. Machi rubbed her eyes against his shoulder a few times and then Mahiru gently wiped away her tears.

“It was my job to care for the Servamps for ten years so I simply jumped to work when she started to cry. I think of them as my own children. I didn’t mean to scare you, Little One. Did you say her name was Machi?” She asked. Mahiru nodded instead of answering her because he was focused on Machi. He softly sang to her and she began to mumble along with him.

He looked back to the woman when she said, “I don’t know of the Shirota household.”

“I’m not from a noble family. I help run the orphanage where Kuro decided to adopt Machi. Kuro is great with the kids at the orphanage but he never raised a child before. I offered to help him with Machi. Kids need a warm home so I’m glad Machi found one with Kuro.” He told her. While the woman worked for the family, he wasn’t certain if he should tell her everything about Machi and Kuro’s mother.

“Oh?” Reika’s tone became dismissive. “Kuro, shouldn’t you be more selective when you hire the help? You must be more careful with who you let into your house because of your family’s name. People will question why you let a common man care for your daughter, even if she is adopted.”

“Reika, that’s enough.” He stopped her before her words could offend Mahiru further. From the way Mahiru turned his face away from them, he knew that she had already hurt him. Kuro’s anger rose slightly and he instinctively felt protective of him. At the same time, he felt guilty that his title had led to him being judged. He had left Mahiru to protect him but he was still hurt in the end.

Kuro placed his hand on Mahiru’s shoulder and said, “Mahiru works with kids and he’s a great man. You’ve already seen how comfortable Machi is with him. I would like to know why you came today, Reika. Hyde told us that he sent letters to our former staff but he didn’t say anything about you would be visiting us. Is there something you needed to tell us in person?”

“Hyde asked about your mother. He wrote that he would prefer us to reply in a letter but I knew I had to come down. When your mother disappeared, he was the most determined to find her again. I thought he gave up since he stopped speaking with us on the matter. Something must’ve happened for him to make him resume his search. Now that I’m here, I can see why.”

Her eyes moved from Mahiru to the child in his arms. He thought that she had realized that Machi was connected to their mother and he stiffened. Mahiru placed his hand on her hair protectively. Reika made a sad smile and said, “You want your adoptive daughter to know her grandmother. I will tell you where your mother is.”

“You know what happened to Mother? You didn’t tell Hyde when he asked a decade ago or during the police’s investigation.” Kuro’s eyes widened. It was rare for him to raise his voice but, as he thought of the years that he spent mourning his mother, he couldn’t stop himself. The anger he held faded once Mahiru placed his hand on his shoulder. Machi mimicked Mahiru and patted Kuro’s arm.

Reika sat down on the couch and sighed. “Your mother was the one who commanded I keep that night a secret. Now that you’re all adults, I think I can tell you. As you know, your mother and father married for political reasons. That is quite normal considering their family name. But… Your mother fell in love with another lord. She ran away with him to France.”

“She left us?” He couldn’t hide his doubt from his voice. “Mother wouldn’t have left her eight children and make them think she was dead.”

“You called her your mother but she wasn’t the one who raised you. I was.” Reika stood and walked to Kuro. She tried to embrace her but he stepped away from him her. She frowned and added: “I lost contact with your mother after she moved to France so I can’t prove she’s there. But it’s the truth. Kuro, you must be disappointed but you need to be strong for your family. That’s your role as heir.”

“Excuse me,” Mahiru spoke over her. He stepped between them with his back turned to the woman so he could focus on Kuro. Tenderly, he stroked his cheek and then he held out Machi to him. Kuro didn’t say a word but he held the baby when he passed her to him. Mahiru faced Reika again and said, “It’s time for Machi’s nap. Kuro is the only one who can make her put her to sleep. I’ll show you out, Reika.”

“I was hoping I could stay a little longer since it has been so long since we’ve last talked.” She said but she let Mahiru lead her to the door. On the steps, Reika turned back to him. “Hyde’s letter surprised me but the fact that Kuro adopted a child is more shocking. I raised him and I never imagined him as the type to want a family.”

“Maybe you don’t know him as well as you like to think. From my time with Kuro, I can tell you that his siblings and family has always been important to him.” He didn’t hide the edge in his voice. Mahiru thought of how callous she was as she told Kuro about his mother. He took a deep breath to calm himself. “If you learn more about where Kuro’s mother, please come back and tell us. You should apologize to Kuro for disrespecting his mother as well.”

“You’re bold for someone without a title to his name.” She had a slight smile as she said the words. “Kuro hired you to help take care of his new daughter and I hope you understand your position.”

“The only thing I want is to help Kuro and Machi.” Mahiru told her and closed the door. For a moment, he leaned against the wood and let out a heavy sigh. He closed his eyes and tried to gather his composure after the conversation they had with Reika. He heard Kuro’s voice from the next room where he was singing to Machi. The meeting must’ve been more difficult for Kuro.

He walked to the living room and paused in the doorway. Kuro cradled Machi in his arms and she was sleeping soundly. The quaint sight warmed his heart but, even from a distance, he could see the conflicting emotions in his eyes. Mahiru walked forward and stood in front of him. He whispered, “Are you okay, Kuro? I’ll put Machi in her crib and we can talk.”

“I was hoping to get more answers but not I’m not sure if I should’ve. I don’t know how Hyde will react to this news.” Kuro glanced at the clock and dreaded the time when his brother would return. He wasn’t the best with words.

“At least he’ll hear it from you and you’ll take his feelings into account when you tell him. That means a lot.” Mahiru was more confident in him than Kuro himself. He smiled to reassure him and then stepped closer. Kuro felt his heart squeeze from how close he was. He merely slipped Machi from his arms and he took her to a baby swing.

Kuro felt a little disappointed when he stepped away but he reminded himself that he couldn’t let his feelings for Mahiru resurface. Mahiru walked back to him and sat on the couch. After Kuro sat down, he said: “Your family’s nanny said your mother went to France with her lover. How did Machi find her way to our small village if what she says is true? Someone brought her here and they’ll know more.”

“Hyde and Licht said a man tried to take Machi the previous day. He might be the father.” Kuro said but he couldn’t fully absorb the fact that his mother left his family willingly. “Reika claimed she left with a lord. I can’t recall news of a lord disappearing around the same time as my mother though. Then again, there were so many rumours that it was hard to keep up with all of them.”

“We can talk to Hyde and Lily about who the lord could possibly be. They might know more.” Mahiru offered the reassurance. He placed his hand on his leg and looked up at him. “Reika might’ve been mistaken when she told you why your mother left. You know your mother and she’s caring. Maybe she had a good reason for leaving.”

“I don’t want Machi to grow up wondering like I had to.”

#servamp #kuromahi #sloth pair #servamp kuro #mahiru shirota #fanfiction

[ladyteacups]

Dear Steven Letter 3

PHOTO NOT MINE FOUND ON GOOGLE

A/N: In honor of me watching “to all the boys part 2,” here are some more love letters to Steve. I was surprised to find this part was practically finished, and just chilling in my files but ya know...

P.S. I cant believe I have to insert my own line break now...

Margo slept while her mind ran a mile a minute. Her great grandmother really loved this man. They talked of marriage and a home and she was only two letters deep. It was getting to her.

It was five in the morning when she could take it no longer. She was getting no sleep while wondering what was gonna happen to the lovers. Wait, ew, that was her grandmother. Great, grandmother.

She slipped out of bed and padded to the kitchen. Setting up some water to boil for tea. When she had finished putting the cup together she returned to her room and got comfortable in her window seat. Margo grabbed the letters and began to read:

Dearest Steven,

I met with Hannah today. We had a nice girls day and I even bought a new skirt pattern. I really can’t wait to sew it up. She asked how you are. I always wonder what to tell them. Do I tell them that you’re doing great? That you love it there? Tell me Steven.

Maybe you do love it there. Maybe more than you love it here. Tell me again Steven. Tell me you love me again. Tell me you miss me, that you want me. I’ll be yours forever if you’ll have me. Next time I see you Steven, I want to marry you. Promise me, the next chance we get, we’ll runaway and come back wed.

Steven my honey, my sweet sweet boy, I dream of seeing you every night and every day I wish just as much. To see you again would grant my every wish. Sweet love of mine, tell me your wishes. Tell me the things you think of when you are finally alone with your thoughts.

I love you Steven.

All I am is with you, love Y/N

 Wow. To love someone that much. It was ethereal, magnificent, beautiful, touching. Everything she could ever want with her future partner. Her grandmother had it all. The love of a century.

Margo swallowed down the rest of her tea and folded the letter back up, before opening up another.

 Dear Y/N,

Baby girl, you make me feel so happy when I receive your letters. I treasure each one. I read them over and over again, thinking of you sitting at your desk just writing to me.

Tell them I’m doing well. Tell them I miss my girl everyday but I’m making it through.

Runaway with you? I would do anything you ask Bunny. But we both know that’s not how you want to get married. You want your father to walk you down the aisle, and to see your mother cry because she’s so happy. Sweet girl, all I want is to marry you. To see you in a white gown and your hair all done up. How stunning you are and how beautiful you would be when you become my wife.

Oh love the things that run through my head when I’m alone are not for letters. They are for looking into each other’s eyes, for lips touching, and souls becoming one. My thoughts are to be said in soft whispers, with gentle caresses.

I’m sorry angel. I shouldn’t talk of my thoughts in this way. A gentleman would make an honest woman of his gal before talking of such things.

All my love,

Steve

Damn. They were crazy about each other.

Margo bit at her nails before placing the letters back in the trunk. She wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and stepped outside with a fresh cup of tea to watch the sunrise.

Margo wished she had known the woman, but the letters were giving her a little bit of sense as to who she was. And to Steven- Margo understood that Y/N was his everything. The love they talked of is what romantics like her dreamed of. Margo wanted all of that.

She was a little jealous of her great grandmother.

When Margo returned to her room, she sat on the floor in front of the trunk. Opening the lid once again and looking at the contents with new eyes.

She pulled out the photos first. There wasn’t many. All of them in black and white and Margo smiled at the images.

A photo of her great grandmother holding her grandma. She could tell. Even as a young girl, her grandmother had the same braided pigtails, and large, enchanting eyes.

The next was of Y/N. She was holding her daughters hand. Her face slightly aged. Her smile lines deeper than the last picture, and Margo’s grandma was older too. A preteen if Margo wasn’t mistaken. She laughed at her grandma’s bright smile.

She flipped through a few more, most of them seemed to just document her grandmother’s growth.

Then she held the last photo in her hand. A soldier. Skinny and fragile looking. He held her great grandmother in a vice grip, like she’d disappear if he let go. He was just barely taller than her. Margo could tell easily that the man was handsome. ‘Go grandma,’ she thought.  She stared at it for a while. Taking in every detail, when it hit her. Just looking at their faces, Margo saw all the love they placed in the letters they wrote to each other.

It was Steven.

#steve rogers #steve rogers imagine #captain america #captain america imagine #steve rogers x reader #captain america x reader #marvel #marvel imagine #marvel x reader

[the-writerly-night-owl]

A Very Special Christmas Story

Desire and Decorum/MC x Ernest Sinclaire

Summary: Ernest Sinclaire spends a Christmas with his now grown family to tell a story from his favorite book.

Authors Note: Holy crap wait until you see the notes for the future of the Sinclaire kids it will be long. For the 41 days of cheer: favorite book. Fun fact the story he tells is a foreshadow to the christmas book coming up. Maybe let me know which book you think I should write next? Happy reading. 

Christmas Eve 1856

Ernest Sinclaire looked at the letter address to him and saw the return address. Smiling her held off on opening it and grabbed for his cane. They would open that as a family together later that afternoon. Behind the library doors he could hear the pitter patter of small feet and shrieks of giggles. He put the letter aside and headed out.

“Grandfather,” said the voice of Arabella Sinclaire as she stopped right in front of them. The ten-year-old curtsied as she smiled brilliantly at him. “Are you okay?”

He looked at her a bit suspicious as he noted that she came to a sudden halt.

“I’m fine, now who are you chasing? Or running from?” he asked giving her a pointed look.

Arabella cleared her throat and flushed her face turning a bit red. She shifted on her feet and shook her head her auburn hair falling over her face. Ernest just laughed and offered her his arm. Nodding she took it and they headed to the main part of the house. They could hear the piano in the parlor while they walked in together.

His eyes glazed around the room to find the one person that he really wanted to see. Clara was sitting next to the window, a blanket on her lap and baby Isaac in her arms. Ernest took his spot next to her and just let his mind wander. Wow, it was hard to believe everyone in this room was here partly because of him.

“Ernest, someone wants to be held,” said Clara capturing his attention.

He smiled and took baby Isaac from her arms. The infant smiled and glanced at his jacket before picking at the buttons. He was only six months old and loved to play with anything he could find.

“Even our great grandchild likes to mess with my jacket.”

“It’s because of the buttons they’re very shiny. Can you believe that we already a great grandchild?” asked Clara laughing before resting her head on his shoulder. Isaac drooled a little on his lap as he wiped her face with his handkerchief. “He’s like her grandfather that way, Vincent loved to play with those buttons the most.”

Ernest just shook his head and looked over at the rest of the family. In this room with him there was so much family that his younger self’s head would spin if he saw them.

“Grandmother, grandfather do you have a recommendation?” asked young Maria Richards from the piano.

“Silent Night,” said Clara and gave a look to Ernest and giggled.  

“I agree with your grandmother,” he said laughing as the young girl just grinned.

She started to play the new song as he took Isaac’s hands and started to play with her gently. His eyes glancing around the room every once in a while. Georgiana and Percival giggling together. Ernest could remember being shocked when he said that he wanted to marry Georgiana. He was just floored since they had grown up together. Apparently boarding school and not being around for a couple of summers made him look at her very differently.

Most of the girls were gathered around the piano and picking out other carols to play during the night. Some of the younger children were getting ready for a game of hide and seek.

“Ernest,” said Clara not looking at him as she squeezed his thigh. “Happy Christmas.”

“Happy Christmas Clara.”

He closed his eyes for a moment and listened to the sound of his family surround them. The only people who wouldn’t be here would be the ones he prayed for the most. His heart ached for Thomas who had passed in the war when India fought for Independence. He glanced at Alicia who looked so much like Hamid keeping her boys from reaching for the presents. William who was in America with a very pregnant wife that shouldn’t be traveling right now. Andrew and his family with William staying together like they did when they were younger.

Mabel couldn’t travel with her son sick in Cordonia. He was told that they would be there in time for Easter.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Clara smiling at Isaac playing peek-a-boo.

“Just blessed. I got a letter from William, I think Martha had the baby.”

“I can’t wait to read it, I want to know if I have a grandson or a granddaughter from him.” She laughed and pushed on his shoulder some excited as if she was like a little girl again.

“I bet you know exactly what grandchild that would be wouldn’t it?” he teased.

“Number 33.”

She looked proud to know that as he saw her green eyes twinkling. Clara picked up Isaac from his arms and hugged him before kissing the infant on the head. The kids were all playing games with Clara and Ernest trying to keep up with them.

Georgiana had rushed over to Clara to talk about something with her. Something about a new dress pattern she wanted to try.

“Grandfather can you read us a story?” asked Peter, Laurnce’s son, holding a copy of A Christmas Carol in his hands. “I like it when you read aloud, I mean this is your favorite book right?”

Ernest took a long look at the cover and shook his head. He paid no mind to the girls talking about clothes and what not. He looked at the ten year old next to him and cleared his throat.

“Well that’s not my favorite book. My favorite book isn’t published and it’s in library waiting for me to add to the story.”

Peter looked up at him intently trying to figure out what book he was talking about. Next to him Georgiana and Clara shared a look with each other, they knew what he was talking about.

“What book is that then Grandfather?” he pressed trying to figure it out.

Ernest sighed and clapped a hand on his thigh on top of Clara’s hand. “Well my favorite is about Ledford Park. You see back when I married your grandmother, Ledford park had burned down.”

At this Peter’s eyes grew wide and looked a little scandalized at the news. After all they were currently sitting inside Ledford Park. Everyone around them had turned and looked at the pair. Not everyone knew this story because well there was a lot details that he didn’t want to remember. Particularly those details about Percival’s father.

“That’s your favorite book?” asked Fitzwilliam who just had a puzzled look on his face.

“Well my favorite book tells the story of 1816. Your grandmother got it for me as a wedding gift. It is about when I met your grandmother and when we courted and when we married. It’s the first chapter in the story of Ledford Park.”

Next to them on the floor Eleanora gasped and put her cards down. “I know that book. I didn’t know that you wrote that Grandfather.”

Ernest grinned, she read every kind of book she could get her hands on when she was here. It didn’t surprise him.

“I did.”

“It’s not your favorite book because you wrote it, is it?” asked Charles staring at him.

“No, it’s my favorite book because it’s the story of our family.”

“Am I in it?” asked Peter.

Ernest nodded as he looked around at his grandchildren who had given him full attention. Clara smiled and bit her bottom lip and nodded at him. He knew that look and what was coming next.

“How about instead of reading A Christmas Carol by Mr. Dickens, I read a few passages to you from my favorite book.” He sighed and looked at his daughter catching Georgiana’s eye. “Sweetheart would you mind getting the book? It’s on the writing table, I just added to it this morning. I’ll read to you what I wrote about our first Christmas together. You know we helped someone get engaged that year.”

The girls gathered around sitting on their knees to get closer to him. They loved to hear stories about weddings and happy beginnings of marriages. All nineteen of his grandchildren huddled in close and his four children passed around blankets and hot drinks. His granddaughter in law, Genevieve, took Isaac to sit back and listen.

His wrinkled hands took the book from Georgiana and watched her sit next to Percival. Vincent next to Amelia. Ernie and Leila side by side with cups of tea. Laurence sat with his wife, believe it or not, Rebecca Marlcaster. Figures that it would be the way to make Briar related to her.

“This is what it’s like to be popular huh?” he asked as Clara rolled her eyes.

“Now you know what it’s like to be me,” she teased.

