Flash Fiction Entries

The Medal

“Look at this, Anne. It’s some kind of medal. It must be silver. It’s so tarnished I can hardly read it. Here, you look. Your eyes are better than mine.”

I walked over to the attic dormer and held the medal in the shaft of sunlight coming through the glass. “It looks like a picture of a honey bee. Oh, it’s a spelling bee medal. I remember Mom telling us she won lots of spelling bees. Daddy always said she had a gift for it. He never could stump her, and she always beat him in Scrabble. You couldn’t have paid me to play with her.”

“Here’s a cute picture of Mom getting ready to jump off a diving board. She looks just like your Margie with that ponytail. Why don’t you keep the medal and picture for Margie someday?”

Per Dad’s instructions, we were supposed to be cleaning out the attic and boxing things up to give away, but so far we were keeping more than we were giving away.

Suddenly, I remembered reading somewhere about the perfect solution to our problem. I think it is called a sentimental journal with pictures. Anne went home and got her camera, and I went to the bookstore and bought a beautiful album with room for writing personal notes.

It took several days and many hours, but now we have a visual record of everything we wanted to keep, and even some things we knew we did not have room for. An emotionally draining, sad job turned into a wonderful memory for Anne and me. We even took a picture of Dad as he gazed at all those wonders of the past. His face shone so bright, we hardly needed a light.


W.C. 290