Chapter 1: Simpler Times in Chronicles of Droddrik

“Dan!” I hear my mother cry out in the distance. It must be getting close to dinner time, she usually doesn’t worry about how long I’m outside getting these chores knocked out. “On my way, Mom!” I respond loud enough for our neighbors several clicks down the road could hear. The tools in my hands are getting cold and I realize as I set them back in their bag, that it’s actually getting dark outside. “hmm, that’s weird, I don’t remember the sun going down so fast” I murmur to myself. This leads me to think about all the times that this has been happening to me this month, Just yesterday I was setting lumber in piles so I could split them, then what seemed to be a blink of an eye, all the lumber was split, and stacked just as I would normally do it. I didn’t think this was too much to worry about as I’m still getting work done, but not remembering the actual work. I laugh to myself for a second, who would complain about such things? I open the door to our home and see that my Dad, Raynold, who goes by Ray, is already at the table and looks much more awake than normal. My little sister Martha and brother Pete, who were both named after my great grandparents, are also both already waiting at the table. “Mom? What’s going on?” I look at her in puzzlement, as she knows as much as I, this is the first time I think I’ve ever seen my siblings and father all at the kitchen table before me, and quiet as mice, just waiting for me to come through the front door.
“he doesn’t know Mom! You were right!” Pete blurts out
Martha giggles and looks over at Dad. “Son.” Dad says. I look directly at him. “Today, is” he coughs. The coughing turns into a small fit of struggling to breath and then he stops and looks back up at me with determination to finish what he started to say “Today. You’re a man of our house”. Just as he said it, Mother opens up the stove and pulls out a small cake that she made, “it’s lemon” she faintly says “your favorite, I tell you, it was like shoving wolves off of a fat sheep all evening in this kitchen, and then trying to keep a look out for you!”. I smiled and gave her a quick peck on the cheek.
Pete yells “Can we have it now!” knowing this wasn’t going to be in his favor. Mother just looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “fine, fine, after dinner”. Peter sighed. I laughed and tousled his hair, “come on, mom’s dinner smells just as good as the cake, let’s just enjoy all of it”.
“I helped!” Martha blurted out and barely holding her silence in anymore, “and mom said that she thinks I could be a baker, when I’m grown like you! I want to bake down at old Mills road! All that fresh flower, I could make everything! Even bread, that looks like a duck!” she smiled
“Nobody is going to buy bread that looks like a duck!” Pete retorts. “everybody wants, normal looking bread, not some bottom feeding floating feather bird”.
“now, now” Mother breaks in, seeing the anger building in Martha’s eyes and her hand bunching into little fists. She gets down to Martha’s eye level “I would buy all your duck bread, and any other kind of bread designs you make, and I’m sure others would too. Just remember that some people are going to want regular looking bread too, so if you want to be really successful, you have to make both.” She concluded with a small wink to Martha. Martha smiled and said “yah, I can do both!”.
I look over at Pete “Don’t provoke your sister like that, she has dreams and there is nothing wrong with having dreams, plus our town could use a really good baker in a couple years. I don’t think Baker Thomas is going to be around much longer and he didn’t have any children.”
“Don’t tell me what to do, I didn’t do anything wrong!” Peter responded
“Peter!” Dad says with more authority than I’ve heard in a long time. Pete stops dead in a freeze and looks at Dad.
“Yes Father”. Pete replies, but more coughing happens and you can see in his eyes that he has something important to say, and we all wait. Ray looks up “You will respect Dan as a man of the house now, as you do me, he has..” Ray coughs more “he has, every right to punish you now, for such talk back, and” he continues coughing and looks up at mom.
“Pete” mother continues, knowing Ray wasn’t going to make the rest of the conversation happen. “Dan is no longer equal to you in this home. He is equal to me and your Father now, do you understand? Today was his last day as a child of this home, respect is now due as it is to us, as it will be for you when you are of age.” she finished. Mother always did have a great way of putting things in perspective without making people angry, she just smiled after that and said “I think you know what you need to do now”.
Peter stood up and walked over to my right side and held his hands out to me. The typical response to this is to smack his hands with a spoon or anything hard, or even my hands.
“Pete” I make him look up to me “I think tonight we can let this go, this is new to you, and I forgive you, but now you know, and I’m sure you won’t forget” I say with a firm but hopefully loving voice, and end it with a small subtle smile that only he would see.
“Yes Dan, I won’t forget, and I’m sorry for talking back to you when you gave me advice on how I was talking to Sis” Pete then walked back to his seat after a small nod of my head.
Our night went smooth after that, Mother’s dinner and dessert were the best I ever had. After Peter and Martha went to bed, and Father fell asleep on his favorite rocking chair that I think I’ve fixed now a dozen times, I addressed Mother. “Mom” I said after several minutes of helping her in the kitchen with cleanup.
“Yes?” she replied
“It’s much worse, I can hear it in his breathing, he can’t finish sentences now without coughing, I know he keeps that red cloth he coughs into so the blood doesn’t show” I say with a lowered voice so it was between us.
“how much” I stop and swallow the lump forming in my throat “How much time do you think is left, you have dealt with this before as a nurse, right?”
“Yes, I have” She says with some tears forming. “He’s in the final stage now, the disease will have him within a week, two if we’re lucky, no more”
I hesitate In my movement towards the drawer while putting away the silverware. This is faster than I expected. I look up at her and give her a hug “we’ll get through this” I whisper in her ear. “is there anything, anything at all I can do for him, to cure it, to slow it, to ease his pain?”. She just shakes her head and cries silently into my chest. “Well, then lets enjoy every day we do have with him, before he goes to The Beyond, with all our Elders and embraced by Light” I assure her. After a few moments she looks back up at me and she smiles and nods her head
“right then, lets wrap tonight up” she says as she goes back to the dried dishes to put them back. I walk into the living room and put more logs on to the fire, then walk over to my room door which is attached to the back corner of the living room, I always enjoyed having my room next to the living room and not down the hall with everybody else. I take one last look back at my sleeping father, rocking back and forth and my Mother in the distance blowing out the candle light in the kitchen. Today, I thought to myself, I am grown.

Last updated May 30, 2019