He just shook his head and found the page. A rush of memories of being young flooded in his mind. What it was like to kiss Clara for the first time. He still remembered holding Vincent for the first time like it was yesterday. Ernest found the pages marked Christmas of 1816. Clara had taken his hand and nodded at him to continue. Everyone was comfortable and ready to hear him read.

78-year-old Ernest Sinclaire took his time telling his and Clara’s story as he saw it to his family. He was looking forward the quips that Clara would add in and smiled.

Tag list:  @hellooliviaolivia @noeschoices @flyawayboo @queen-among-writers @am-i-invisible777 @adrianadmirer @fluffy-cat-whisper @melodyofgraves @symonde @paisleylovergirl @elainew13 @itsbrindleybinch @brightpinkpeppercorn @darley1101 @mfackenthal @jlpplays1 @writerapprentice @indescribablechoices @wildsayeed @princess-geek @perriewinklenerdie 

#ernest x mc #ernest sinclaire #Mr. Ernest Sinclaire #mc X ernest sinclaire #mr ernest sinclaire #Mr. Sinclair #Mr. Sinclaire #mr sinclaire #mr. sinclaire x mc #D&D fanfic #choices d&d #d&d mc #choices: d&d #choices d&d MC #mc: clara mills #choices ernest sinclaire #choices desire and decorum #desire and decorum #choices: desire and decorum book 2 #choices: desire and decorum #choices stories you play #choices: stories you play #playchoices #playchoices fanfiction #41daysofcheer #41daysofcheerchallenge

[areeta9]

If I Wrote an RF4 Next Gen  Fanfic Part 3

(Changes are the same as previously stated)

Dolce’s Kid

Gender: Male

Other Parent: Random male NPC

Age: 11

Looks and acts a lot like his mom

Likes to read

His mom makes all his clothes

Has a strong interest in the spooky and supernatural

Tries to act mature but is actually quite childish

Stoic

Very good with dark magic

To his family’s surprise, can’t see ghosts

Has a crush on his “aunt” (Jones and Nancy’s biological daughter)

Pico’s existence confuses him. He and his “aunt” can’t see her but Dolce, Nancy, Jones, Frey/Lest, Ventuswill, and his dad can.

Pico often took care of him when he was a baby

Nancy and Jones are his grandparents. They’re daughter is his aunt

He refuses to admit it ,but Amber’s son is his best friend. He’s 80% of his impulse control.

Amber’s son makes him read to him.

Amber’s Kid

Gender: Male

Other Parent: Random male NPC

Age: 11

Literal ball of sunshine

Limitless energy

Tries to make friends with everyone he meets

Extremely naive

He’s afraid of the dark

Loves flowers and sweets

Has his own little garden patch that Illuminata let him have

Loves tagging along in Illuminata’s investigations to the point where Illuminata will make up a mystery and let others in on it just to make him happy

Makes a lot of bouquets and flower crowns for his friends

His favorite way to greet someone: Glomping

He doesn’t like to read much but Kiel and Dolce’s kid do, so he makes them read to him

He sometime pokes fun at Dolce’s son’s crush on his aunt

Dolce’s son is his absolutely, positively BEST friend and favorite person to glomp

Xiao Pai’s Kid

Gender: Male

Other Parent: A man who had joined her father on his travels. He came home with her father and was smitten on first sight. The two began exchanging letters and were eventually married.

Age: 16

Is part of the “My parents are weird but I swear I’m normal club” with Vishnal and Clorica’s kids

He spent most of his life travelling with his dad

He decided to stay with his mom and grandma because he wanted to learn how to run the Bell Hotel

He loves his mother and grandmother, but he finds their antics ridiculous.

Has a weird accent but tries to hide it. It shows when he gets too excited.

Makes some GREAT Asian food

Knows multiple languages

Is great friends with Vishnal’s and Clorica’s kids

Teaches Vishnal and Clorica’s children cooking techniques and recipes from his travels

A bit snarky

Strict on himself

Total Mama’s boy

Mother and grandmother dote on him a lot

Vishnal’s Kid

Gender: Male

Age: 17

Other Parent: Random female NPC

Is part of the “My parents are weird but I swear I’m normal club” with Xiao Pai and Clorica’s kids

Neither of his parents can cook so he taught himself by watching Clorica and Volcanon

Iron Chef

Is an apprentice under Porcoline

Primarily uses a frying pan to fight and supports it with flame magic

Is really big on healthy eating

Porcoline wants to send him to some of his associates so that he can further hone his craft

He's surprisingly strong

Great respect for Dylas

Works out a lot to combat how much food he eats

He did not inherit his father's bishounen looks so some question whether they really are related

Always keeps his kitchen clean

The big brother type

Just as passionate about cooking as Vishnal is about being a butler

Surprisingly gentlemanly

Clorica's Kid

Gender: Female

Age: 16

Other parent: Random male NPC

Is part of the “My parents are weird but I swear I’m normal club” with Xiao Pai and Vishnal’s kids

Butler in training

Really looks up to Volcano

Narcoleptic, but can't work while sleeping like her mother

Frustrated to no end with her narcolepsy

Is very critical of herself

Workaholic

Is always trying to better herself in some way

Impatient

Gets into arguments with her mother because of her refusal to take things slow

Her impatience sometimes lead to mistakes that only serve to make her more frustrated

Dislikes romance and views it as a distraction

Once her training is complete, wants to work somewhere outside of Selphia

Jones's and Nancy's Kid

Gender: Female

Age: 20

Loves kids

Adores her nephew

Has almost completed her medical apprenticeship

Once she completes her apprenticeship she wants to leave town to open her own practice

Team mom

A lot of the guys are attracted to her

Is not being using her boobs to get what she wants

Always has a first aid kit on her

Uses healing magic

Very protective of those she cares about

Is quite the romantic, but refuses suitors in favor of her ambitions

Stronger than she looks

As much as she loves helping people, she also loves that dinero

Frey/Lest’s Kid

I guess this would be a timeline where Frey/Lest just doesn’t get married and thus doesn’t have a child. They dedicate themselves entirely to assisting Ventuswill and maintaining the town. While Frey/Lest never have kids of their own, they become the official aunt/uncle of all the kids in town. The reason why I would go with this is that I feel that if I did write a fanfic where Frey/Lest had a child, I’d probably pair them with one of the love interests and replace the child idea in these posts with ideas for Noel/Luna, the official child you get in the game.

#RF4 #nancy #jones #next gen au #next gen #rune factory 4 #clorica #vishnal #xiao pai #amber #dolce #fanfic

[jaybeevega]

Blogpost 3-5

“The Life of Pi”

“The life of Pi” this movie is a kind of dramatic movie, tells the fantastical story of Pi Patel, a sixteen-year-old South Indian boy who survives at sea with a tiger for 227 days and there is a lot of lessons that you will learn and it can help you in your whole life. In this story Pi is the only human survived in that disaster and his mom, his dad and his brother died in a middle of disaster and Pi also succeed on surviving 227 days in the middle of the ocean, A lot of problems, challenges, and battles that he experience in order to survive, to the point that there is a time that he wants to give up, there are times that he want to die, but he keep on fighting until he succeed. After all of those problems, challenges and battles Pi survived with a tiger named Richard Parker, Pi and Richard Parker eventually land on the Mexican beach. Richard Parker immediately runs off into the jungle without acknowledging Pi, which Pi finds deeply hurtful. Pi is found, fed, bathed, and taken to a hospital. There, two Japanese men come to question Pi about what caused the Tsimtsum to sink. He tells his story, which they do not believe, so he offers them a more plausible version, with the animal characters replaced by other humans, which casts doubt on the original story. According to Pi “You know, I left so much behind, my family, the zoo, India, Anandi. I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go. But what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye. I was never able to thank my father for all I learned from him. To tell him, without his lessons I would never have survived. I know Richard Parker’s a tiger but I wish I had said, “It’s over. We survived. Thank you for saving my life. I love you, Richard Parker. You’ll always be with me. May God be with you.” The lesson is Learn to let go, to forgive, be humble and stand up for yourself.

1. What life lessons can be learned from the movie?

- the lessons that you can learn in the movie is that to let go, to forgive, be humble, and stand up for yourself

2. What part of the story told by the movie was the most powerful? Why?

- the most powerful part of the movie is that when the typhoon has appeared and their boat is about to destroy and only Pi and other animals survived on that typhoon

3. Who was your favorite character in the movie? Why?

- It is Pi because aside from being a protagonist he is a strong man and even how big is the problems or challenges that has given to him, he never give up, and I am inspired to his story that we can win against our problems and challenges that has given to us.

4. Did anything that happened in the  movie remind you of something that has occurred in your own life or that you have seen occur to others?

- the thing that reminds me in this movie is that, when they finally survived Richard Parker runs to the jungle and Pi was hurt because Parker did not even thank Pi for saving him.

“Coco”

The movie entitled “coco” In Santa Cecilia, Mexico, Miguel dreams of becoming a musician, even though his family strictly forbids it. His great-great-grandmother Imelda was married to a man who left her and their daughter Coco to pursue a career in music, and when he never returned, Imelda discarded all forms of music from her family's life before starting a shoemaking business. Miguel now lives with the elderly Coco and their family, including Miguel's parents and grandmother, who are all shoemakers. Coco suffers from memory loss and has become largely non-verbal, but Miguel is very close to her. Miguel secretly idolizes famed musician Ernesto de la Cruz and practices his guitar skills using Ernesto's old films. On the Day of the Dead, Miguel accidentally damages the picture frame that holds a photo of Coco with her mother and her father (the latter's face torn off the picture) on the family ofrenda, discovering that a hidden section of the photograph shows his great-great-grandfather holding Ernesto's famous guitar. Miguel, concluding that Ernesto is his great-great-grandfather, ignores his family's objections and decides to enter the local talent show. Breaking into Ernesto's mausoleum, Miguel takes his guitar to use in the show, but once he strums it, he becomes invisible to everyone in the village plaza. However, he can interact with his skeletal deceased relatives, who are visiting from the Land of the Dead for the holiday. Taking him back with them, they learn that Imelda cannot visit, since Miguel accidentally removed her photo from the ofrenda. Miguel discovers that he is cursed for stealing from the dead, and must return to the Land of the Living before sunrise, or he will become one of the dead; to do so, he must receive a blessing from a member of his family. Imelda offers Miguel a blessing on the condition of ending his dream of becoming a musician, but Miguel refuses and resolves to seek Ernesto's blessing instead. He meets Héctor, who declares that he knows Ernesto, offering to help Miguel reach him in return for Miguel taking his photo back with him, so that he might visit his daughter before she forgets him, causing him to disappear completely. Héctor helps Miguel enter a talent competition to win entry to Ernesto's mansion, but Miguel's family tracks him down, forcing him to flee. Miguel sneaks into the mansion, where Ernesto welcomes him as his descendant, but Héctor confronts them, again imploring Miguel to take his photo to the Land of the Living. Ernesto and Héctor renew an argument from their partnership in life, and Miguel realizes that when Héctor decided to leave to return home to his family, Ernesto robbed him of his guitar and songs after poisoning him, passing them off as his own to become famous. To protect his legacy, Ernesto seizes the photo and has his security guards throw Miguel and Héctor into a cenote pit. There, Miguel discovers that Héctor is his actual great-great-grandfather, and Coco's father. Héctor only wanted to go to the Land of the Living so he could see Coco again. After Imelda and the family rescue the duo, Miguel reveals the truth about Héctor's death. Imelda and Héctor slowly reconcile, and the family infiltrates Ernesto's concert to retrieve Héctor's photo. Ernesto's crimes are exposed to the audience, who jeer at him as he is flung out of the stadium by Imelda's alebrije, Pepita. Ernesto is then trapped under a giant bell, recreating the circumstances of his death; in the chaos, however, Miguel loses Héctor's photo. As the sun rises, Coco's memories are fading; Imelda and Héctor bless Miguel, so that he can return home. After Miguel plays "Remember Me", a song that Héctor wrote for Coco, which Ernesto used as his number one hit, Coco brightens and sings along with Miguel. She reveals that she had saved the torn-off piece of the family photo with Héctor's face on it, and then tells her family stories about her father, thus saving his memory as well as his existence in the Land of the Dead. Miguel's family reconciles with him, ending the ban on music. One year later, Miguel shows his new baby sister the family ofrenda, which now includes Héctor and a recently deceased Coco. Coco's collected letters from Héctor reveal Ernesto's plagiarism, tarnishing his legacy and allowing Héctor to be rightfully honored in his place. In the Land of the Dead, Héctor and Imelda rekindle their romance and join Coco for a visit to the living, where Miguel performs for his family.

 1.What life lessons can be learned from the movie?

- The life lesson I have learned after watching the movie was we should remember our family who had been passed away , not only the member of the family but to those person who shows good or nice to us their memories should remain in our heart and treasure everything they have done for us.

2. What part of the story told by the movie was the most powerful? Why?

- When Miguel finally meet his great grandfather who was his idol. In a reason where they had been working together and surpasses many difficulties in their journey not knowing that Miguel already met his idol without knowing.

3. Who was your favorite character in the movie? Why?

- Its Miguel, despite from his family who strictly forbids music in their lives he still pursue his dreams.

4. Did anything that happened in the  movie remind you of something that has occurred in your own life or that you have seen occur to others?

- The time when Coco forget her father, it's because of the hatred they become selfish and think only about their selves.

“Kimi No Nawa(Your Name)”

The movie “Kimi no nawa(your name)” is a Japanese movie. Mitsuha Miyamizu is a high school girl living in the rural town of Itomori near Hida. She is bored living in town and wishes to be a boy in her next life. She inexplicably begins to switch bodies intermittently with Taki Tachibana, a high school boy in Tokyo, when they wake up in the morning. They both initially believe these experiences to be vivid dreams, but eventually realize they can communicate with each other, by recording messages on paper, phones and sometimes on each other's skin. Mitsuha (in Taki's body) sets Taki up on a date with his coworker Miki Okudera, while Taki (in Mitsuha's body) causes Mitsuha to become popular at school. One day, Taki (in Mitsuha's body) accompanies Hitoha and Yotsuha to leave the ritual alcohol kuchikamizake, made by the sisters, as an offering to the Shinto shrine on a mountaintop outside the town. It is believed to represent the body of the village guardian god, ruling over human experiences and connections. Taki reads a note from Mitsuha about the comet Tiamat, expected to pass Earth on the day of the autumn festival. The next day, Taki wakes up in his body and goes on a date with Miki, who tells him she enjoyed the date but also that she can tell that he is preoccupied by thoughts of someone else. Taki attempts to call Mitsuha on the phone, but cannot reach her and the body-switching ends. Taki, Miki, and their friend Tsukasa travel to Gifu Prefecture by train on a trip to Hida, though Taki does not know the name of the town, instead relying on sketches he has made of the surrounding landscape from his memory. A restaurant owner in Hida, who is originally from Itomori, recognizes one of Taki's sketches. Taki and his friends arrive in the town, which is now destroyed by a meteor and five hundred people were killed three years after the comet Tiamat unexpectedly fragmented. While gazing over the impact crater, in disbelief that everyone he met in Mitsuha's body had died this entire time, Taki sees that Mitsuha's messages have been permanently deleted from his phone and their memories start fading away. Taki finds every names in the record of fatalities and wonders if the body-switching was just a dream. While Miki and Tsukasa return to Tokyo, Taki goes to the shrine alone to drink Mitsuha's sake from the bottle, hoping to reconnect with her body and warn her about the comet. After drinking the sake, Taki lapses into a vision, where he sees Mitsuha's past. When she was a child, her mother died of an illness, and her father abandoned the family to pursue politics and become the mayor, leaving Mitsuha and her sister to be raised by their maternal grandmother. He learns that he met Mitsuha on a train three years earlier, when she arrives in Tokyo to find him while the body-switching was occurring in her timeline but not yet due to happen for another three years. Before leaving the train in embarrassment, she leaves Taki with the braid, which he has worn on his wrist as a good-luck charm. Taki wakes up in Mitsuha's body at the house on the morning of the festival. Hitoha deduces what happened, and tells him the body-switching ability has been passed down among the family caretakers of the shrine. Taki convinces Tessie and Sayaka, two of Mitsuha's friends, to make everyone evacuate the town, by disabling the electrical substation and broadcasting a false emergency alert. Realizing that Mitsuha is in his body at the shrine, Taki goes back to find her and Mitsuha wakes up in Taki's body. When Taki reaches there during the sunset, the two sense each other's presence, but are separated temporally by three years and cannot see each other. When twilight falls (referred to in the film as "magic hour" or "kataware-doki" they return to their own bodies and meet in person for the first time. After Taki returns the braid to Mitsuha, they attempt to write their names on each hands so they will remember each other, but twilight passes and Mitsuha disappears before she can write hers. When the evacuation plan fails, Mitsuha determines to convince her father, the mayor, to evacuate the town. Before doing so, Mitsuha notices her memories for Taki starting to fade, and discovers he wrote "I love you" on her hand instead of his name. Despite the evacuation, the meteor crashes to Earth and destroys Itomori. Taki wakes up in his own time, remembering nothing. Five years later, Taki has graduated from university and searches for a job. He senses he lost something important he cannot identify, but feels drawn to the town's disaster, in which the inhabitants have survived by following the mayor's evacuation order. One day, Taki and Mitsuha see each other when their trains draw parallel, and they separately disembark and search for each other, finally meeting at the stairs of Suga Shrine. Taki calls out to Mitsuha, saying that he feels that he knows her, and she responds that she has the same feeling. With their connection re-established, they shed tears of happiness and simult.

 1.What life lessons can be learned from the movie?

- The lesson I've learned in the movie was in every situation do not hesitate to offer things that you can do and share what you have for better , just like Taki where he find Mitsuha to prevent the incoming disaster

2. What part of the story told by the movie was the most powerful? Why?

- When Taki and Mitsuha finally had conversation in person wherein they are both excited and nervous. They become very comfortable to each other and Taki reminds Mitsuha that she can still save everyone from the incoming disaster.

3. Who was your favorite character in the movie? Why?

- Taki , because he sacrifices everything and look for the girl he wants and to confirm if she is fine. Despite from the gossips and news he heard he still want to help and save Mitsuha

4. Did anything that happened in the  movie remind you of something that has occurred in your own life or that you have seen occur to others?

