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STORYTIME TAPESTRY

The Newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world

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Special Treat ??“ Summer Garden

Aug 16, 2005? 

Summer Garden

Debra Shiveley

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Ripe, red and round, I bite deeply.?  Juice runs down my chin and within the core of this plump, luscious orb, I taste sunshine.?  Mawmaw is waiting for the green beans I am to pick for lunch, but, she knows that my duties in the garden will take a little longer than expected.?  I am a forager, a nibbler, a taster of bounty.?  I bite again and my mouth is filled with glorious, sweet, warm fruit.

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???Youngin??™ you eat more ???en you pick!??? she cries, smiling and shaking her head.

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I choose a few extras and place them in my basket.?  They are warm and bursting, fat and juicy.?  Mawmaw will slice them and put them on a platter and we will feast upon large, meaty Beefsteak, sweet golden streaked German Stripe, beautiful, delicious, creamy Golden Yellow; slices so large, they fill a plate.

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We sit and join hands.?  Pawpaw says the blessing, gives me a wink and passes a plate filled with golden fried circles.? ?  I question with raised eyebrows and dig in.?  Fried green tomatoes, prepared as a surprise.?  I crunch into warm juice-filled ambrosia.?  They fill my mouth with the taste of green, of red, of fresh air.?  They are a little bitter at first bite, but sweetness comes through as tongue and palate work in harmony to wrest from each morsel every nuance of taste: corn meal, salt, pepper, unripened tomato, bacon fat.?  I close my eyes and eat more slowly - savoring.

Debra Shiveley

merribuck@merribuck.com

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About Me:

Hello, my? name is Debra Welch.?  I'm 52 and the very proud mother of a soon-to-be 13? year old son named Christopher.

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Christopher is adopted, so I have some writings on the subject, and he was? born with a moderately severe unilateral clefting of the lip, gums and hard and soft palates.?  He is beautiful!?  Chris also has learning differences:? ADD, Dysgraphia, and Executive Function and? Working Memory Deficit.?  He is the joy of our lives.

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I have been writing since age nine.?  My father came to visit and plopped down a pad of paper and a pencil.?  "Write me a poem," he said "and call it 'Poetry Problems.'"?  This is when I learned that my father and great grandfather both wrote poetry.?  I was being tested.

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I have just finished co-authoring a novel with my cousin titled "Jesus Gandhi Jetta Mae Adams," a murder mystery set in Columbus, Ohio and am starting my second novel.