Writing Club Part 4

Do you have a superstition?  What is it, Why do you have it, and how do you follow it?

My superstition is “knocking on wood”.  I don’t know why I started it but whenever I brag about something {usually my kids finally sleeping through the night} my stomach gets all tense and I feel like I just jinxed myself.  I quickly find some wood, give it a couple of knocks, and feel instant protection.  Don’t know why I do it…

When I was thinking about this prompt I thought it would be fun to create a story.  Here is what I came up with.

FANNI FROM THE TREE

I didn’t come to earth the same way everyone else came to earth.  There were no storks.  There were no birds.  And there were absolutely no bees.  I hate bees.

Most babies in our town came to earth in a hospital, all except for Tommy Burch.  Tommy came out in his families corn field.  His mom was slaving away picking ear after ear of corn.  Her stomach got really tight.  She bent over to catch her breath and POP out came Tommy.  She caught him real quick and cleaned everything up.  She debated if she should keep working but decided to call it a night.  The town talked about it for days.

My story is different.  I’ll begin where it started.

I was born on a warm summer day.  The birds sang happy songs and the sun shone through my mother’s bedroom window.  My mother watched the sun rays dance on her wooden floor.  But that is about all she could do because her heart felt heavy and her eyes were wrung dry.  In her arms she held a lifeless baby boy.  Born the same day as me but too early and too quick.  The doctors said there was nothing they could have done.  So my mother sat there holding my brother, watching the sun rays, and thinking about nothing.

My father walking in and nodded to my mother.  She nodded back.  They walked out into the field where a wooden box lay next to a deep hole.  My mother hugged my brother and traced her finger over every inch of his face, memorizing him in that moment.  She then handed him to my father where he kissed him on both cheeks, one for each breath that he took.  He gently laid him in the box, which lay in the hole, which was covered by the earth.  When the earth was back in place my mom went back to her bedroom to stare at the sun rays.  My father stared at the earth he just put back in place.  He had to listen to the birds with their happy songs and the more he listened the sadder he got.  Then his sadness turned to anger and he grabbed his ax.  He started chopping at that three that had all the birds singing their happy songs.  Chop, Chop, Chop, and then Silence.  The chopping kept all the happy songs away so my father kept chopping until the whole tree fell over.  The tree fell, the birds flew, the dust settled, and my father caught his breath.  My father heard the last noise in the whole wide world that he thought he would hear.  The sound of a baby crying.  The sound of ME crying.  He ran to my cries and found me snuggled up in a big crack of the tree he just cut down.  When the tree fell it split strait down the middle.  And in the middle of the middle was a hollow shape like a cocoon.  That cocoon is what I was now kicking and screaming in.  My father picked me up and my cries softened.  He ran his fingers through my thick auburn hair and scanned my perfect pink wrinkly body.  What he wanted to do was race inside to my mother with me held high in the air screaming, “We have a baby! We have a baby!”  But that not being the best idea he took smooth quick strokes to where my mother lay in her room.  He placed me in my mother’s arms and told her where I came from.  My mother’s dry eyes cried tears she didn’t think she had.  They named me Fanni after my Grandma who planted the very tree my father found me in.  My mother said it was the best and worst day of her life.  The worst because her heart was broken into a million pieces and the best because I pieced her heart back together again.

I don’t mind that I came here differently than everyone else.  My parents tell me that their heart will always ache for the loss of their little baby.  But they had faith that they would have a baby of their own and here I am.  My Father always jokes that I am his lucky charm.  Whenever he needs fate to fall his way he gives me a knock on the head.  He says most people have to find a tree to knock on for good luck.  But all he needs is his little “Fanni Tree” and life is exactly how it should be.