-  The sacrifises and effort of Taki, cause in real life we must sacrifise and give effort to the things we are happy to do.

[naussensei]

Heyy! Hope you're having/had a great day! ^_^ thank you for reblogging my post. (: so, for your OC quesiton: which of your OCs have relatives that are, in any way, intolerant to them? For instance, my grandmother is racist against blacks even though half her grandkids are half black. So things like that? For your WIP: which scene from your WIP did you have the most fun writing?

Thank you for your ask! I had a busy day but there is always time for a little writing before bed! (tumblr procrastination included). 

OC: That’s an interesting question! Now that I think about it, one of my characters (the army’s general) is “homophobic” (I say this in quotation marks because strictly speaking the concept of homosexuality didn’t exist in Ancient Greece), but he has feelings for his friend (the King) who he admires and worships.

WIP: That is a hard question. I have had lots of fun with most scenes to be honest, it is so much fun to write adventure stories. The four main characters have a really fun dynamic that makes the dialogues flow so smoothly. But if I had to choose one, it would be this one:

Ptolemy opened the letters; the king’s seal had already been opened. He read it out loud to Waver and Hephaestion.

“Dear Lord…” he skipped the introduction. A smile began to appear on his face as he kept reading. “…I believe the bond between our kingdoms can be strengthen by the union of my son and your daughter in marriage…”

Ptolemy snorted as he read. Waver and Hephaestion’s jaw dropped, chuckling.

“Yes, very funny isn’t it? Let’s see if you’ll laugh in the dungeons when I put you all in there for laughing at your prince”

The three of them pursed their lips to hide their smile, trying to look serious.

“How did you get these back?” asked Waver

“Lord Irus’ daughter. She told me about it last night when…”, the prince paused.

“Yes?” asked Hephaestion, intrigued.

“Last night when we were talking…in my room”

“Talking…”, repeated Hephaestion.

“Yes. Talking… I knew she was acting strange. I’ve seen her several times since we were kids. Never once has she shown interest in me, not until last night”.

“Well… I don’t know…”, said Hephaestion, his arms crossed against his chest, staring at the prince with a serious look. “You where both pretty young when you last saw each other. You have grown to become a handsome young man…”

“Shut up…”, the prince rolled his eyes.

“It’s true”, Hephaestion gave him a serious look.

Alexander stared at him in silence, wondering if his friend meant his words or if he was just messing with him.

“So wait…”, interrupted Waver, “She gave you the letter? Just like that?”

“No, she mentioned it. So, naturally, I went into her father’s room and stole it”

“Naturally…”, said Waver. Alexander did not get the sarcasm in his voice.

“I was curious to see what my father wrote in the other letter too, so I went into the old lord’s room and stole it as well”

“right…”, Waver sighed.

“But she didn’t seem to be informed about it. She didn’t say anything to me.”

“That’s odd”, observed Waver.

Alexander shrugged.

They all silently begun to move their horses again back in the road.

“Oh well…”, said Ptolemy, “Look at the bright side, at least you’ll have a beautiful wife”

“Oh yeah? Why don’t you marry her then?” Replied the prince, annoyed.

“Me?” Ptolemy scoffed. “Impossible. My heart belongs to one person, and only one. I could never marry anyone else. I don’t care if I end up not marrying her. Not even then.”

Alexander sighed. “I wish I could say the same…”

“Oh?” Hephaestion turned to him, surprised. “I didn’t know our prince was such a romantic”

“I’m not…” Alexander eyes turned suddenly gloomy, “It’s just… I don’t know… I wish I could get to choose who I’ll marry. But I guess for a prince that is too much to ask”

The air became dense for a moment. Everyone was silent.

“Well, you can always have a mistress!” said Hephaestion, trying to cheer him up.

“That’s right…” The prince faked a smile.

“Once you are king you can do whatever you want!” Said Waver. “You can marry someone you love then, you can have more than one wife”.

Although he was trying to cheer him up, Waver’s comment ended up having the opposite effect.

“When I’m king, I will never force my children to marry anybody!”, Alexander yelled.

“That is what you say now… you are young and stupid and idealistic”, teased him Ptolemy.

Alexander completely ignored him, lost in his thoughts.

“He takes me for an idiot…”, he thought out loud, frustrated. “…sending me to a "mission”, arranging my marriage without telling me anything. Who does he think he is?“

"Uh… he is the King…?”, said Hephaestion.

Waver gave him a deadly glare, warning him to keep quiet.

“Sorry, I’ll stop talking”, Hephaestion whispered.

“Alright. Sure, maybe it was unscrupulous of your father to set you up like that. But he must have had his reasons”, observed Ptolemy

“ARE YOU JUSTIFYING HIM, PTOLEMY?!”

#dialogue #funny dialogue #writing #writeblr #alexander hephaestion

[emedhelp]

Toni Morrison, author and Pulitzer winner, dies aged 88 | Books | The Guardian

Toni Morrison, who chronicled the African American experience in fiction over five decades, has died aged 88.

In a statement on Tuesday, her family and publisher Knopf confirmed that the author died in Montefiore Medical Center in New York on Monday night after a short illness.

Describing her as “our adored mother and grandmother”, Morrison’s family said: “Although her passing represents a tremendous loss, we are grateful she had a long, well lived life. While we would like to thank everyone who knew and loved her, personally or through her work, for their support at this difficult time, we ask for privacy as we mourn this loss to our family.”

Born in an Ohio steel town in the depths of the Great Depression, Morrison carved out a literary home for the voices of African Americans, first as an acclaimed editor and then with novels such as The Bluest Eye, The Song of Solomon and Beloved. Over the course of a career that garnered honours including the Pulitzer prize, the Nobel prize, the Légion d’Honneur and a Presidential Medal of Freedom presented to her in 2012 by her friend Barack Obama, her work became part of the fabric of American life as it was woven into high school syllabuses up and down the country.

The house where Morrison was born in 1931 stands about a mile from the gates of the Lorain steel factory in Ohio – the first of a series of apartments the family lived in while her father added odd jobs to his shifts at the plant to make the rent. He defied his supervisor and took a second unionised job so he could send his daughter to college. After studying English at Howard University and Cornell, she returned to Washington DC to teach, marrying the architect Howard Morrison and giving birth to two sons.

Toni Morrison: 'I want to feel what I feel. Even if it's not happiness'

Read more

In 1965, her marriage over after six years, she moved to upstate New York and began working as an editor. It was in Syracuse that she realised the novel she wanted to read didn’t exist, and started writing it herself.

“I had two small children in a small place,” she told the New York Times in 1979, “and I was very lonely. Writing was something for me to do in the evenings, after the children were asleep.”

The book she was missing took Morrison back to Lorain and a conversation she had had at elementary school. Writing in 1993, she remembered how she “got mad” when her friend told her she wanted blue eyes.

“Implicit in her desire was racial self-loathing,” Morrison wrote. “And 20 years later I was still wondering how one learns that. Who told her? Who made her feel that it was better to be a freak than what she was? Who had looked at her and found her so wanting, so small a weight on the beauty scale? The novel pecks away at the gaze that condemned her.”

During the five years it took her to write The Bluest Eye she moved to New York City and started publishing books by Angela Davis, Henry Dumas and Muhammad Ali, but she didn’t tell her colleagues about her own fiction. Speaking to the Paris Review in 1993, Morrison explained that writing was a “private thing”.

“I wanted to own it myself,” she said. “Because once you say it, then other people become involved.”

Published in 1970 with an initial run of 2,000 copies, The Bluest Eye made no bones about its difficult material, wrapping the novel’s hard-hitting opening around the cover: “Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941. We thought, at the time, that it was because Pecola was having her father’s baby that the marigolds did not grow.”

The New York Times hailed how Morrison charted the workings of “a cultural engine that seems to have been designed specifically to murder possibilities” in prose “so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry” – a description that dogged the writer for the rest of her career.

Speaking to the New Republic in 1981 , she explained she wanted to write books that were “not … only, even merely, literary” or she would “defeat [her] purposes, defeat [her] audience”.

“That’s why I don’t like to have someone call my books ‘poetic’,” she said, “because it has the connotation of luxuriating richness. I wanted to restore the language that black people spoke to its original power. That calls for a language that is rich but not ornate.”

Morrison’s reputation gradually built as she forged the language of her family and neighbours into three more novels, resigning from Random House in 1983 to devote herself to writing full-time. The publication in 1987 of Beloved, a powerful story set in the middle of the 19th century of a slave who kills her own baby, cemented her status as a national figure. When the novel failed to improve on its shortlisting for the National Book Award, 48 writers signed a letter of protest accusing the publishing industry of “oversight and harmful whimsy”.

“Despite the international stature of Toni Morrison, she has yet to receive the national recognition that her five major works of fiction entirely deserve,” they wrote. “She has yet to receive the keystone honors of the National Book Award or the Pulitzer prize.”

Five months later Beloved won the Pulitzer, unleashing a tide of awards including the Nobel prize for literature in 1993, a National Book Foundation medal in 1996 and a National Humanities medal four years later.

Morrison continued exploring the African American experience – a project she described to the New York Times in 2015 as “writing without the white gaze” – in novels stretching from the 17th century to the present day. She was never afraid to speak up on issues confronting the US, defending president Bill Clinton from criticism in 1998 by calling him the nation’s “first black president”, or reacting to the shooting of Travyon Martin by outlining the “two things I want to see in life. One is a white kid shot in the back by a cop. Never happened. The second thing I want to see: a record of any white man in the entire history of the world who has been convicted of raping a black woman. Just one.”

Speaking after winning her Nobel prize in 1993, Morrison spelled out the dangers of “oppressive language [that] does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge” and offered instead a positive vision of “word-work” which “makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference – the way in which we are like no other life”.

“We die,” she said. “That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”

[the-jam-to-the-unicorn]

Candy For Grandmother

Summary: Gaston likes Grandma Dupont, the old lady in the village. Every Christmas he brings her candy. When her granddaughter (reader) moves to the village, he might have another reason to visit the old lady.

Rated: No smut.

Note: Fluff, Gaston, Gaston x Reader

Warnings: none

Words: 2935

Author note: Requested by an anon. Based on an AU, you can find here. AU from @dailyau. Enjoy everyone! Feedback is very welcome. :-) (Btw, that is my first try with character x reader. And English isn’t my first language and I have no beta at the moment, so please excuse mistakes.)

For years your mother tried to marry you to some rich man. The family name was a big one, your father is a very successful merchant, so everyone knew, you would inherited a lot of money one day. And your mother was particular happy about the fact you were beautiful and “blessed with wide hips, ideal for childbirth”. You had three other sisters and they all were successfully married. Your two brothers were married too. But you didn’t want to marry some rich bloke, you couldn’t stand. To be honest, every man you’ve met was boring. No one had caught your interest. And no one shared your interests. And a girl, who loves riding, the hunt and couldn’t care less about flowers and dresses wasn’t the ideal housewife, according to your mother.

So, it was a relief, when your mother FINALLY gave up. But she wasn’t very happy and neither was your father.

“You should do something with your life, (Y/N)”, he told you one day and you agreed.

You were tired of the big balls and feasts of Paris, of hours and hours in the tailoring or the endless and boring tea hours with the daughters from the other families, who all couldn’t wait to marry someone rich and get children and be a happy, naïve and little lovely wife.

Yes, Paris was the most beautiful city, but it could be incredibly boring. And you preferred the nature and country side much more.

One day, your father called you into his office and showed you a letter from your grandmother. She lived somewhere in France and was in the lead of a farm – and she needed help, but most of all company. She was getting old and the farm was no longer profitable. Your father knew, you were clever and you’ve learned everything from him. Mostly, because you were the only one, besides his sons, who cared for the family business. So, the moment he asked you to move to your grandmother, you said “yes”, without a second thought.

  You hadn’t seen your grandmother in a long time. She came once a year to Paris to visit everyone. Besides that, she only wrote letters. Grandmama Dupont was a lovely woman and you loved her very much. She wasn’t very tall and she was very old, but still very clever and agile.

You arrived at the farm on a summer day and you felt incredible happy. Finally you were far, far, far away from Paris and annoying, social obligations and you could ride and hunt and most of all do, whatever and whenever you felt like it.

You quickly settled down in the big house and the small village, which was right next to the farm, was lovely and you really liked it. In the first months, everyone eyed you suspicious, but you quickly gained their trust.

Your grandmother spend most of her days helping you, but whenever she had time, she would go riding or hunting. Sometimes you saw her with a black haired guy, who was waiting for her at the forest. But you never saw him at the farm. You never asked your grandma, because it wasn’t your business.

  You finally met him, when it was Christmas.

You were in the kitchen and cooked the Christmas dinner, when you heard a soft knock on the front door.

“One second!”

You put the deer, your grandmother brought early that day back home, into the oven and rushed to the door. When you opened the door, you looked into the most handsome face you’ve ever seen.

With a puzzled look, the man looked at you.

“I’m…looking for Mamie Dupont?!”

“My grandmère? She is in the village.”

“Oh.”

The man starred at you for a second. That young girl in front him, was very beautiful. He blinked, realising he was staring at you.

“I’m sorry. You are here granddaughter?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. She told me about you.”

“Did she?”

You raised an eyebrow.

“Yes. She talked about you. Sometimes. When we’re hunting.”

“Oh! You’re the guy who accompanies her.”

“Yeah, I’m that guy.”

The man showed a bright smile and you wondered, how someone could have such an amazing smile. You looked closer at him. He was tall, very tall. His dark brown (or was it black?) hair was perfectly coiffed in a ponytail, his face was almost clean-shaven, just some little stubbles were visible and they suited him. His eyes were mesmerizing. His face was perfect: the concise chin, the high cheekbones, the full lips. And his suit was well-tailored. He was the definition of perfection and looked like one of these Grecian statues you’ve read bout.

Too late you realized, he was talking with you. You were too busy with looking at him.

“What did you say?”

He showed another perfect smile.

“I said, my name is Gaston.”

“Oh. I’m (Y/N). Nice to meet you, Gaston.”

“Pleasure is all mine.”

You shook his hand and smiled.

“Gaston?!”

He turned around and behind him was your grandmother.

“Hello, Mamie Dupton.”

“Of course, you would come. You’re such a sweet guy. Oh, and LeFou is waiting for you at the gate.”

“I know.”

Gaston smiled and pulled something out of his coat.

“This is for you.”

He gave your grandmother a small package and a big smile appeared on her face.

“Thank you very much. Have a lovely Christmas.”

“I’ll try. You too.”, he added and walked down the stairs.

You looked after him, while your grandmother was entering the house. Before you closed the door, Gaston was turning around, looked at you, smiled and waved. You waved back and for some reason, you were blushing.

You quickly closed the door and went back to the oven.

“So, that’s the guy, you always meet for hunting?”

“Yeah, Gaston. Sweet boy, poor boy. His family his horrible. Father drinks and is aggressive, mother is basically not existing. I met him some years ago, when I was in the woods and he tried to hunt a deer. Poor boy nearly got killed. I’ve teached him everything I know about hunting and sometimes he’s helping me with the farm. He’s actually a hero, you know.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You remember the war we had many years ago?”

“Father told me about it.”

“Gaston defended the village. He’s our hero.”

“My, what a guy, that Gaston.”

“Yeah, he’s some kind of paragon. Everyone’s admiring him.”

You nodded and moved to the next topic.

But you couldn’t stop thinking about that Gaston.

  As it turned out, your grandmother didn’t made an understatement. Everyone really loved Gaston. Especially three brunette girls who would follow him wherever he went.

The more time you spent in the village, the more you heard about “the Great Gaston” and “his adventures”. And you realized, he was pretty bigheaded, a narcissist. And while you didn’t met him earlier, you now met him nearly every time you visited the village. You never talked much, just “Hello” and “Goodbye”.

And while your grandmother never had mentioned him earlier, she now would talk about him now and then. Listening to her, it felt like, she was talking about a different Gaston. But maybe, your grandmother was just old.

  For the next two years, nothing changed.

You learned more about Gaston from your grandmother and heard a lot of stories from the villagers or saw Gaston in public. Gaston wasn’t really the most likable person, but you couldn’t say you disliked him. It…was hard to put in words. There was something about him, something special and everyone could see it. But you sometimes got the feeling, there were two Gastons.

On your fourth Christmas, you saw the package again. It was the same, Gaston gave your grandmother some years ago.

“What’s that?”, you asked curious.

“Gaston’s Christmas present.”

“What’s the present?”

“Candy.. I’ll get it every year.”

“Candy?”

Your grandmother smiled widely and opened the package.

“Yes. And it’s delicious! It’s homemade.”

“You’re telling me, that the Great Gaston is making his own candy?!”

Your Grandmother rolled her eyes.

“He’s not a bad guy. Just…complicated.”

You raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

  The next day, Gaston knocked at your door and you were surprised to see him.

“Gaston, what you’re doing here?!”

“I’m invited?!”

“You are?”

“Yes, he is!”, you heard your grandmothers voice from the background. “He is going to celebrate Christmas with us.”

You let him in and your grandmother hugged him.

“You’re going to love (Y/N)’s dinner! Best Christmas dinner you’ve ever tried.”

You felt your cheeks blushing.

“Grandma is exaggerating, very much. Before I moved to her, I couldn’t cook a potato. She showed me how to cook.”

“Yes, and she is very good. A perfect wife.”

You gave your grandmother a dirty look.

“Did you know, she’s also a good hunter?”, your grandmother continued.

“Really?!”

Gaston seemed surprised.

“Well, like grandmother, like granddaughter.”

You laughed a bit.

“Why don’t you two talk about hunting and riding and I finish our meal. (Y/N), have I told you, that Gaston is the best hunter in the village?!”

“You’ve mentioned it.”

“It’s true. I am. No one is better than me, expect your grandmother.”

“I’m sure there are other people who are good.”

“Yeah, maybe. But I’m the best.”

You nodded slowly.

“Tell her about the one time, you killed the bear!”, you heard your grandmother from the kitchen.

Gaston grinned and looked at you.

“Want to hear a story?”

You sighed and smiled.

“Do I have choice?”

