[personal/writing/whatever] Christmas + Meme
Officially finished my shopping at about 0130 this morning. Yay 24 hour Wal-Mart....(because shopping during the day is downright insane now).
Potluck at work tomorrow!!! It's going to be WAAAY better than eating hospital turkey on Thanksgiving. I'm telling you, working as an RN on my floor has taught me alot, including be VERY thankful you don't ( Read more... )
When Seiichi is eleven, his grandfather dies and his family moves in with his ornery grandmother. The house is a lot bigger than the apartment they had in the city, and he gets a room to himself and there’s a backyard and a shed to put his bike inside. He pulls the bicycle across the lawn, glad to have a break from helping to carry in boxes. He glances over his shoulder to watch his parents going back and forth between the moving truck and the house, sometimes with boxes, sometimes with furniture carried between the two of them.
The shed is kind of old and he has to pull hard in order to get the creaky door to slide open. The air inside is stale and motor-oil scented and there are hints of dirt and gasoline. Seiichi sees a lawnmower and several wooden shelving units full of his grandparents’ junk: bottles of insect killer, plastic watering cans, coils of hose. There is no place for his bicycle.
He wedges himself inside and shoves the lawnmower closer to one wall. It’s heavy and scrapes against the stone flooring. There are buckets and battered cardboard boxes and plastic bags from the hardware store. Seiichi starts making a pile out of them before something scrapes his leg.
It’s just a little scrape, but he hisses “oww!” anyway because he’s alone and even if it’s hardly bleeding it still stings. He hops on his other foot to find the offending object and knocks a bucket over with his elbow. It falls to the floor with a thump and makes the pile of plastic bags crinkle. Seiichi doesn’t care though, because he knows what that cruel looking machine is. It’s got spikes and sharp blades and horrible orange paint, but it’s shiny and wonderful and he pops back out of the shed to find his parents.
“Can I use it?” he yells, pointing at the shed.
“Use what?” his mom asks. She picks up another box and pushes hair out of her eyes. Seiichi wonders if he should offer her a headband, but they’re probably still all packed away.
Seiichi’s dad walks down the ramp from the truck with a folding chair under one arm and his little sister’s kiddie table under the other. “What are you talking about, Seiichi?”
“The roto-tiller,” Seiichi answers, still pointing. It waits inside the shed, ready to hum and purr and turn sections of the yard into patches of heady brown earth. His heart pounds with excitement. He can feel sweaty anticipation building in the crooks of his elbows and across his palms. He’ll get blisters from the handle and it’ll be heavy to push, but…
“No,” both his parents say firmly.
So he goes off to ask his grandmother instead.
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I'm very glad I asked for healthy Yukimura too ;_;. His gardening side is so cute and almost never gets written about! Seeing him so excited about a rototiller... so adorable ._.;. I had to make sure that this machine was what I suspected from the context, because I wasn't aware of the name for it! But it was! I loved this, thank you for writing it for me!! <3
Did his grandma agree to let him use it after all? 8D Grandmas are great for spoiling their grandchildren, and I loved how that was hinted at! 8D I also really liked the description for the shed, too-- I could see it, lol. I've been in places like that myself!
Randomly, I wonder if he forgot about his bicycle after this... I know it's a VERY random concern, but I'd love to know.
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I think Yuki would be pretty hyped about a roto-tiller after having to grow plants in pots and seed trays up until then. ; ) That, and the thing is kind of dangerous. And I'm glad you could picture the shed - my parents' is always kind of a disaster, and you practically have to clean the thing in order to find a place to put anything.
Grandma said no, but then later (when she wanted the ground broken up for her own gardening project) she probably let him help her use it. I tend to write Yukimura's grandmother as really, really hard to please.
As to the bicycle:
Seiichi stomps back out of the house and across the yard. What's the point of having a roto-tiller if you don't even let people use it? He's old enough, right? And he'd be careful. Besides, it's prime planting season and some of those bags from the hardware store had seeds in them.
His family just doesn't have the right sort of priorities.
"Seiichi!" his dad calls. Seiichi glances up. His dad has a big cardboard box in his arms and he has to jiggle it with his knee a little so that he can hold it better.
"What?" Seiichi asks. He tries to look put out. He is put out.
"Put your bicycle away! It's been sitting there in the grass all afternoon," his dad answers. "It's going to rain. Put it in the shed."
Seiichi doesn't answer, but he stomps back over to the shed. This time he doesn't care about having a nice place to put the thing - he just drags the bicycle inside and lets it rest on top of a coil of hose and a cardboard box. He kicks the roto-tiller. It's not fair. Rain starts to pelt down on the metal roof, pinging and pounding. Seiichi peeks out between the sliding doors and sees his parents rushing back and forth between the moving van and the house.
Enough light shines into the shed for Seiichi to discover a pile of plastic seeding trays shoved into a corner. He shoves a few things around so that there's a little space on the floor and rips one tray away from the rest. There are cracks in part of it, but most of the little plant holes are intact. Seiichi swears he saw a bag of potting soil on the shelf earlier.
He peeks out of the shed again. His parents are still running. So what? He starts patting handfuls of dirt into the tray and then rummages through the hardware store bags for seeds. The envelopes are dry and yellowed, but seeds stay good for a long time, right? Seiichi lays them out and tries to decide what he wants. No squash! Or cabbage. He uses one row of the tray for radishes and the rest for zinnias and morning glories. It'll take a few weeks for the plants to sprout and get big enough to be put in the ground.
Which means he has a few weeks to convince his messed-up family to let him use that roto-tiller.
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