On mother’s day, I live on a deserted island. Not just this year because of Covid-19. Every year since my birth. I sincerely mean it when I say, I hate to go negative. It takes every ounce of my being every day to smile, to stay positive when my childhood was literally a clusterfuck. My mother was an abusive alcoholic and let’s just say I was her hockey puck and leave it at that. I forgave her a long time ago, long before she died of alcohol related illness at 56 years old. I am a firm believer in moving on, in leaving the past behind, but as well, let there be no misunderstanding, child abuse leaves permanent scars.

As to your question, what would I do if she wasn’t there? I cannot give you a definitive answer, but I’d like to think I would have made better choices in my life.

I am proud to say, in spite of the person who gave birth to me, I raised three amazing children that love me. Our love is unconditional and yes, good children can be raised without lifting a hand to them. I can attest to that. So every year when I see posts that say let’s give it up to your Mom, I cannot personally jump on that bandwagon for mine, and that is okay, because there are a whole lot of moms out there that are the bomb and I salute them, one and all! Including, pat on back, myself!

P. S. I do not understand why this challenge does not have more entries!

Just recently my family adopted a new dog. She stayed in the backyard, but there was a problem: We also had a rabbit in the backyard. Dogs and Rabbits don’t get along together very well. So we brought the rabbit into the house. For 2 weeks the Rabbit stayed in a box: a big, plastic, storage box with a red lid. I have to admit, he was quite happy, but I think he was geting a little bit bored. My sisters offered to house the rabbit in their room because we could not put the rabbit in the living room; my dad is allergic to rabbits.

One morning I heard my sister yelling and screaming at the furry rodent. Turned out the rabbit had eaten half of her math page. My mom was not happy and in the end she had to email the teacher to send another copy of the math page. But thats only the biggining.

The next day the rabbit hopped on to my other sisters bed and scratched it up, leaving behind hair and Poop. My other sister was not happy; both of my sisters were angry. I figured they were about to tell me to take the rabbit to my room and house him. Thankfuly it did not come to that.

So we kicked him out to the garage. He was quite happy there. But one day my brother left a mirror in his box. The rabbit (rabbits are pretty dumb) tryed to frighten the other rabbit in the mirror. As he was trying to frighten the other rabbit, the other rabbit frightened him. He backed off and the other rabbit backed off to. The rabbit seing that this was a good chance to show the other rabbit who he was charged and the other rabit charged to. The rabbit never got his revenge for I had finally relized what the noise had been and quickly pulled the mirror out. Boom! The rabbit hit the side of the box. Confused and bewildered he retured to his bed, not knowing were the other rabbit had gone.

#funny #flash-fiction #rabbit

"What would it be like," asked Shila, "if we were in a parallel universe?"

"Well... I guess there's no real way to answer that. There's an infinite amount of possibilities," quipped back Bri. "But we can wildly speculate, if that's what you need."

Shila bowed her head for a moment, thinking. "In a parallel universe, would we still be friends?"

"I don't see why not," Bri said casually, grabbing a granola bar out of the cabinet.

"In a parallel universe... You would be grabbing a yogurt cup. Except in this universe, yogurt doesn't have to be cold. It's supposed to stay warm." Shila hopped up on the counter next to the stove, sitting delicately on the edge, her legs dangling in front of the drawers full of measuring cups and baking utensils. She looked at Bri sadly, watching her eat.

"In a parallel universe, your mom would have made a twelve layer cake, and I would have been allowed to eat the first seven layers," Bri said wistfully, taking a huge bite out of her granola bar.

"In a parallel universe, you would have all the money in the world, except you'd spend every penny on baked goods and pastries," Shila said with a sigh.

"Well, in a parallel universe, I wouldn't have to eat. Food would regenerate itself in my belly so I wouldn't have to waste so much time eating." Bri took another big bite out of her granola bar.

"In a parallel universe you would eat one bite of food and gain forty pounds!" Shila said with a huff, looking over Bri's slim form as she stuffed her face with another granola bar.

"In a parallel universe, I'd pay more attention to studying than eating," Bri said, putting down her half-eaten second granola bar.

"In a parallel universe, you wouldn't have left," Shila said in a quiet voice.

Bri looked up at Shila with empathy in her eyes. "In a parallel universe, we wouldn't need fathers. Women would be the only gender, and life would be perfect."

Shila gave her a weak smile, and even managed a giggle. "In a parallel universe, there wouldn't be need for violence. People would settle their worst arguments with a coin toss, or rock-paper-scissors."

"In a parallel universe, there wouldn't be sadness. Whenever someone started to feel down, a rainbow unicorn would shoot out of the coulds and cover them in glitter."

"Bri, you're so weird. In a parallel universe, you would make sense!"

"Oh Shila, in a parallel universe you would understand me!"

Both girls erupted into giggles. Then Shila cleared her throat, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"In a parallel universe... We both would have survived."