“Not really.”, Gaston answered and for a brief second you thought, he winked.

  In the end, the evening was pretty nice. In the beginning, Gaston was full of himself and the narcissist you knew, but the more you two talked, the more he stopped being an idiot. Gaston was, for sure, a really interesting person with an interesting life. He had a lot to tell and listened to you and your stories and seemed genuinely interested. You felt a bit of sadness, when he had to go.

  After this Christmas, something changed. Whenever you two met, you would talk with each other. Sometimes, he would escort you through the village, helping you with your purchases. He was also helping a lot more at the farm. And sometimes you would accompany your grandmother and him for a hunt or you two were just riding out and talked.

Yes, he was a narcissist and sometimes he could be an idiot, but there was also a nice, very sensitive side he showed sometimes, when the two of you were alone.

At some point, you realized, you two were friends and you liked him very, very much.

Sometimes, when he was visiting the farm, he brought flowers. And sometimes, when your grandmother returned from village, she had flowers too – from Gaston.

“I wonder, why he’s giving you flowers.”, you said at one point to your grandmother.

“Oh, they are not mine. They are for you.”

Surprised you looked at her.

“Why should he give me flowers?”

Your Grandmother just smiled.

“Oh, dear (Y/N), you’ll find out. By the way, have I told you that one time, Gaston…”

You rolled your eyes and listened to another Gaston story from grandmother.

  At the next Christmas, Gaston was invited too. Like always, he brought candy. A long time ago, you had found out, he did this since many, many years. And your grandmother was right. The candy was delicious.

And your grandmother wouldn’t stop talking about you two.

“Isn’t it a shame, (Y/N), that such a handsome and nice guy like Gaston, isn’t married?!”

“If you say so, grand-mère.”

“And Gaston, can you believe it, that such a sweet and clever woman like (Y/N) isn’t married yet.”

“Hardly.”, Gaston answered and smiled at you.

Your cheeks blushed – a thing they did, whenever Gaston was smiling at you.

“And I think, it’s so lovely you two go hunting.”

“Well, it’s hard to find company who can keep up with me.”

You rolled your eyes.

“Yeah, we know. You’re the best hunter ever.”

Gaston grinned.

“It’s true!”

“Ha! The last times, I was better.”

“You think so.”

“I was!”

“Look at you two. Bickering like an old married couple.”

You two stopped and looked at your grandmother.

“Well, time to get the dessert.”

And before you could say anything, your grandmother rushed to the kitchen.

“Married couple…grand-mère tries to be funny.”, you muttered under your breath.

Gaston looked at you and cleared his throat.

“Yeah. She’s a lovely woman.”

“Yeah.”

There was silence.

“But why aren’t you married? I mean, every guy in the village would marry you immediately.”

“Well, I guess, I haven’t found the right man. I want to marry someone, because I love him. I want someone, who respects me and my interests. What about you?”

“Well, I have to admit, it’s highly unusual that guy like me, isn’t married…”, he started and you rolled your eyes and Gaston grinned “…but I guess, it’s the same. Haven’t found the right woman.”

“Really? Not one of the Bimbettes?!”, you joked.

“I would never marry one of them.”, he said and suddenly, he sounded very serious.

“Too dumb?”

“Maybe. But, I want a strong woman. Of course, a woman who wants kids and be my lovely wife, but also a wife, who is self-confident.”

You smiled and there was silence again. Suddenly, Gaston chuckled.

“What?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Come on. What’s so funny.”

“It’s just…your grandmother praised you so much…at one point, she even told me…”

He stopped and looked down at his plate.

“She told what?”

“Nothing, really. Forget it.”

“Come on. Whatever it is, tell me. I mean, she talked about you so much and praised you so much. I know, what you’re talking about. At some point, she even suggested, we should go out. Can you imagine?!”

You laughed. Gaston didn’t laugh.

“Would you?”

“What?”

“Go out with me?”

Taken aback you looked at him.

“Well…I mean…why not?! Spending time with you is always great. And it would make grand-mère happy.”

Gaston smiled a bit.

“Yeah, that’s true.”

“We should do it.”

“Do what?”

“Go out. Maybe grand-mère will stop, if we go out.”

Gaston went silent for some seconds and nodded.

“Okay. Let’s go out. For mamie.”

“For grand-mère.”, you answered and raised your glass.

“Here is the dessert!”

Your grandma entered the room and you looked at Gaston and you both started laughing.

  Two nights later, you two would go…on a date. On the one side, it felt strange to go on a date with Gaston. But on the other side, you felt really nervous…and excited. And you couldn’t say way. Your grandma was very excited and when Gaston picked you up, she had the biggest smile on her face.

“Have a lovely night!”

  The night was lovely. You two went to Gaston’s house and he cooked for you. Later, you went to the tavern, where everyone was celebrating and you danced the whole night. You couldn’t remember the last time, you had so much fun and felt so happy.

It was nearly morning, when Gaston escorted you back to your house. You talked about this and that and when you arrived at the house, you sat down at the steps and continued talking. When you started freezing, Gaston put his jacket around your shoulders. You smiled at him and continued to talk.

At some point you yawned and you two walked up the stairs.

“Thanks for the lovely night. I had a lot of fun.”

“Me too.”

You two smiled at each other.

“Maybe we should do this again. You know, for mamie.”, he suggested.

“Yeah, sounds like plan.”

You two stopped in front of the door and looked into each other eyes. You felt something in your stomach…and your heart jumped. Gaston’s eyes were really beautiful and mesmerizing. He looked up and you followed his gaze. A mistletoe. You couldn’t remember, it had been there before.

“Looks like, we’re standing under a mistletoe.”, Gaston said and looked at you again.

“Yes.”

“Isn’t there some myth?!”

“You have to share a kiss under a mistletoe or you have bad luck with love.”, you answered and looked briefly at Gaston’s lips.

For a second you wondered, what it would feel like, to kiss these full lips, who looked so soft. Gaston looked at you and put his hand on your cheek.

“Well…we don’t need more bad luck…right?!”

“No…”

You swallowed and Gaston’s face came closer.

“To be honest, I enjoyed the night very much.”

“Me too.”

“And I wanted to ask you out for a while. I was glad mamie suggested it.”

“Why didn’t you ask?”

“I wasn’t sure, what the answer would be.”

“Why on earth could the Great Gaston be shy?”

“Because I…have feelings for you.”

You felt your breathing stopping.

“And I really want to kiss you right now, but not, if you don’t want it.”

And with that, you kissed him. You felt, how Gaston was putting his arms around you and you put his hands on his chest. And kissing Gaston was the most beautiful thing, you’ve ever did.

#my fanfic #beauty and the beast #beauty and the beats 2017 #gaston #lefou #gaston fanfic #gaston fanfiction #gaston x reader

[nervesbaddington]

Life and Lyric

This won't be easy to share and it could potentially get somewhat longwinded but whatever.  I just feel like I gotta do it so please bear with me ok thanks 😏

Many of you know that I've recently experienced significant growth in the relationship with my daughter. Some of you probably didn't even know I had a daughter because for a long time it's been a very sensitive subject for me to talk about due to seriously complicated and unfortunate circumstances.

Anyway, I do. I do have a daughter and her name is Lyric. She was born in Denver while I was living on the run (2005-2010) trying to avoid a ridiculous prison sentence for a ridiculous "crime" because Alabama's ridiculous laws regarding marijuana suggest I'm a hardened criminal that belongs in a cage. You probably know someone in prison for weed too, huh? Yeah. Ridiculous right?

So Lyric was born in 2008 and I was a stay-at-home-dad/starving artist (making music, touring, etc.) for the first 18 months of her life. She was a stereotypical "daddy's girl" in every aspect of the phrase but I'll stop gloating...for now. 😉

She was a year and a half old when the US Marshals kicked in the door to haul me back to Alabama to "pay my debt to society". The image of her standing up in her crib, hysterically crying, tears streaming down her cute baby face as they walked me past her bedroom in handcuffs is burned into my memory for eternity. It was brutally painful. To make it worse, they were in full on bully-mode and wouldn't even let me say goodbye. In fact, I could still hear her screaming from the police car out front.

Fast forward to about 6 months into the 42 month bid of being held captive in the Alabama Department of Corrections. To when the letters stopped coming in. To when the phone calls stopped being answered. To when Lyric's mom decided to go above and beyond in attempt to delete me from Lyric's life like I was some vague, poorly worded Facebook post made at 3:30am after polishing off a fifth of vodka. Her goal was to delete me like I never existed. Obviously, there was very little I could do about...well, anything. Especially from behind that razor wire fence. One of the first survival tactics you inevitably learn while doing time is accepting that you can't control what happens on the outside from the inside. I know it sounds like common sense but trust me, it's supremely harder than it sounds.

So as if I had a choice...I accepted it. Everything. Her mom moved on and I did my time. Luckily, Lyric's grandmother kept in touch a bit and I was able to send letters to Lyric through her. Clearly, Lyric was way too young to process any of what was going on, much less read a letter, but relentlessly I drew pictures for her, wrote her letters and thought about her constantly.

The year 2013 finally rolled around and apparently ADOC deemed me "rehabilitated" enough to be set free (re: sarcasm). To little to no surprise, just like all the OG convicts predicted, I heard from Lyric's mom literally the same week I was scheduled to be released (According to the OG's unwritten universal law; freeworld relationships can't last while your significant other is doing time). She had contacted my family and somehow they coordinated a trip from CO to AL for my release date. They were even at the prison to greet me as I walked through the back gate. One of the most surreal days of my life. I got to spend the first week as a free man with my, now 4 yr old, Lyric. It was genuinely like we never missed a beat but instead picked up right where we left off...except without all the hysterical crying (only the happy crying).

When they flew back to Denver I had hopes of transferring my probation to Colorado so I could continue being a father to Lyric and start making up for everything I'd missed during my state-sponsored vacation. Those plans came to a screeching halt when I learned about all the ridiculous (yes, THAT word again) stipulations of making that happen. I either A) needed to have immediate family living in Denver or B) needed to be married to someone living in Denver.

I know what you're thinking...having a child is considered "immediate family" right? Well here's the shittiest of all shitty things about this unfortunate situation:  I was literally a fugitive from justice when Lyric was born and, as a measure of caution, did not put my name on her birth certificate. I know, I know. It's fucking awful but that's what happened. **Side note:  I did, however, fill out the proper paperwork while in prison to be added but for some brilliant reason her mom never filed it and subsequently fail off the face of the earth.

I kept trying to figure out ways to be in Lyric's life. Marrying her mom was never an option and I'll spare you the details of why and just say that our relationship was an unhealthy spiral of doom and regret and the absolute last thing Lyric needed in her life. For the record, I don't subscribe to the philosophy of "staying together for the kids". That's a bullshit philosophy. But I still kept trying to figure it out. I even tried to get "fake married" to a longtime  Denver homegirl just so I could move there to be close to Lyric. While that would've been understandable and totally worth it, I just couldn't go through with it. Just didn't feel right and I needed to get my life in order before I started making desperate decisions like that. Then Nerves Baddington was born and the rest is pretty much history.

After multiple fallouts with Lyric's mom which included false accusations of sending her "fake money orders" among other irrationally immature arguments, I found myself resorting back to that ol' prison survival tactic of accepting the fact that I can't control some things...only now I'm on the OUTSIDE but still (up until now) have felt circumstantially powerless as they hold my lack of LEGAL fatherly rights over my head as some sort of twisted torture device.

I've seen Lyric exactly twice in the 4+ years I've been home. Once in Birmingham and once in Denver and both times at least 4 years ago. A third attempt was made, in April of 2014, when my ever-so-rad and wonderful girlfriend Melanie and I drove all day and night to Denver just to be denied a simple visit with my Lyric. It crushed me. No words can describe the pain of being denied seeing your daughter after driving 24 hours straight. I felt like I had no choice but to give up until the universe (or whatever) grants me with an opportunity to go through the proper legal channels to access my fatherly rights. The time is now and I feel I need to strike while the proverbial iron is hot, so to speak. Obviously this is not going to be easy or inexpensive. I'm going to have to hire lawyers that practice law in Colorado. There will be much travel cost and tests and paperwork and...you name it. But it's all possible and could actually become feasible with a little love and assistance from friends and family.

I spoke with Lyric for the first time in over a year on Father's Day '17. Sincerely the best Father's Day I've ever had since joining The Club. My birthday falls around Father's Day every year and my dad passed away in 2003. Without fail since 2010 each year around this time my brain automatically goes into a very dark place. Not this year though. This has been the happiest week since...as long as I can remember and I can't help but think my dad would be just as excited as I am.

As happy as I am about this newly-fast-developing relationship with my amazing, now 8 yr old, Lyric, I also can't help but be genuinely concerned about her living situation. Since her mom has been the one keeping her from me, it wasn't until her recently "hitting bottom" and disappearing for a few weeks that Lyric actually mustered the courage and ability to find a way to contact me. I've talked to Lyric's grandmother, whose sister (Lyric's great aunt), passed away the same week her daughter had a meltdown and vanished. Apparently CPS has been involved for some time now but I honestly don't know a lot of details as to why or what's going on. Lyric is currently living with her grandmother and is seemingly in good spirits although she's a bit devastated about the whole thing. She wants to come to Birmingham but they (Lyric's mom/grandmother) have been very vocal about how that'd never be a possibility.

Until I go through the aforementioned "proper legal channels" the odds are severely stacked against me.

Which leads me to asking what you - my friends and fam - think about me starting a gofundme campaign to raise money to make this thing happen.

People often turn their nose up when others take to platforms like gofundme to ask for help. What do YOU think? Is this something worth going all out for? I think so but I'd like some input and/or reassurance here.

Thanks so much for reading and I hope one day for Lyric to see how hard I fought for her. THIS IS MY REAL DEBT TO SOCIETY and I just want to do the responsible thing.

[stephspencer10]

Post updated.View Post

In 2017, I bought and read Maud’s Story, a 2013 self-published/Vanity Press book written by my Aunt Charlotte LeBaron — my Mother’s brother Verlan LeBaron’s first wife. 

It’s a short book consisting mainly of letters supposedly written by Maud Lucinda McDonald LeBaron* — letters run-together in often hard-to-decipher paragraphs more akin to vignettes. 

It appears, at the time of this book’s writing, Aunt Charlotte still held fast to The Church of the First Born. This I assume because “Maud’s Story” contains a revised version/a rewrite of the history and teachings of the “Prophet Joel LeBaron” saga; wherein she turns the tale upside down and Joel into a martyred Prophet. By so doing, she shows, though not intentionally, how religious myths are made.

Maud Lucinda McDonald LeBaron is my maternal grandmother, of whom I’m “the spittin’ image” — I was always told while growing up. The above photo of her looks so much like me at that age, I look at it and think it is me. I can’t tell the difference!

When I saw, on Amazon.com, Aunt Charlotte had published my Grandma Maud LeBaron’s story, I spent $4.00  … and three hours reading it. Such was its brevity. That even includes the many times I had to re-read parts, attempting to understand what the heck had been said.

Suffice it to say, the book was no bargain! It left me wanting more. It’s supposed to be Grandmother LeBaron’s story; but missing in the biography are many tales Grandma used to tell about her life.

Nevertheless, nobody else has published anything much about Grandma Maud. So I’m glad Aunt Charlotte wrote as much as she did. “If you don’t like how the story was written, write it yourself,” they say.

Still, I resent that Aunt Charlotte used Grandmother Maud: She wrote a book “about” Grandma that was largely meant to draw in Grandma’s progeny, relatives and others; and convert them to her’s/Charlotte’s and Uncle Joel’s Church of the Firstborn doctrine — a la Charlotte LeBaron’s viewpoint, however — if they were not already members of Joel’s church. In that sense, Maud’s Story really should be “Charlotte’s Story.” 

I was disappointed “Maud’s Story” wasn’t imbued with more of Grandmother’s colorful history. And disgusted she borrowed heavily from The LeBaron Story — a book my mother Esther LeBaron Spencer largely wrote — without stating she was quoting from that book; let alone crediting my mother.

She includes in her booklet numerous “Quotes from Grandma’s Notes.” Doesn’t write much, otherwise, about Grandma. Perhaps, to get more of Grandma’s history, Charlotte expects us to read The LeBaron Story, a manuscript consisting mostly of my mom’s work that Aunt Charlotte helped her husband Verlan LeBaron compile, finish, and publish.

Both The LeBaron Story and Maud’s Story strike me as an apologist’s story written to preach the Church of the Firstborn/CotFotfot doctrine. 

In other words, Maud’s Story‘s general flavor is biased and provincial. It whitewashes and glorifies the Alma Dayer and Maud Lucinda McDonald LeBaron family, making them, the Mexico-LeBarons, look like a Godly family with a saintly mission.

I find this covert preaching of the CotFotfot dogma distasteful — especially the revising of its doctrine and history to make it more palatable than it was when my Uncles Ervil and Joel LeBaron first spawned this sect/cult in 1955—a take off from their older brothers Ross Wesley LeBaron Sr. and Ben LeBaron’s cults, as well as other Mormon fundamentalist cults.

 To summarize, Aunt Charlotte has white-washed history in The LeBaron Story and Maud’s Story so as to turn Uncle Joel into a Prophet, Saint, and Martyr. And his untimely murder into a Modern-Day Cain and Abel Story. But there’s a lot more to this dirty tale than meets the eye. So “Charlotte’s Story” is as much a myth in the making as it is a revisionist-history’s gold mine.

My final thoughts on Maud’s Story: Grandmother should have given a sermon or two in church if she was as erudite and well-versed in the cult’s dogma as she appears to be in Charlotte’s short biography where she uses Grandmother Maud to preach Joel’s dogma.

In truth, Grandmother was a musician and homemaker … no Scriptorian! She left the preaching and proselytizing up to leaders in the cult; preferred to be in the kitchen cooking and feeding people, when she wasn’t teaching piano lessons and taking care of kids and the homestead.

Perhaps Aunt Charlotte didn’t know it but William Preston Tucker (my now-deceased husband) and my Uncle Ervil LeBaron put their heads together to write those letters Charlotte says Grandma wrote to Spencer W. Kimball!

