How to make a precocious little five-year-old extremely happy: “This dinner was brought to you by Capt. Robert Edward Ludlow Sr. and Robert Edward Ludlow III, the latter of whom formed his first meatloaf today.”
Capt. Ludlow was making dinner for the Ludlow family so Mrs. Ludlow could work on a series of commissioned articles in the afternoons, and when he had made the stuffed peppers on day 1, he had also chopped three of those peppers with onions, garlic, and seasonings with two pounds of ground turkey he was not using in the stuffed peppers and had put it in the refrigerator overnight to marinate. All that remained to do after reveille was to take the meat and mix it with eggs and crumbled bread for additional cohesion before putting it in the molds and baking it before the heat of the day became too much.
As Capt. Ludlow had finished his mixing, out Lil' Robert had come from bed again.
“He had awakened and come into the kitchen – his little feet were bare and he had quite an idea, Thalia,” the grandfather said to the grandmother in private. “ 'If I work with my hands and my feet, I can keep up – I wanna learn!'”
Mrs. Ludlow laughed.
“That Lil' Robert,” she said. “He wants to be you, so bad!”
“I know – I pray every day that I be someone worth being like. What I had to tell him was that we didn't want what's on the floor in the meatloaves, but that I would slow down and wait on him to put on his shoes, and he could make the second meatloaf. He ran off and put his shoes on and came back, and then watched me like a hawk as I put the meat mixture in the first pan.
“He picked up the techniques right away – accounting for the size of his little hands, he did really well. I had to do a little packing to get it all in – 'See, this is where we could have stepped on it!' he said to me – but overall, he made that loaf. He parked his little self by the stove and looked in to watch things cook until he fell out asleep again, but he made it about 20 minutes from when we cleaned our hands up.”
“Sweet Lil' Robert, trying to be a cook like Papa,” Mrs. Ludlow said.
“Oh, all seven of them were in the kitchen with me while you were away,” Capt. Ludlow said with a laugh. “I gave them each a job, and now they are all going to be after both of us to get kitchen work now that Lil' Robert had his chest out today.”
“He thought he was six-feet-three, barrel-chested, and 58 years old,” Mrs. Ludlow said, “and was just about to fall over trying to breathe in deep enough so he could look like that!”
“I know – that was hilarious but I couldn't laugh at him, until now!”
The love that Little Robert has for his Grandpa, PRICELESS.
Yep ... I was like that with my grandma, and, in essence, I have become her, in the community... Lil' Robert is on his way...
Hi, there deeanndmathews. This is my first time here. It was a pleasure to read this piece. I too am interested in writing short stories. I hope I can use you as an inspiration. Your words are few but they do pack a punch. Great read.
Thank you! There is a prompt here given every day -- look for a blue post by @mariannewest announcing the freewrite. There will be a word or phrase ... just see what you can come up with in five minutes! I've been writing every day for some years now, but I started just like that!
Do yourself a favor and go back and read @deeanndmathews stories, she has a good book going on here I think she could publish this one and it would be a best seller. I look forward to reading what she will write about every evening. Also good luck with your posts, you will love writing for #freewriters. I never know what the prompt will be but when I see it, somehow a story comes to me.
By the way, I would upvote you but as you can see I am not worth much at this time. Again. It was a pleasure to read.
I appreciate all upvotes ... no one's upvote is too small to be appreciated! We all started just where you are starting, so, don't feel your upvote is worthless -- it will be an honor to receive it whenever you feel like sharing it!
Ok empress. I will.