I was there at the time. I recall these two leaders of the LeBaron Church/cult talking about how they could use Grandma Maud as a ploy to get the President of the LDS church to read their [LeBaron cult] literature because she had grown up with Spencer W. Kimball.

They figured he would read a letter from Maud, his childhood friend, though not literature from her sons and their LeBaron cult. (So they were sneaking up on Pres. Kimball by way of Maud.)*

Suffice it to say, Aunt Charlotte wasn’t honest about the story of how my Uncle Joel became the self-proclaimed One Mighty and Strong. Therefore, I don’t trust much of what she relates in her book. I know for sure, for example, Grandmother Maud DID NOT write most of those letters Charlotte credits her with.

You only have to look at Grandma’s “Notes ‘n’ Quotes” Charlotte wrote “in Grandma’s own words” to get a good example of how Grandmother wrote. When you carefully compare “Grandma’s words” to those eruditely-written letters to Spencer W. Kimball, you can see they were NOT written by Grandma LeBaron.

A final word: Should anyone consider doing a reprint of Maud’s Story, please get a good Editor to go over it beforehand. Also, do not run Grandmother’s “Notes ‘n’ Quotes” together as if they were one organized piece. They’re not!

They are short vignettes, and should be separated as such; so the reader isn’t hoping to find the rest of the tale in the next paragraph, only to be left hanging by the tail — for a whole new tale takes up in the next paragraph!

*”Ghost writing“/deception was the name of the game when I was sequestered in the LeBaron cult in the 1960s. The sect’s two leading Scriptorians My Uncle Ervil LeBaron and my husband William Preston Tucker would write the exposé or such. Then publish it with whatever name or signature they thought would be most impressive and most likely to convert those receiving the literature.

(Comments transferred from Facebook”:)

Says Moira Blackmore:

I knew Maud, she went out of her busy days by visiting me all alone in Galeana with my 4 baby girls, and when their were shooting guns in my back neighborhood… thank you Steff … I love you, Maud, I love Charlotte as well, years later … 

  My response to Moira: I appreciate your feedback, Moira, and your attempts to always be positive and loving. That’s what makes the world go around. I’m so happy Grandma visited you and helped lift your spirits during a very bad time.

I remember her being concerned about your being over there alone; and her begging someone to take her over to visit you. I do not remember who she got to do the driving as she could not drive.

And now I’m getting off onto a bunny trail: I know she visited you out of care and concern for you and your situation. But she was also often there for visitors and people she was trying to help convert to the cult. Converts meant more people saved, more tithing money — and consecrations of all their wealth to the Bishop’s storehouse!

Such money was largely how Grandma and her sons managed to survive down in the Mexico-LeBaron colony. Especially was more money needed as each of her sons married more and more wives who bore more and more children. 

Given her help with the church’s conversion of new members, it seems aging Grandma Maud had no energy and time left over for her own hundreds of grand, great-grand, great-great, and great-great-great-grandchildren, and so on and on … not to mention her thousands of other relatives ad infinitum.

During the two years I lived at home, before I was married off at age 16, I recall only a few times after we moved to the LeBaron colony that she ever came by her daughter/my mother Esther LeBaron Spencer’s place to visit; even though we lived within walking distance of Grandmother Maud.

 Nor did my Grandmother Maud ever visit me, once I was married, even in my hours of need and desperation; although I lived within walking distance of her.

I may as well have not had a grandmother. But she did help Mother a lot after my father died. By then I was 18 and married — no longer living with my mom. 

When I was fourteen and we moved from the United States to where Grandmother Maud lived in Mexico, I had thought: Now I will finally have one of those grandmothers I have so often read about in children’s literature and so longed to have as I was growing up. 

But Grandmother Maud, though she had favored and spoiled my mama when she was raising her, was never emotionally there for me nor the rest of my mother’s thirteen other children, as far as I know. Not much, anyway.

For me, she never was a grandma that made cookies for her grandkids, let alone did she give us grandchildren any other gifts. Nor even hugs. She always had a big twinkling smile for me and her other grandchildren, though; whenever we saw her at church or elsewhere.

 Our Family was not a hugging-touching family. But pioneer-woman Grandmother was also simply overwhelmed and overworked, given her primitive lifestyle and her monumental duties; including being the church pianist and the colony’s piano teacher.

To put it succinctly, there was simply no way my ever-aging grandmother could muster all the time and energy needed to keep up with her exponentially growing progeny. She was already 68 years old when my family moved to the LeBaron colony; I was 14 years old then.

I had always lived within walking distance of her, while in the LeBaron colony; so she did come by three or four times, after I was married, to give me some piano lessons. She was around seventy-three years old then! Thanks, Grandma! 

But, other than that, in the four years I lived near her, and on my own, after I was married at sixteen, Grandmother dropped by one other time — though not to see her new grandchild, my first child, that I had almost died giving birth to, at age seventeen. My baby and I were simply taken for granted, as was generally the custom there!

 The reason she came by that one other time was to take back a piece of piano sheet music she had given me that she now wanted to turn around and take away from me to give to an investigator of our cult who was a pianist! I told Grandma, “No! You gave the music to me!! It’s mine now! I want it. You can’t take it back to give to somebody else!”

Grandmom was furious with me for not giving it back to her so she could gift it to the investigator of our “Church”! Getting converts — new people into God’s work — was part of her and her sons’ bread and butter. So that investigator was more important than I, her granddaughter. On top of that, she treated me as if the music still belonged to her, though she had given it to me the year before. Such “Indian trading”! 

Now I know where Mother learned this taking-back what she had given me, as if she still had tabs on it; so could turn around, whenever she wanted to, and give it to somebody else — even though I still very much wanted it and it belonged to me!

I never knew what to depend on. Then you wonder what causes schizophrenic kids? I’m at least sure this behavior did not help any. 

Bottom line: When there are lots of kids and relatives, they are not highly valued. They get taken for granted. They are pawns in the hands of the powers that be and regularly sacrificed for “the cause”!

     Rachel LeBaron Anderson:

 The BIG question: “Will what you are going to say improve the world by being said?”

    Steph Spencer Good question, Rachel! I ask myself that important question all the time as I write my Memoirs!

  Rachel LeBaron Anderson You are bringing healing to the younger generations trying to make sense of everything, building strong roots, many generations will be glad someone wrote things down.

  Steph Spencer Thanks so much for this insightful response and feedback! As always, Rachel, you show wisdom and intellect. Your remarks are much appreciated and will help me as I take time to make sense of everything on my end. That is certainly one of my goals!

    Dena McLean I enjoyed reading this book, not only to learn about family but specifically learn more about my Great Grandmother Maud. I know the story is all in perspective but I like to hear all perspectives.

Even if I don’t agree with the religious views, I find it fascinating how they chose Joel LeBaron, Alma’s priesthood keys and all the people connected to each story and then trying to find them in genealogy. Right now, I’m trying to discover if the man who baptized Maud was John Smith, as in Joseph Smith’s brother’s son or another John Smith. I hope to find some truth.

Steph Spencer Thank you for this valuable feedback. As always, I’m impressed with your scholarliness. To be sure, Charlotte’s Maud’s Story is skewed: It attempts to convert people to the belief that Joel was a true Prophet, etc.

Aunt Charlotte Kunz LeBaron was there pretty much from the beginning of Joel and Ervil’s “Church,” but chose to change how Joel got the “priesthood keys,” et cetera. Newcomers to the story believe her fabrications. That’s how myths are built.

Review of Charlotte LeBaron’s “Maud’s Story” Post updated.View Post In 2017, I bought and read Maud's Story, a 2013 self-published/Vanity Press…

[andrewmawby]

PFC Melvin Carter

Author's Note: The following text appeared in Chapter One of the Adventures & Advice book that I wrote at the request of my youngest daughter. I also shared the book with my other two older children. This book is not available to the general public as it was a special gift to my children, my older sister, and a very small select group of my friends.

It's important to realize that my father, PFC Carter, passed away before any of my children were even a glint in my eye. The details of his life in what you're about to read are what he might have shared with my children had he been able to sit them on his lap and talk about who he was and what he did.

I only came to appreciate and deeply love my father years later after he had been worn down by life and the horrors of what he experienced in the great World War II. My mother, sister, and I sent him back to Heaven when I was a very young man.

Grandfather Melvin Carter

  Your Grandfather Carter looks pretty smart in his US Army uniform, doesn’t he? He’s beaming because he’s sitting next to your grandmother no doubt! This photo was taken in June of 1945 after he returned from the hellish experience of World War II. The photo was taken at Coney Island amusement park in Cincinnati, Ohio. Many people went to Coney Island before Kings Island ravaged and plundered its customer base.

My dad was born on April 10, 1917. That was just four days after the USA entered World War One in Europe. His middle name honored the tiny hamlet he was born in, Mt. Vernon, Indiana. His father, William Columbus Carter was born in 1846. That made him 70 years old at the time your grandfather was conceived!  

Your great-grandfather was a country veterinarian in the middle of nowhere. Mt. Vernon, Indiana is a sleepy town now, so you can imagine what it was like in the early 1900s.

I have no clue when the family relocated from Indiana to New Richmond, Ohio, just fifteen or so miles upstream on the Ohio River from downtown Cincinnati. But before ending up in New Richmond, they must have relocated to Cincinnati not too long after my dad was born because my great-grandfather is buried at the Baltimore Pike Cemetery in Cincinnati.

I do know that my dad’s mother, Ida, married three times. Ida remarried a man with the last name Steinbrecher. This is why all the urgent telegrams she received about her son during World War ll were addressed to Ida Steinbrecher. I don’t have a record of this but Ida’s second husband must have died and Ida, not wanting to be lonely, remarried a third, and final time, to Louis Nitzel. Ida passed away in 1957 and her final resting place is in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Your grandfather, his four sisters, and one older brother lived in or adjacent to a boarding house operated by his mother, Ida Steinbrecher Carter. I was five years old when my grandmother passed away. I have a dim memory of seeing her on her deathbed in a house just off Beechmont Avenue in Mt. Washington. 

Your grandfather's oldest sister was my Aunt Margaret. She dated and married your grandmother’s older brother, my Uncle Louie. Your grandfather must have run into Louie at the boarding house and at some point, Uncle Louie hired him to help collect money from jukeboxes that Louie owned in local bars and other places of disrepute. 

World War II started when your grandfather was twenty-one years old. He enlisted in the US Army to fight our enemies just like millions of other young men. He traveled to at least two Army camps across the US. His first training camp was Camp Pickett in Virginia where he was in Company A of the 6th Medical Training Battalion. He was trained as a battlefield medic and ambulance driver.

After Camp Pickett, he was sent to gorgeous Camp Carson in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. He must have been in awe, as my guess is he’d never before seen snow-covered mountains like these. 

Your grandfather was shipped to North Africa from Camp Carson on April 29, 1943. He was assigned to the Medical Detachment 180th Infantry 45th Division and became part of General Bradley’s Second Corps.

US and British troops were fighting the Germans in North Africa and it was also a staging ground for the invasion of Italy at Anzio Beach. I don’t believe your grandfather was part of the invasion force. My research leads me to believe that once the beachhead was established and the Germans were being pushed up towards Rome, his battalion landed some days after the primary invasion.

He worked his way from Anzio to Rome, and was part of the force that liberated the city of Rome from the clutches of the Nazis on June 4, 1944. Based on photos your grandfather took while in Rome, he appears to have gotten some time off while in this ancient city. However, just days later, on June 12, 1944, he was wounded in his left forearm by a Nazi bullet.

The wound was not serious and he was still able to be part of the fighting force. He also contracted malaria while in Italy. An old newspaper clipping talks about how he was recovering from it before being shipped to southern France.

I’m not clear how he made it to southern France as the Allies continued to push the Germans back towards Berlin, but on October 5, 1944, his unit was sent to the front lines. They engaged the Germans the following morning and the battle raged on all day. As sometimes happens in battle, one side can run out of ammunition. This happened to your grandfather’s unit.

The Germans captured your grandfather on October 6, 1944. I have a very dim memory of my mom saying that he could have avoided capture, but he stayed with his injured soldiers to provide aid and comfort for them.

A newspaper clipping that your grandmother saved indicated that his best friend and tentmate, Vance Hallman PFC, was able to somehow escape capture. I suspect that Vance was not sent out on patrol at the same time your grandfather was dispatched with his rifle company.

Vance subsequently wrote a letter to your grandmother dated November 8, 1944, sharing the details of the battle and your grandfather’s capture.

I’ve transcribed the actual letter here:

France

8 Nov 1944

Dear Jeane,

The letter that I’ve been waiting for came last night and it was yours of Oct 24 telling me that the War Dept had notified you of Carter being missing in action. I would have written you sooner, in fact I did write you all about it but I destroyed the letter after thinking it over and decided to wait until you had heard from the WD.

I wrote Mary all about it and told her to write you so you’ve probably heard from her by now. But in case you haven’t I’ll tell you about it and I hope this relieves you and his mother of a great part of the anxiety that you must be in.

First of all I want to tell you that Carter is only a prisoner, and I know that relieves you some because the WD never gets into detail and it’s human nature for us to expect the worst when it involves someone we love. Those three words “missing in action” cover a lot of territory and I can imagine how you all felt when you got the telegram.

Carter was an aid man with one of the rifle companies and on Oct 6 there was a big battle in the forests that (Please excuse the two kinds of paper, I didn’t know I was so near out of the other.) lasted all day and up into the night. The enemy broke through our lines and Carter’s Company was surrounded. There were many casualties so Carter and some of the men carried them into a farmhouse and down into the cellar where he could give them medical attention.

About dark that evening the enemy encircled the house and took Carter and the seventeen wounded men prisoners. Some of the other men that were at the house with Carter made a break for it and got away but Carter chose to stay and take care of his wounded buddies who might have died otherwise. Knowing Carter like I do, I don’t believe he would have left those buddies of his under any circumstances and Jeane, don’t you think any of us has forgot that heroic deed and he will certainly get recognition for it from the War Department.

I talked to one of the men that were in the house with Carter who made a break for it and got away, and he praised Carter very highly for his sacrifice. Jeane, the Germans were seen evacuating Carter and the wounded men from the house that evening with the help of five more of our medics that were captured the same time Carter was. So he has five more of his buddies in the medics that are prisoners with him.

They were litter bearers and were in a jeep on the way up to the house to get the wounded men that Carter was looking after, when they were captured.

Jeane, we’ve had reports from medic prisoners and they say the medics get the best of treatment, and they also get priority on the list of exchange prisoners which is very good news.

Yes, Jeane, I do know that you and Carter mean everything to each other and I can readily understand that, and Mary and I are looking forward to being with you all when this war is over. You’re right, we’re going to have a swell time together after this mess is all over, and I don’t think that’s so long off either. Carter and I already have a trip to the Indianapolis races and one to Florida planned.

I miss him very much, we used to lie in bed at night and talk about you and Mary and make all kinds of plans, etc. He’s a swell guy, Jeane, and I’ll be seeing more of him after this war. A fellow doesn’t find friends like Carter every day. He’s one of the best friends I ever had and I feel as if I’ve known him all my life.

Jeane, I received your other two letters sometime ago and this is the reason I haven’t answered them. I sincerely hope that I’ve taken away some of the worry off your and Carter’s mother and if there’s anything else you want to know or anything that I can do for you please don’t hesitate to call on me, I’m sure Carter would do the same for me.

Sincerely yours,

Vance Hallman

I’d love to know more about this and how terrifying it must have been. Imagine having one or more German soldiers, possibly with their bloodlust overflowing, pointing their rifles at your chest.

Another newspaper clipping recounting the battle and capture, states that he also suffered a head wound from a bullet. He was sent to Stalag II-B in Poland after his capture. This camp was located in the far northeastern corner of that occupied country. The newspaper clipping states he ate potato peels to stay alive and went without bread for weeks at a time.

He received a Purple Heart for this injury. Far greater than the gunshot wounds were the psychological injuries he suffered. These would bubble to the surface once back home and would plague your grandfather for the rest of his life.

Your grandmother told me many years after your grandfather died that he had an unpleasant time in the German POW camp. He lost quite a bit of weight and I remember a story told once at the dinner table about him being hit by one of the guards. Dad had cursed at the guard out of frustration and the guard either knew English or could simply understand what my dad was trying to convey.

In April, 1945 Dad’s POW camp was liberated by advancing Russian forces that were beating the Germans back towards Berlin. Your grandfather shared the story of how on that day he and all the other prisoners awoke to find all their guards had abandoned them.

They heard a rumbling sound and a Russian tank crashed through the prison gates. Dad and all his POW buddies were fearful that they might be killed, but the tank commander opened his hatch, popped his head out, went back into the tank and brought out a 5-gallon fuel container.

The container didn’t contain gasoline. It was filled with vodka and they all had a giant liberation party right there in the POW camp!

The war ended not too long after this and your grandfather was moved to the coast of France to await a transport ship to take him back home to his sweetheart, your grandmother. Here is the first letter he sent to her once he was liberated from the POW camp. 

Germany - May 6 - 45

My Dearest Darling,

Honey just a few lines to let you know I am well and getting along fine. I know you have been waiting seven months to hear from me and I know you have thought I have been dead but when you are a prisoner you are not allowed to write much but I did write you a few letters whether you got them I don’t know.

Honey here is the main thing you want to hear right now. I am at an airport waiting for a plane to take me to the coast of France where I will (missing verb) the boat for home and I should be there within a month. Well honey right now I am very tired and sleepy so I will close until tomorrow with all my love.

Yours forever,

Melvin

He got back from Europe on June 2, 1945. He was sent to Camp Atterbury in nearby Indiana. They were married within weeks on June 14, 1945.

His experiences on the battlefield, the fear of being killed when his unit was overrun, and then the seven months in a German POW camp caused permanent debilitating injuries to your grandfather’s psyche. He suffered from severe depression that, unfortunately, was made worse by electroshock treatments administered by the Veterans hospital psychiatrists.

Doctors back in the late 1940s and 1950s thought this was the best way to treat depression, just like hundreds of years ago doctors thought that bloodletting was the way to cure sick patients.

Should you want to see disturbing and vivid examples of this electro-shock treatment, watch the movie One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest with Jack Nicholson. Based on what I’ve discovered, each successive shock treatment intensified the depression so the doctors were setting up your grandfather for failure. I don’t blame them, nor should you. They were doing the best they could do at the time.

I don’t have a clear picture of the time period from 1945-1955, but my guess is it was a tumultuous time for your grandmother. She was not alone as tens of thousands of other young wives were dealing with their tormented soulmates. There’s a reason why the three-word saying war is hell rings true.

At one point, my Uncle Raymond, Aunt Thelma’s husband, got your grandfather a job at the massive Cincinnati Milling Machine factory. I have one faded memory of Dad either leaving for or coming back home from the plant. He had on dark blue pants and shirt and was carrying a metal lunchbox.

I also have a sad memory of his escalating torment. One warm summer day, he and Mom were involved in a heated discussion. It was close to my birthday and evidently, he wanted to rescind his promise of taking me and some friends on some sort of birthday outing. It might have been an afternoon at Putt-Putt miniature golf. I was quite young and I remember sitting on the front porch crying as I heard Mom’s frustrated voice. I can’t tell you how that discussion or the day turned out, but I’m sure it wasn’t the only time that things that should have been easy were instead a challenge.

It’s important to realize that back then, at least in our family, these hardships were not discussed. It might have been too painful for Mom to do. She might not have had the energy. She might not have wanted to frighten your Aunt Lynn and me any more than we already were. She might have thought that all of it was nice-to-know but not need-to-know information for our young minds.

The downside of being kept in the dark about my dad was that as I grew older, I began to resent his behavior. I couldn’t understand why he stayed home all day sleeping on the couch listening to country music over and over on the hi-fi while all my friends’ dads went to work each day.

The thought of not working was hateful to me. The animosity between us climaxed while I was in high school. I was working seven days a week at Skyline Chili. Monday through Friday, I worked from 4 until 7 p.m. to help out with the dinner rush. I’d miss dinner with the family and would bring home a pint of chili, a packet of diced onions, and a packet of cheese.

I’d eat it at the kitchen table in my favorite red-glass bowl, and Dad would come in most nights to watch me. I look back now and understand why he did this. He wanted to be with me and discover how my day had been just like how I want to hear about your days now. He’d be smoking a cigarette and the stench of it nauseated me. This just added to the dark cloud hovering over us. I so wish I could go back in time and change my behavior as it wasn’t Dad’s fault he was suffering. I was just too young to understand his pain and his own feelings of shame.

Fortunately, I began to mature as I made my way through college. The resentment faded and your grandfather and I began to become friends. I’d talk to him about what I was learning in geology and he was genuinely interested.

Once I graduated from the University of Cincinnati in June of 1974 with my geology degree, I started my own little remodeling business. Not a year passed before I had purchased my first house at 2865 Minto Avenue in East Hyde Park.

I remember one day your grandfather stopped by to watch while I worked. It was a beehive of activity and he just stood there for about an hour shaking his head in amazement at the scope of the project and what his son was doing.

Mom told me years later he was really proud of me. He knew I was tackling what for him would have been an impossible challenge.

Your grandfather’s health had always been poor. His sedentary lifestyle mixed with his heavy smoking was a recipe for nothing but bad things. When I was in grade school he had revolutionary surgery where they installed artificial arteries from just below his heart all the way down both legs. I remember crying about this in school the day of his surgery because I knew it was very serious.

In the middle of August 1976, he went for a normal doctor’s visit and the doctor listened to his heart. He was in the middle of an arrhythmia episode and the doctor told him to get to the hospital immediately.

Your grandfather didn’t last a week. He was in intensive care, had multiple heart failures, and was brought back to life with defibrillators. Your grandmother, your Aunt Lynn, and I watched one of these terrifying events happen. I’ll never forget it. 

We sent your grandfather back to Heaven on August 21, 1976, while I was living in the starter home in Hyde Park. I remember your grandmother calling to tell me he had passed away. I have many regrets about your grandfather and one is not being by his side as he passed. He died alone in his hospital room and it bothers me to this day. Your grandfather was still a young man as he was only 59-years-old. His final resting place is in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio, near the rear exit.

Not a week goes by that I don’t think about my dad. There are so many things I’ve done that I wish he could have seen. It would have been so cool to have him stop by while I was building the house in Amberley. He would have been speechless at all the carpentry involved in that huge project! I think he’d be really proud of how my life has turned out. I know he’d be proud of you!

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[thegregorybruce]

PFC Melvin Carter

Author's Note: The following text appeared in Chapter One of the Adventures & Advice book that I wrote at the request of my youngest daughter. I also shared the book with my other two older children. This book is not available to the general public as it was a special gift to my children, my older sister, and a very small select group of my friends.

It's important to realize that my father, PFC Carter, passed away before any of my children were even a glint in my eye. The details of his life in what you're about to read are what he might have shared with my children had he been able to sit them on his lap and talk about who he was and what he did.

I only came to appreciate and deeply love my father years later after he had been worn down by life and the horrors of what he experienced in the great World War II. My mother, sister, and I sent him back to Heaven when I was a very young man.

Grandfather Melvin Carter

  Your Grandfather Carter looks pretty smart in his US Army uniform, doesn’t he? He’s beaming because he’s sitting next to your grandmother no doubt! This photo was taken in June of 1945 after he returned from the hellish experience of World War II. The photo was taken at Coney Island amusement park in Cincinnati, Ohio. Many people went to Coney Island before Kings Island ravaged and plundered its customer base.

My dad was born on April 10, 1917. That was just four days after the USA entered World War One in Europe. His middle name honored the tiny hamlet he was born in, Mt. Vernon, Indiana. His father, William Columbus Carter was born in 1846. That made him 70 years old at the time your grandfather was conceived!  

Your great-grandfather was a country veterinarian in the middle of nowhere. Mt. Vernon, Indiana is a sleepy town now, so you can imagine what it was like in the early 1900s.

I have no clue when the family relocated from Indiana to New Richmond, Ohio, just fifteen or so miles upstream on the Ohio River from downtown Cincinnati. But before ending up in New Richmond, they must have relocated to Cincinnati not too long after my dad was born because my great-grandfather is buried at the Baltimore Pike Cemetery in Cincinnati.

I do know that my dad’s mother, Ida, married three times. Ida remarried a man with the last name Steinbrecher. This is why all the urgent telegrams she received about her son during World War ll were addressed to Ida Steinbrecher. I don’t have a record of this but Ida’s second husband must have died and Ida, not wanting to be lonely, remarried a third, and final time, to Louis Nitzel. Ida passed away in 1957 and her final resting place is in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Your grandfather, his four sisters, and one older brother lived in or adjacent to a boarding house operated by his mother, Ida Steinbrecher Carter. I was five years old when my grandmother passed away. I have a dim memory of seeing her on her deathbed in a house just off Beechmont Avenue in Mt. Washington. 

Your grandfather's oldest sister was my Aunt Margaret. She dated and married your grandmother’s older brother, my Uncle Louie. Your grandfather must have run into Louie at the boarding house and at some point, Uncle Louie hired him to help collect money from jukeboxes that Louie owned in local bars and other places of disrepute. 

World War II started when your grandfather was twenty-one years old. He enlisted in the US Army to fight our enemies just like millions of other young men. He traveled to at least two Army camps across the US. His first training camp was Camp Pickett in Virginia where he was in Company A of the 6th Medical Training Battalion. He was trained as a battlefield medic and ambulance driver.

After Camp Pickett, he was sent to gorgeous Camp Carson in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. He must have been in awe, as my guess is he’d never before seen snow-covered mountains like these. 

Your grandfather was shipped to North Africa from Camp Carson on April 29, 1943. He was assigned to the Medical Detachment 180th Infantry 45th Division and became part of General Bradley’s Second Corps.

US and British troops were fighting the Germans in North Africa and it was also a staging ground for the invasion of Italy at Anzio Beach. I don’t believe your grandfather was part of the invasion force. My research leads me to believe that once the beachhead was established and the Germans were being pushed up towards Rome, his battalion landed some days after the primary invasion.

He worked his way from Anzio to Rome, and was part of the force that liberated the city of Rome from the clutches of the Nazis on June 4, 1944. Based on photos your grandfather took while in Rome, he appears to have gotten some time off while in this ancient city. However, just days later, on June 12, 1944, he was wounded in his left forearm by a Nazi bullet.

The wound was not serious and he was still able to be part of the fighting force. He also contracted malaria while in Italy. An old newspaper clipping talks about how he was recovering from it before being shipped to southern France.

I’m not clear how he made it to southern France as the Allies continued to push the Germans back towards Berlin, but on October 5, 1944, his unit was sent to the front lines. They engaged the Germans the following morning and the battle raged on all day. As sometimes happens in battle, one side can run out of ammunition. This happened to your grandfather’s unit.

The Germans captured your grandfather on October 6, 1944. I have a very dim memory of my mom saying that he could have avoided capture, but he stayed with his injured soldiers to provide aid and comfort for them.

A newspaper clipping that your grandmother saved indicated that his best friend and tentmate, Vance Hallman PFC, was able to somehow escape capture. I suspect that Vance was not sent out on patrol at the same time your grandfather was dispatched with his rifle company.

Vance subsequently wrote a letter to your grandmother dated November 8, 1944, sharing the details of the battle and your grandfather’s capture.

I’ve transcribed the actual letter here:

France

8 Nov 1944

Dear Jeane,

The letter that I’ve been waiting for came last night and it was yours of Oct 24 telling me that the War Dept had notified you of Carter being missing in action. I would have written you sooner, in fact I did write you all about it but I destroyed the letter after thinking it over and decided to wait until you had heard from the WD.

I wrote Mary all about it and told her to write you so you’ve probably heard from her by now. But in case you haven’t I’ll tell you about it and I hope this relieves you and his mother of a great part of the anxiety that you must be in.

First of all I want to tell you that Carter is only a prisoner, and I know that relieves you some because the WD never gets into detail and it’s human nature for us to expect the worst when it involves someone we love. Those three words “missing in action” cover a lot of territory and I can imagine how you all felt when you got the telegram.

Carter was an aid man with one of the rifle companies and on Oct 6 there was a big battle in the forests that (Please excuse the two kinds of paper, I didn’t know I was so near out of the other.) lasted all day and up into the night. The enemy broke through our lines and Carter’s Company was surrounded. There were many casualties so Carter and some of the men carried them into a farmhouse and down into the cellar where he could give them medical attention.

About dark that evening the enemy encircled the house and took Carter and the seventeen wounded men prisoners. Some of the other men that were at the house with Carter made a break for it and got away but Carter chose to stay and take care of his wounded buddies who might have died otherwise. Knowing Carter like I do, I don’t believe he would have left those buddies of his under any circumstances and Jeane, don’t you think any of us has forgot that heroic deed and he will certainly get recognition for it from the War Department.

I talked to one of the men that were in the house with Carter who made a break for it and got away, and he praised Carter very highly for his sacrifice. Jeane, the Germans were seen evacuating Carter and the wounded men from the house that evening with the help of five more of our medics that were captured the same time Carter was. So he has five more of his buddies in the medics that are prisoners with him.

They were litter bearers and were in a jeep on the way up to the house to get the wounded men that Carter was looking after, when they were captured.

Jeane, we’ve had reports from medic prisoners and they say the medics get the best of treatment, and they also get priority on the list of exchange prisoners which is very good news.

Yes, Jeane, I do know that you and Carter mean everything to each other and I can readily understand that, and Mary and I are looking forward to being with you all when this war is over. You’re right, we’re going to have a swell time together after this mess is all over, and I don’t think that’s so long off either. Carter and I already have a trip to the Indianapolis races and one to Florida planned.

I miss him very much, we used to lie in bed at night and talk about you and Mary and make all kinds of plans, etc. He’s a swell guy, Jeane, and I’ll be seeing more of him after this war. A fellow doesn’t find friends like Carter every day. He’s one of the best friends I ever had and I feel as if I’ve known him all my life.

Jeane, I received your other two letters sometime ago and this is the reason I haven’t answered them. I sincerely hope that I’ve taken away some of the worry off your and Carter’s mother and if there’s anything else you want to know or anything that I can do for you please don’t hesitate to call on me, I’m sure Carter would do the same for me.

Sincerely yours,

Vance Hallman

I’d love to know more about this and how terrifying it must have been. Imagine having one or more German soldiers, possibly with their bloodlust overflowing, pointing their rifles at your chest.

Another newspaper clipping recounting the battle and capture, states that he also suffered a head wound from a bullet. He was sent to Stalag II-B in Poland after his capture. This camp was located in the far northeastern corner of that occupied country. The newspaper clipping states he ate potato peels to stay alive and went without bread for weeks at a time.

He received a Purple Heart for this injury. Far greater than the gunshot wounds were the psychological injuries he suffered. These would bubble to the surface once back home and would plague your grandfather for the rest of his life.

Your grandmother told me many years after your grandfather died that he had an unpleasant time in the German POW camp. He lost quite a bit of weight and I remember a story told once at the dinner table about him being hit by one of the guards. Dad had cursed at the guard out of frustration and the guard either knew English or could simply understand what my dad was trying to convey.

In April, 1945 Dad’s POW camp was liberated by advancing Russian forces that were beating the Germans back towards Berlin. Your grandfather shared the story of how on that day he and all the other prisoners awoke to find all their guards had abandoned them.

They heard a rumbling sound and a Russian tank crashed through the prison gates. Dad and all his POW buddies were fearful that they might be killed, but the tank commander opened his hatch, popped his head out, went back into the tank and brought out a 5-gallon fuel container.

The container didn’t contain gasoline. It was filled with vodka and they all had a giant liberation party right there in the POW camp!

The war ended not too long after this and your grandfather was moved to the coast of France to await a transport ship to take him back home to his sweetheart, your grandmother. Here is the first letter he sent to her once he was liberated from the POW camp. 

Germany - May 6 - 45

My Dearest Darling,

Honey just a few lines to let you know I am well and getting along fine. I know you have been waiting seven months to hear from me and I know you have thought I have been dead but when you are a prisoner you are not allowed to write much but I did write you a few letters whether you got them I don’t know.

Honey here is the main thing you want to hear right now. I am at an airport waiting for a plane to take me to the coast of France where I will (missing verb) the boat for home and I should be there within a month. Well honey right now I am very tired and sleepy so I will close until tomorrow with all my love.

Yours forever,

Melvin

He got back from Europe on June 2, 1945. He was sent to Camp Atterbury in nearby Indiana. They were married within weeks on June 14, 1945.

His experiences on the battlefield, the fear of being killed when his unit was overrun, and then the seven months in a German POW camp caused permanent debilitating injuries to your grandfather’s psyche. He suffered from severe depression that, unfortunately, was made worse by electroshock treatments administered by the Veterans hospital psychiatrists.

Doctors back in the late 1940s and 1950s thought this was the best way to treat depression, just like hundreds of years ago doctors thought that bloodletting was the way to cure sick patients.

Should you want to see disturbing and vivid examples of this electro-shock treatment, watch the movie One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest with Jack Nicholson. Based on what I’ve discovered, each successive shock treatment intensified the depression so the doctors were setting up your grandfather for failure. I don’t blame them, nor should you. They were doing the best they could do at the time.

I don’t have a clear picture of the time period from 1945-1955, but my guess is it was a tumultuous time for your grandmother. She was not alone as tens of thousands of other young wives were dealing with their tormented soulmates. There’s a reason why the three-word saying war is hell rings true.

At one point, my Uncle Raymond, Aunt Thelma’s husband, got your grandfather a job at the massive Cincinnati Milling Machine factory. I have one faded memory of Dad either leaving for or coming back home from the plant. He had on dark blue pants and shirt and was carrying a metal lunchbox.

I also have a sad memory of his escalating torment. One warm summer day, he and Mom were involved in a heated discussion. It was close to my birthday and evidently, he wanted to rescind his promise of taking me and some friends on some sort of birthday outing. It might have been an afternoon at Putt-Putt miniature golf. I was quite young and I remember sitting on the front porch crying as I heard Mom’s frustrated voice. I can’t tell you how that discussion or the day turned out, but I’m sure it wasn’t the only time that things that should have been easy were instead a challenge.

It’s important to realize that back then, at least in our family, these hardships were not discussed. It might have been too painful for Mom to do. She might not have had the energy. She might not have wanted to frighten your Aunt Lynn and me any more than we already were. She might have thought that all of it was nice-to-know but not need-to-know information for our young minds.

The downside of being kept in the dark about my dad was that as I grew older, I began to resent his behavior. I couldn’t understand why he stayed home all day sleeping on the couch listening to country music over and over on the hi-fi while all my friends’ dads went to work each day.

The thought of not working was hateful to me. The animosity between us climaxed while I was in high school. I was working seven days a week at Skyline Chili. Monday through Friday, I worked from 4 until 7 p.m. to help out with the dinner rush. I’d miss dinner with the family and would bring home a pint of chili, a packet of diced onions, and a packet of cheese.

I’d eat it at the kitchen table in my favorite red-glass bowl, and Dad would come in most nights to watch me. I look back now and understand why he did this. He wanted to be with me and discover how my day had been just like how I want to hear about your days now. He’d be smoking a cigarette and the stench of it nauseated me. This just added to the dark cloud hovering over us. I so wish I could go back in time and change my behavior as it wasn’t Dad’s fault he was suffering. I was just too young to understand his pain and his own feelings of shame.

Fortunately, I began to mature as I made my way through college. The resentment faded and your grandfather and I began to become friends. I’d talk to him about what I was learning in geology and he was genuinely interested.

Once I graduated from the University of Cincinnati in June of 1974 with my geology degree, I started my own little remodeling business. Not a year passed before I had purchased my first house at 2865 Minto Avenue in East Hyde Park.

I remember one day your grandfather stopped by to watch while I worked. It was a beehive of activity and he just stood there for about an hour shaking his head in amazement at the scope of the project and what his son was doing.

Mom told me years later he was really proud of me. He knew I was tackling what for him would have been an impossible challenge.

Your grandfather’s health had always been poor. His sedentary lifestyle mixed with his heavy smoking was a recipe for nothing but bad things. When I was in grade school he had revolutionary surgery where they installed artificial arteries from just below his heart all the way down both legs. I remember crying about this in school the day of his surgery because I knew it was very serious.

In the middle of August 1976, he went for a normal doctor’s visit and the doctor listened to his heart. He was in the middle of an arrhythmia episode and the doctor told him to get to the hospital immediately.

Your grandfather didn’t last a week. He was in intensive care, had multiple heart failures, and was brought back to life with defibrillators. Your grandmother, your Aunt Lynn, and I watched one of these terrifying events happen. I’ll never forget it. 

We sent your grandfather back to Heaven on August 21, 1976, while I was living in the starter home in Hyde Park. I remember your grandmother calling to tell me he had passed away. I have many regrets about your grandfather and one is not being by his side as he passed. He died alone in his hospital room and it bothers me to this day. Your grandfather was still a young man as he was only 59-years-old. His final resting place is in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio, near the rear exit.

Not a week goes by that I don’t think about my dad. There are so many things I’ve done that I wish he could have seen. It would have been so cool to have him stop by while I was building the house in Amberley. He would have been speechless at all the carpentry involved in that huge project! I think he’d be really proud of how my life has turned out. I know he’d be proud of you!

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[the-writerly-night-owl]

Quiet Afternoons

Desire and Decorum/ Dominique and Charlotte friendship 

Summary: Now grandmothers and great grandmother’s they reflect on their friendship, family, and life. 

Authors note: timelines suck and I just decided to go with whatever feels natural. I’m not making this as historical since Charlotte would have died years ago at this point. Instead I’m picking and choosing what would fit. Enjoy! 

The dowager countess Dominique glanced out the window as she grinned softly more to herself. Outside the children were playing with a dog running around with them. Each trying to tag each other as best as they could.

“They seem to be playing quite nicely,” said Charlotte now watching them too. “It’s wonderful for Alexandrina to have some friends. I wish that they were around more. Georgiana has been so kind to her.”

“Of course, who knows maybe they’ll be like us one day,” said Dominique, her own half smile on her face.

“Well she’ll have one of the greatest friends then.” They shared a look then looked out the window once more. It could almost be like a mirror if they had met that young once. 

Lagging far behind the boys and holding their bonnets, little Georgiana and her friend Princess Alexandrina Victoria were eagerly showing each other their dolls. In a way, if they had known each other at that young of an age, perhaps they would have been friends. The two girls finally gave up trying to catch Georgiana’s brothers and decided to sit down with their dolls.

“That would be delightful,” said Charlotte, as she grinned at her friend. “Imagine if you had known about Clara sooner, perhaps my granddaughter would have been friends with her. You remember meeting her of course.”

“Of course,” said Dominique. “Charlotte Junior, that was so confusing sometimes. Knowing that you two shared a name. She would ride horses around the palaces and always happy. Although lonely. Clara would have been an excellent comfort. She tells me about her childhood sometimes and Clara could keep up from my understanding.”

Charlotte perked up sitting aside her sewing and going to peer closer out the winder. This was great to see the two girls getting along. Dominique could only beam proudly at her growing family. It was a woman’s goal of the era to marry and marry well, but also to produce children, especially an heir. To her delight Clara Sinclaire had produced three sons and a daughter before she was thirty.

“I can only hope that Alexandrina is as lucky as Clara one day. You have three great grandsons already Dominique, three sons. You must be so happy! Edgewater and Ledford could each have their own heirs.”

“Oh they are delights. Three sons and a daughter, Clara has been blessed. That doesn’t hold a candle to you though. Charlotte, so many children and you live to tell the tale. I barely survived having Vincent.”

The two women pulled back to lean against the walls of the window seat. Dominique could watch her friend and the children outside. Together they were like any other proud grandmothers just boasting about their grandchildren. Even if it was technically two generations between Dominique and Georgiana.

“So, tell me, what happened since our last letter?”

“We only wrote a month ago, Charlotte.” She gave her friend a stern but puppy dog looking face. Dominique only laughed before recounting her last month. “Not much has really happened. We had to get a new butler, I liked the old one much better. My favorite book has slowly become this Northanger Abbey…”

Charlotte just shook her head. “No, that kind of news, but personally what’s going on? I can always tell when something is wrong.”

Dominique sighed as she thought about what was really bothering her. In the back of her mind she knew that this was coming.  “You have a way of reading me. There are two problems that I wouldn’t mind talking about. But you’re telling me about your problems too, I can tell when you want to talk about something personal.”

Charlotte nodded for her to continue as she reached out and touched her friends’ hand.  Their eyes met before her gazed dropped.

“I’m just worried about Clara. She’s having more and more children so she’s not spending as much time at Edgewater. She and Ernest have tried to raise the children in both homes but they’re just spending more time at Ledford. I’m afraid Charlotte.”

She adjusted her dress to lay out in front of her and looked thoughtful. Honestly, she had never seen her friend afraid before. “Please tell me.”

“I’m getting older and it’s harder for me to get up every morning. Clara is one of my remaining family and sometimes… Sometimes I feel like I’m getting pushed aside for new family. She’s just so happy. I don’t want to scare her by talking about this.”

She nodded sympathetic to what she was saying. Sometimes it was easier just to write it down rather than talk about it. “That’s why you have me. I understand that it’s hard to watch her get older. My only advice would be to spend as much time with them as possible. Rock the baby to sleep as many times as you can.”

Dominique squeezed her hand and took a deep breath. Her smile tiny but thankful as she felt a weight come off her chest.

“Thank you, now what ails you?”

“It’s the same as you, except almost the opposite. I lost so many people in my family Dominique. Four of them are already gone and only four have had children.”

Knowing that they were in private Dominique moved closer to her friend before hugging her. The two women hugged each other letting it linger basking in their warmth. “That was heavy,” she said quietly before clearing her mind. “Now perhaps we can switch to a lighter topic? I believe that we have greater things to discuss.”

“Such as?”

“What we will be having for dinner.”

“Dinner? I was thinking dessert. How we can use our powers we have in this house to get it before everyone else.” They burst into laughter before helping each other stand tall. They were going to take their time after all they were still going to get there first. “I think we can get some now.”

Giggling like they were Alexandrina and Georgiana, the former queen and dowager countess strode confidently down to the kitchens and asked for the fresh batch of dessert. Really anything would do.

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[williamccreynolds]

PFC Melvin Carter

Author's Note: The following text appeared in chapter seven of the Adventures & Advice book that I wrote at the request of my youngest daughter. I also shared the book with my other two older children. This book is not available to the general public as it was a special gift to my children, my older sister, and a very small select group of my friends.

It's important to realize that my father, PFC Carter, passed away before any of my children were even a glint in my eye. The details of his life in what you're about to read are what he might have shared with my children had he been able to sit them on his lap and talk about who he was and what he did.

I only came to appreciate and deeply love my father years later after he had been worn down by life and the horrors of what he experienced in the great World War II. My mother, sister, and I sent him back to Heaven when I was a very young man.

Grandfather Melvin Carter

  Your Grandfather Carter looks pretty smart in his US Army uniform, doesn’t he? He’s beaming because he’s sitting next to your grandmother no doubt! This photo was taken in June of 1945 after he returned from the hellish experience of World War II. The photo was taken at Coney Island amusement park in Cincinnati, Ohio. Many people went to Coney Island before Kings Island ravaged and plundered its customer base.

My dad was born on April 10, 1917. That was just four days after the USA entered World War One in Europe. His middle name honored the tiny hamlet he was born in, Mt. Vernon, Indiana. His father, William Columbus Carter was born in 1846. That made him 70 years old at the time your grandfather was conceived!  

Your great-grandfather was a country veterinarian in the middle of nowhere. Mt. Vernon, Indiana is a sleepy town now, so you can imagine what it was like in the early 1900s.

I have no clue when the family relocated from Indiana to New Richmond, Ohio, just fifteen or so miles upstream on the Ohio River from downtown Cincinnati. But before ending up in New Richmond, they must have relocated to Cincinnati not too long after my dad was born because my great-grandfather is buried at the Baltimore Pike Cemetery in Cincinnati.

I do know that my dad’s mother, Ida, married three times. Ida remarried a man with the last name Steinbrecher. This is why all the urgent telegrams she received about her son during World War ll were addressed to Ida Steinbrecher. I don’t have a record of this but Ida’s second husband must have died and Ida, not wanting to be lonely, remarried a third, and final time, to Louis Nitzel. Ida passed away in 1957 and her final resting place is in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Your grandfather, his four sisters, and one older brother lived in or adjacent to a boarding house operated by his mother, Ida Steinbrecher Carter. I was five years old when my grandmother passed away. I have a dim memory of seeing her on her deathbed in a house just off Beechmont Avenue in Mt. Washington. 

Your grandfather's oldest sister was my Aunt Margaret. She dated and married your grandmother’s older brother, my Uncle Louie. Your grandfather must have run into Louie at the boarding house and at some point, Uncle Louie hired him to help collect money from jukeboxes that Louie owned in local bars and other places of disrepute. 

World War II started when your grandfather was twenty-one years old. He enlisted in the US Army to fight our enemies just like millions of other young men. He traveled to at least two Army camps across the US. His first training camp was Camp Pickett in Virginia where he was in Company A of the 6th Medical Training Battalion. He was trained as a battlefield medic and ambulance driver.

After Camp Pickett, he was sent to gorgeous Camp Carson in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. He must have been in awe, as my guess is he’d never before seen snow-covered mountains like these. 

Your grandfather was shipped to North Africa from Camp Carson on April 29, 1943. He was assigned to the Medical Detachment 180th Infantry 45th Division and became part of General Bradley’s Second Corps.

US and British troops were fighting the Germans in North Africa and it was also a staging ground for the invasion of Italy at Anzio Beach. I don’t believe your grandfather was part of the invasion force. My research leads me to believe that once the beachhead was established and the Germans were being pushed up towards Rome, his battalion landed some days after the primary invasion.

He worked his way from Anzio to Rome and was part of the force that liberated the city of Rome from the clutches of the Nazis on June 4, 1944. Based on photos your grandfather took while in Rome, he appears to have gotten some time off while in this ancient city. However, just days later, on June 12, 1944 he was wounded in his left forearm by a Nazi bullet.

The wound was not serious and he was still able to be part of the fighting force. He also contracted malaria while in Italy. An old newspaper clipping talks about how he was recovering from it before being shipped to southern France.

I’m not clear how he made it to southern France as the Allies continued to push the Germans back towards Berlin, but on October 5, 1944, his unit was sent to the front lines. They engaged the Germans the following morning and the battle raged on all day. As sometimes happens in battle, one side can run out of ammunition. This happened to your grandfather’s unit.

The Germans captured your grandfather on October 6, 1944. I have a very dim memory of my mom saying that he could have avoided capture, but he stayed with his injured soldiers to provide aid and comfort for them.

A newspaper clipping that your grandmother saved indicated that his best friend and tentmate, Vance Hallman PFC, was able to somehow escape capture. I suspect that Vance was not sent out on patrol at the same time your grandfather was dispatched with his rifle company.

Vance subsequently wrote a letter to your grandmother dated November 8, 1944 sharing the details of the battle and your grandfather’s capture.

I’ve transcribed the actual letter here:

France

8 Nov 1944

Dear Jeane,

The letter that I’ve been waiting for came last night and it was yours of Oct 24 telling me that the War Dept had notified you of Carter being missing in action. I would have written you sooner, in fact I did write you all about it but I destroyed the letter after thinking it over and decided to wait until you had heard from the WD.

I wrote Mary all about it and told her to write you so you’ve probably heard from her by now. But in case you haven’t I’ll tell you about it and I hope this relieves you and his mother of a great part of the anxiety that you must be in.

First of all I want to tell you that Carter is only a prisoner, and I know that relieves you some because the WD never gets into detail and it’s human nature for us to expect the worst when it involves someone we love. Those three words “missing in action” cover a lot of territory and I can imagine how you all felt when you got the telegram.

Carter was an aid man with one of the rifle companies and on Oct 6 there was a big battle in the forests that (Please excuse the two kinds of paper, I didn’t know I was so near out of the other.) lasted all day and up into the night. The enemy broke through our lines and Carter’s Company was surrounded. There were many casualties so Carter and some of the men carried them into a farmhouse and down into the cellar where he could give them medical attention.

About dark that evening the enemy encircled the house and took Carter and the seventeen wounded men prisoners. Some of the other men that were at the house with Carter made a break for it and got away but Carter chose to stay and take care of his wounded buddies who might have died otherwise. Knowing Carter like I do, I don’t believe he would have left those buddies of his under any circumstances and Jeane, don’t you think any of us has forgot that heroic deed and he will certainly get recognition for it from the War Department.

I talked to one of the men that were in the house with Carter who made a break for it and got away, and he praised Carter very highly for his sacrifice. Jeane, the Germans were seen evacuating Carter and the wounded men from the house that evening with the help of five more of our medics that were captured the same time Carter was. So he has five more of his buddies in the medics that are prisoners with him.

They were litter bearers and were in a jeep on the way up to the house to get the wounded men that Carter was looking after, when they were captured.

Jeane, we’ve had reports from medic prisoners and they say the medics get the best of treatment, and they also get priority on the list of exchange prisoners which is very good news.

Yes, Jeane, I do know that you and Carter mean everything to each other and I can readily understand that, and Mary and I are looking forward to being with you all when this war is over. You’re right, we’re going to have a swell time together after this mess is all over, and I don’t think that’s so long off either. Carter and I already have a trip to the Indianapolis races and one to Florida planned.

I miss him very much, we used to lie in bed at night and talk about you and Mary and make all kinds of plans, etc. He’s a swell guy, Jeane, and I’ll be seeing more of him after this war. A fellow doesn’t find friends like Carter every day. He’s one of the best friends I ever had and I feel as if I’ve known him all my life.

Jeane, I received your other two letters sometime ago and this is the reason I haven’t answered them. I sincerely hope that I’ve taken away some of the worry off your and Carter’s mother and if there’s anything else you want to know or anything that I can do for you please don’t hesitate to call on me, I’m sure Carter would do the same for me.

Sincerely yours,

Vance Hallman

I’d love to know more about this and how terrifying it must have been. Imagine having one or more German soldiers, possibly with their bloodlust overflowing, pointing their rifles at your chest.

Another newspaper clipping recounting the battle and capture, states that he also suffered a head wound from a bullet. He was sent to Stalag II-B in Poland after his capture. This camp was located in the far northeastern corner of that occupied country. The newspaper clipping states he ate potato peels to stay alive and went without bread for weeks at a time.

He received a Purple Heart for this injury. Far greater than the gunshot wounds were the psychological injuries he suffered. These would bubble to the surface once back home and would plague your grandfather for the rest of his life.

Your grandmother told me many years after your grandfather died that he had an unpleasant time in the German POW camp. He lost quite a bit of weight and I remember a story told once at the dinner table about him being hit by one of the guards. Dad had cursed at the guard out of frustration and the guard either knew English or could simply understand what my dad was trying to convey.

In April, 1945 Dad’s POW camp was liberated by advancing Russian forces that were beating the Germans back towards Berlin. Your grandfather shared the story of how on that day he and all the other prisoners awoke to find all their guards had abandoned them.

They heard a rumbling sound and a Russian tank crashed through the prison gates. Dad and all his POW buddies were fearful that they might be killed, but the tank commander opened his hatch, popped his head out, went back into the tank and brought out a 5-gallon fuel container.

The container didn’t contain gasoline. It was filled with vodka and they all had a giant liberation party right there in the POW camp!

The war ended not too long after this and your grandfather was moved to the coast of France to await a transport ship to take him back home to his sweetheart, your grandmother. Here is the first letter he sent to her once he was liberated from the POW camp. 

Germany - May 6 - 45

My Dearest Darling,

Honey just a few lines to let you know I am well and getting along fine. I know you have been waiting seven months to hear from me and I know you have thought I have been dead but when you are a prisoner you are not allowed to write much but I did write you a few letters whether you got them I don’t know.

Honey here is the main thing you want to hear right now. I am at an airport waiting for a plane to take me to the coast of France where I will (missing verb) the boat for home and I should be there within a month. Well honey right now I am very tired and sleepy so I will close until tomorrow with all my love.

Yours forever,

Melvin

He got back from Europe on June 2, 1945. He was sent to Camp Atterbury in nearby Indiana. They were married within weeks on June 14, 1945.

His experiences on the battlefield, the fear of being killed when his unit was overrun, and then the seven months in a German POW camp caused permanent debilitating injuries to your grandfather’s psyche. He suffered from severe depression that, unfortunately, was made worse by electroshock treatments administered by the Veterans hospital psychiatrists.

Doctors back in the late 1940s and 1950s thought this was the best way to treat depression, just like hundreds of years ago doctors thought that bloodletting was the way to cure sick patients.

Should you want to see disturbing and vivid examples of this electro-shock treatment, watch the movie One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest with Jack Nicholson. Based on what I’ve discovered, each successive shock treatment intensified the depression so the doctors were setting up your grandfather for failure. I don’t blame them nor should you. They were doing the best they could do at the time.

I don’t have a clear picture of the time period from 1945-1955, but my guess is it was a tumultuous time for your grandmother. She was not alone as tens of thousands of other young wives were dealing with their tormented soulmates. There’s a reason why the three-word saying war is hell rings true.

At one point my Uncle Raymond, Aunt Thelma’s husband, got your grandfather a job at the massive Cincinnati Milling Machine factory. I have one faded memory of Dad either leaving for or coming back home from the plant. He had on dark blue pants and shirt and was carrying a metal lunchbox.

I also have a sad memory of his escalating torment. One warm summer day he and Mom were involved in a heated discussion. It was close to my birthday and evidently, he wanted to rescind his promise of taking me and some friends on some sort of birthday outing. It might have been an afternoon at Putt-Putt miniature golf. I was quite young and I remember sitting on the front porch crying as I heard Mom’s frustrated voice. I can’t tell you how that discussion or the day turned out but I’m sure it wasn’t the only time that things that should have been easy were instead a challenge.

It’s important to realize that back then, at least in our family, these hardships were not discussed. It might have been too painful for Mom to do. She might not have had the energy. She might not have wanted to frighten your Aunt Lynn and me any more than we already were. She might have thought that all of it was nice-to-know but not need-to-know information for our young minds.

The downside of being kept in the dark about my dad was that as I grew older, I began to resent his behavior. I couldn’t understand why he stayed home all day sleeping on the couch listening to country music over and over on the hi-fi while all my friends’ dads went to work each day.

The thought of not working was hateful to me. The animosity between us climaxed while I was in high school. I was working seven days a week at Skyline Chili. Monday through Friday I worked from 4 until 7 p.m. to help out with the dinner rush. I’d miss dinner with the family and would bring home a pint of chili, a packet of diced onions, and a packet of cheese.

I’d eat it at the kitchen table in my favorite red-glass bowl and Dad would come in most nights to watch me. I look back now and understand why he did this. He wanted to be with me and discover how my day had been just like how I want to hear about your days now. He’d be smoking a cigarette and the stench of it nauseated me. This just added to the dark cloud hovering over us. I so wish I could go back in time and change my behavior as it wasn’t Dad’s fault he was suffering. I was just too young to understand his pain and his own feelings of shame.

Fortunately, I began to mature as I made my way through college. The resentment faded and your grandfather and I began to become friends. I’d talk to him about what I was learning in geology and he was genuinely interested.

Once I graduated from the University of Cincinnati in June of 1974 with my geology degree, I started my own little remodeling business. Not a year passed before I had purchased my first house at 2865 Minto Avenue in East Hyde Park.

I remember one day your grandfather stopped by to watch while I worked. It was a beehive of activity and he just stood there for about an hour shaking his head in amazement at the scope of the project and what his son was doing.

Mom told me years later he was really proud of me. He knew I was tackling what for him would have been an impossible challenge.

Your grandfather’s health had always been poor. His sedentary lifestyle mixed with his heavy smoking was a recipe for nothing but bad things. When I was in grade school he had revolutionary surgery where they installed artificial arteries from just below his heart all the way down both legs. I remember crying about this in school the day of his surgery because I knew it was very serious.

In the middle of August 1976, he went for a normal doctor’s visit and the doctor listened to his heart. He was in the middle of an arrhythmia episode and the doctor told him to get to the hospital immediately.

Your grandfather didn’t last a week. He was in intensive care, had multiple heart failures, and was brought back to life with defibrillators. Your grandmother, your Aunt Lynn, and I watched one of these terrifying events happen. I’ll never forget it. 

We sent your grandfather back to Heaven on August 21, 1976 while I was living in the starter home in Hyde Park. I remember your grandmother calling to tell me he had passed away. I have many regrets about your grandfather and one is not being by his side as he passed. He died alone in his hospital room and it bothers me to this day. Your grandfather was still a young man as he was only 59 years old. His final resting place is in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio near the rear exit.

Not a week goes by that I don’t think about my dad. There are so many things I’ve done that I wish he could have seen. It would have been so cool to have him stop by while I was building the house in Amberley. He would have been speechless at all the carpentry involved in that huge project! I think he’d be really proud of how my life has turned out. I know he’d be proud of you!

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[manuelclapid]

PFC Melvin Carter

Author's Note: The following text appeared in chapter seven of the Adventures & Advice book that I wrote at the request of my youngest daughter. I also shared the book with my other two older children. This book is not available to the general public as it was a special gift to my children, my older sister, and a very small select group of my friends.

It's important to realize that my father, PFC Carter, passed away before any of my children were even a glint in my eye. The details of his life in what you're about to read are what he might have shared with my children had he been able to sit them on his lap and talk about who he was and what he did.

I only came to appreciate and deeply love my father years later after he had been worn down by life and the horrors of what he experienced in the great World War II. My mother, sister, and I sent him back to Heaven when I was a very young man.

Grandfather Melvin Carter

  Your Grandfather Carter looks pretty smart in his US Army uniform, doesn’t he? He’s beaming because he’s sitting next to your grandmother no doubt! This photo was taken in June of 1945 after he returned from the hellish experience of World War II. The photo was taken at Coney Island amusement park in Cincinnati, Ohio. Many people went to Coney Island before Kings Island ravaged and plundered its customer base.

My dad was born on April 10, 1917. That was just four days after the USA entered World War One in Europe. His middle name honored the tiny hamlet he was born in, Mt. Vernon, Indiana. His father, William Columbus Carter was born in 1846. That made him 70 years old at the time your grandfather was conceived!  

Your great-grandfather was a country veterinarian in the middle of nowhere. Mt. Vernon, Indiana is a sleepy town now, so you can imagine what it was like in the early 1900s.

I have no clue when the family relocated from Indiana to New Richmond, Ohio, just fifteen or so miles upstream on the Ohio River from downtown Cincinnati. But before ending up in New Richmond, they must have relocated to Cincinnati not too long after my dad was born because my great-grandfather is buried at the Baltimore Pike Cemetery in Cincinnati.

I do know that my dad’s mother, Ida, married three times. Ida remarried a man with the last name Steinbrecher. This is why all the urgent telegrams she received about her son during World War ll were addressed to Ida Steinbrecher. I don’t have a record of this but Ida’s second husband must have died and Ida, not wanting to be lonely, remarried a third, and final time, to Louis Nitzel. Ida passed away in 1957 and her final resting place is in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Your grandfather, his four sisters, and one older brother lived in or adjacent to a boarding house operated by his mother, Ida Steinbrecher Carter. I was five years old when my grandmother passed away. I have a dim memory of seeing her on her deathbed in a house just off Beechmont Avenue in Mt. Washington. 

Your grandfather's oldest sister was my Aunt Margaret. She dated and married your grandmother’s older brother, my Uncle Louie. Your grandfather must have run into Louie at the boarding house and at some point, Uncle Louie hired him to help collect money from jukeboxes that Louie owned in local bars and other places of disrepute. 

World War II started when your grandfather was twenty-one years old. He enlisted in the US Army to fight our enemies just like millions of other young men. He traveled to at least two Army camps across the US. His first training camp was Camp Pickett in Virginia where he was in Company A of the 6th Medical Training Battalion. He was trained as a battlefield medic and ambulance driver.

After Camp Pickett, he was sent to gorgeous Camp Carson in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. He must have been in awe, as my guess is he’d never before seen snow-covered mountains like these. 

Your grandfather was shipped to North Africa from Camp Carson on April 29, 1943. He was assigned to the Medical Detachment 180th Infantry 45th Division and became part of General Bradley’s Second Corps.

US and British troops were fighting the Germans in North Africa and it was also a staging ground for the invasion of Italy at Anzio Beach. I don’t believe your grandfather was part of the invasion force. My research leads me to believe that once the beachhead was established and the Germans were being pushed up towards Rome, his battalion landed some days after the primary invasion.

He worked his way from Anzio to Rome and was part of the force that liberated the city of Rome from the clutches of the Nazis on June 4, 1944. Based on photos your grandfather took while in Rome, he appears to have gotten some time off while in this ancient city. However, just days later, on June 12, 1944 he was wounded in his left forearm by a Nazi bullet.

The wound was not serious and he was still able to be part of the fighting force. He also contracted malaria while in Italy. An old newspaper clipping talks about how he was recovering from it before being shipped to southern France.

I’m not clear how he made it to southern France as the Allies continued to push the Germans back towards Berlin, but on October 5, 1944, his unit was sent to the front lines. They engaged the Germans the following morning and the battle raged on all day. As sometimes happens in battle, one side can run out of ammunition. This happened to your grandfather’s unit.

The Germans captured your grandfather on October 6, 1944. I have a very dim memory of my mom saying that he could have avoided capture, but he stayed with his injured soldiers to provide aid and comfort for them.

A newspaper clipping that your grandmother saved indicated that his best friend and tentmate, Vance Hallman PFC, was able to somehow escape capture. I suspect that Vance was not sent out on patrol at the same time your grandfather was dispatched with his rifle company.

Vance subsequently wrote a letter to your grandmother dated November 8, 1944 sharing the details of the battle and your grandfather’s capture.

I’ve transcribed the actual letter here:

France

8 Nov 1944

Dear Jeane,

The letter that I’ve been waiting for came last night and it was yours of Oct 24 telling me that the War Dept had notified you of Carter being missing in action. I would have written you sooner, in fact I did write you all about it but I destroyed the letter after thinking it over and decided to wait until you had heard from the WD.

I wrote Mary all about it and told her to write you so you’ve probably heard from her by now. But in case you haven’t I’ll tell you about it and I hope this relieves you and his mother of a great part of the anxiety that you must be in.

First of all I want to tell you that Carter is only a prisoner, and I know that relieves you some because the WD never gets into detail and it’s human nature for us to expect the worst when it involves someone we love. Those three words “missing in action” cover a lot of territory and I can imagine how you all felt when you got the telegram.

Carter was an aid man with one of the rifle companies and on Oct 6 there was a big battle in the forests that (Please excuse the two kinds of paper, I didn’t know I was so near out of the other.) lasted all day and up into the night. The enemy broke through our lines and Carter’s Company was surrounded. There were many casualties so Carter and some of the men carried them into a farmhouse and down into the cellar where he could give them medical attention.

About dark that evening the enemy encircled the house and took Carter and the seventeen wounded men prisoners. Some of the other men that were at the house with Carter made a break for it and got away but Carter chose to stay and take care of his wounded buddies who might have died otherwise. Knowing Carter like I do, I don’t believe he would have left those buddies of his under any circumstances and Jeane, don’t you think any of us has forgot that heroic deed and he will certainly get recognition for it from the War Department.

I talked to one of the men that were in the house with Carter who made a break for it and got away, and he praised Carter very highly for his sacrifice. Jeane, the Germans were seen evacuating Carter and the wounded men from the house that evening with the help of five more of our medics that were captured the same time Carter was. So he has five more of his buddies in the medics that are prisoners with him.

They were litter bearers and were in a jeep on the way up to the house to get the wounded men that Carter was looking after, when they were captured.

Jeane, we’ve had reports from medic prisoners and they say the medics get the best of treatment, and they also get priority on the list of exchange prisoners which is very good news.

Yes, Jeane, I do know that you and Carter mean everything to each other and I can readily understand that, and Mary and I are looking forward to being with you all when this war is over. You’re right, we’re going to have a swell time together after this mess is all over, and I don’t think that’s so long off either. Carter and I already have a trip to the Indianapolis races and one to Florida planned.

I miss him very much, we used to lie in bed at night and talk about you and Mary and make all kinds of plans, etc. He’s a swell guy, Jeane, and I’ll be seeing more of him after this war. A fellow doesn’t find friends like Carter every day. He’s one of the best friends I ever had and I feel as if I’ve known him all my life.

Jeane, I received your other two letters sometime ago and this is the reason I haven’t answered them. I sincerely hope that I’ve taken away some of the worry off your and Carter’s mother and if there’s anything else you want to know or anything that I can do for you please don’t hesitate to call on me, I’m sure Carter would do the same for me.

Sincerely yours,

Vance Hallman

I’d love to know more about this and how terrifying it must have been. Imagine having one or more German soldiers, possibly with their bloodlust overflowing, pointing their rifles at your chest.

Another newspaper clipping recounting the battle and capture, states that he also suffered a head wound from a bullet. He was sent to Stalag II-B in Poland after his capture. This camp was located in the far northeastern corner of that occupied country. The newspaper clipping states he ate potato peels to stay alive and went without bread for weeks at a time.

He received a Purple Heart for this injury. Far greater than the gunshot wounds were the psychological injuries he suffered. These would bubble to the surface once back home and would plague your grandfather for the rest of his life.

Your grandmother told me many years after your grandfather died that he had an unpleasant time in the German POW camp. He lost quite a bit of weight and I remember a story told once at the dinner table about him being hit by one of the guards. Dad had cursed at the guard out of frustration and the guard either knew English or could simply understand what my dad was trying to convey.

In April, 1945 Dad’s POW camp was liberated by advancing Russian forces that were beating the Germans back towards Berlin. Your grandfather shared the story of how on that day he and all the other prisoners awoke to find all their guards had abandoned them.

They heard a rumbling sound and a Russian tank crashed through the prison gates. Dad and all his POW buddies were fearful that they might be killed, but the tank commander opened his hatch, popped his head out, went back into the tank and brought out a 5-gallon fuel container.

The container didn’t contain gasoline. It was filled with vodka and they all had a giant liberation party right there in the POW camp!

The war ended not too long after this and your grandfather was moved to the coast of France to await a transport ship to take him back home to his sweetheart, your grandmother. Here is the first letter he sent to her once he was liberated from the POW camp. 

Germany - May 6 - 45

My Dearest Darling,

Honey just a few lines to let you know I am well and getting along fine. I know you have been waiting seven months to hear from me and I know you have thought I have been dead but when you are a prisoner you are not allowed to write much but I did write you a few letters whether you got them I don’t know.

Honey here is the main thing you want to hear right now. I am at an airport waiting for a plane to take me to the coast of France where I will (missing verb) the boat for home and I should be there within a month. Well honey right now I am very tired and sleepy so I will close until tomorrow with all my love.

Yours forever,

Melvin

He got back from Europe on June 2, 1945. He was sent to Camp Atterbury in nearby Indiana. They were married within weeks on June 14, 1945.

His experiences on the battlefield, the fear of being killed when his unit was overrun, and then the seven months in a German POW camp caused permanent debilitating injuries to your grandfather’s psyche. He suffered from severe depression that, unfortunately, was made worse by electroshock treatments administered by the Veterans hospital psychiatrists.

Doctors back in the late 1940s and 1950s thought this was the best way to treat depression, just like hundreds of years ago doctors thought that bloodletting was the way to cure sick patients.

Should you want to see disturbing and vivid examples of this electro-shock treatment, watch the movie One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest with Jack Nicholson. Based on what I’ve discovered, each successive shock treatment intensified the depression so the doctors were setting up your grandfather for failure. I don’t blame them nor should you. They were doing the best they could do at the time.

I don’t have a clear picture of the time period from 1945-1955, but my guess is it was a tumultuous time for your grandmother. She was not alone as tens of thousands of other young wives were dealing with their tormented soulmates. There’s a reason why the three-word saying war is hell rings true.

At one point my Uncle Raymond, Aunt Thelma’s husband, got your grandfather a job at the massive Cincinnati Milling Machine factory. I have one faded memory of Dad either leaving for or coming back home from the plant. He had on dark blue pants and shirt and was carrying a metal lunchbox.

I also have a sad memory of his escalating torment. One warm summer day he and Mom were involved in a heated discussion. It was close to my birthday and evidently, he wanted to rescind his promise of taking me and some friends on some sort of birthday outing. It might have been an afternoon at Putt-Putt miniature golf. I was quite young and I remember sitting on the front porch crying as I heard Mom’s frustrated voice. I can’t tell you how that discussion or the day turned out but I’m sure it wasn’t the only time that things that should have been easy were instead a challenge.

It’s important to realize that back then, at least in our family, these hardships were not discussed. It might have been too painful for Mom to do. She might not have had the energy. She might not have wanted to frighten your Aunt Lynn and me any more than we already were. She might have thought that all of it was nice-to-know but not need-to-know information for our young minds.

The downside of being kept in the dark about my dad was that as I grew older, I began to resent his behavior. I couldn’t understand why he stayed home all day sleeping on the couch listening to country music over and over on the hi-fi while all my friends’ dads went to work each day.

The thought of not working was hateful to me. The animosity between us climaxed while I was in high school. I was working seven days a week at Skyline Chili. Monday through Friday I worked from 4 until 7 p.m. to help out with the dinner rush. I’d miss dinner with the family and would bring home a pint of chili, a packet of diced onions, and a packet of cheese.

I’d eat it at the kitchen table in my favorite red-glass bowl and Dad would come in most nights to watch me. I look back now and understand why he did this. He wanted to be with me and discover how my day had been just like how I want to hear about your days now. He’d be smoking a cigarette and the stench of it nauseated me. This just added to the dark cloud hovering over us. I so wish I could go back in time and change my behavior as it wasn’t Dad’s fault he was suffering. I was just too young to understand his pain and his own feelings of shame.

Fortunately, I began to mature as I made my way through college. The resentment faded and your grandfather and I began to become friends. I’d talk to him about what I was learning in geology and he was genuinely interested.

Once I graduated from the University of Cincinnati in June of 1974 with my geology degree, I started my own little remodeling business. Not a year passed before I had purchased my first house at 2865 Minto Avenue in East Hyde Park.

I remember one day your grandfather stopped by to watch while I worked. It was a beehive of activity and he just stood there for about an hour shaking his head in amazement at the scope of the project and what his son was doing.

Mom told me years later he was really proud of me. He knew I was tackling what for him would have been an impossible challenge.

Your grandfather’s health had always been poor. His sedentary lifestyle mixed with his heavy smoking was a recipe for nothing but bad things. When I was in grade school he had revolutionary surgery where they installed artificial arteries from just below his heart all the way down both legs. I remember crying about this in school the day of his surgery because I knew it was very serious.

In the middle of August 1976, he went for a normal doctor’s visit and the doctor listened to his heart. He was in the middle of an arrhythmia episode and the doctor told him to get to the hospital immediately.

Your grandfather didn’t last a week. He was in intensive care, had multiple heart failures, and was brought back to life with defibrillators. Your grandmother, your Aunt Lynn, and I watched one of these terrifying events happen. I’ll never forget it. 

We sent your grandfather back to Heaven on August 21, 1976 while I was living in the starter home in Hyde Park. I remember your grandmother calling to tell me he had passed away. I have many regrets about your grandfather and one is not being by his side as he passed. He died alone in his hospital room and it bothers me to this day. Your grandfather was still a young man as he was only 59 years old. His final resting place is in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio near the rear exit.

Not a week goes by that I don’t think about my dad. There are so many things I’ve done that I wish he could have seen. It would have been so cool to have him stop by while I was building the house in Amberley. He would have been speechless at all the carpentry involved in that huge project! I think he’d be really proud of how my life has turned out. I know he’d be proud of you!

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