19 april 2025, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2711: glue him to the table

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

“OK, I am waiting for Papa to start bouncing off the walls excited, but, do we have a plan, Grayson?”

Seven-year-old Amanda Ludlow, being so excited about meeting her Uncle Frank and Aunt Francesca, Capt. R.E. Ludlow's lost-but-actually-found younger two children, was waiting on her grandfather so start bouncing off the walls, but...

“He is kinda big, though, and I don't know if the walls are up for all that.”

Mrs. Thalia Ludlow, who had immediately adored her 19-year-old stepchildren and their adoptive parents the Wainwrights, was quietly listening and thinking … it was indeed true that Capt. Ludlow was having a delayed reaction. He had been very calm, all things considered, the day before when at last meeting and embracing his two surviving children … on the other hand, they had adopted all seven of his grandchildren and were going to adopt their little cousin Glendella, so he had gone from knowing he had four children and losing all four to having ten children in just two-and-a-half years. That was a lot to process, and he needed to take his time with it. Amanda and six-year-old Grayson could not understand all of that, of course.

But then there was the conversation that oldest grandchildren eleven-year-old Eleanor and ten-year-old Andrew were having with their sooner-than-they-expected-to-be-adopted sister-cousin Glendella Ludlow … that was a whole different level.

“Look, we had no-good parents too and you gotta just accept and deal with the fact that it has nothing to do with you,” Eleanor was saying. “We didn't make our parents choose drugs and you didn't make your parents choose to be running from their parents and leaving you behind – that's on the grown folks.”

“OK, but, what you do with the fact that you want your parents to love you but they just don't?” Glendella said.

“You get the love from where you can, and you are in the right place and you know the right God,” Andrew said as he embraced his crying cousin. “We can't make grown folks do stuff, but we love folks up around here, and God does too. My father had no clue, but my grandfather knows, and God the Father knows even more. My mother had no clue, but my grandmother does and the Lord Jesus knows even more.”

“We're gonna love each other around here, and make it work,” Eleanor said, “and maybe your parents, because they are still around, will come around. Ours are dead and there's no hope, but we're making it, we are loved, and we have enough, and you do too.”

“See, and this is why we keep our lives together,” eleven-year-old Velma Trent said as she, her younger brother nine-year-old Milton, younger sister eight-year-old Gracie, and nine-year-old cousin Vertran Stepforth all came off their porch heading for Glendella. “We have our parents and our grandparents so there are no excuses. We gotta keep our lives together, do right, and share the love with others who have need.”

“Ain't it the truth,” Gracie said. “It's like Pop-Pop says about being a billionaire: the more you have, the more good you gotta do with it, or you get messed up.”

They all went and joined the hug with Glendella, and Mrs. Ludlow went out too and joined, but heard the printer going behind her and knew she was going to have to come right back to the house as soon as Glendella was good.

Capt. R.E. Ludlow was seeing red by the time Mrs. Ludlow get back to check on him, and quietly, thoroughly raging at the people on the other side of the printer and email.

“Can't figure out how to get home to take care of your daughter in six months, but you send the paperwork to sign over your parental rights so you do not have to be responsible, all signed and notarized in triplicate, in two days? Didn't have second thoughts about the daughter you laid down and made and left in the hands of the same people you are running from, who was going down a dark road before dawn and was safer there – she might have had the accident you think she is, but you just wanted someone to take her off your hands either way, eh? Really!

“Be thankful there is an ocean between you and me, my wicked cousins – you are the third pair of indolent, heartless, worthless young people I could have torn limb from limb! For one – Glendella – you live, Glendale and Sylvia, like my own children lived to choose their death for the sake of their children! Your life was in Glendella's hands from the minute I laid eyes on her on that dark road. You have done the only responsible thing you are capable of, and for that, I will not shed your blood down to the soil of whatever expensive resort you are hiding in. Perhaps you knew the clock was really ticking. Perhaps you knew you had better not toy with Glendella's life any more since you have no interest in even pretending to want to parent! I thank God He led you better than to try me!”

Meanwhile, in the next room, Grayson had the plan Amanda was asking about.

“Well, Papa is kinda big, so, if he got over-excited and needed to rest, we'd have to do the big version of how we got George into the trunk and duct-taped the sleeping bag down so he wouldn't bounce around in there while they were going to court to get us all adopted.”

“I don't know if we have that much duct tape,” Amanda said.

“I know,” Grayson said, “so, if Papa was really bouncing and couldn't stop, we would just cover the kitchen table with Elmer's Glue, bounce him into it, and glue him to the table. Done!”

“You're so smart!” Amanda said, “because then we could peel him out of it, or bring in the water hose to soften it up first!”

“Right,” Grayson said. “Help me do some blueprints real quick, because when it does kick in, we gotta be ready.”

“Yeah – let's go over to the Lee house and get Rob and Eddie [Edwina] and George to help us too!” Amanda said, and they went on and got their white crayons and blue construction paper and went off without a clue of what was going on in the next room.

“You run from your own child – but she is saving you! You run from God – but He is saving you to either come to Him or find your own richly deserved doom! You deserve to die for this – but you shall live so far as it concerns me, because Glendella must have a life worth living! That is all! I leave vengeance in God's hands – my hands shall uplift these children! That is all!”

Capt. Ludlow was shaking, his face red, his blue eyes two blue flames … it was several seconds before he registered his wife's loving arms around him from behind.

“Thalia … .”

“Your blood pressure is dangerously high, and you know your heart doesn't like all this,” she said.

“My heart is broken!” he gritted. “To see this happen yet again in my family – again! And yet I've got to calm down – someone has to make right what can be made right – the paperwork is here so we can file for the adoption.”

“I gathered that Glendale and Sylvia signed over their parental rights with the quickness,” she said.

“And wrote me the nicest email thanking me for stepping up – if I could have jumped through that screen, Thalia!”

“I've brought your emergency medicine, Robert, with some water.”

“Thank you, Thalia … I've gotta live and you're the first reason in this world that I bother!”

Of course he noticed – the double dose –

“I must look a fright,” he said.

“So much that the Lord sent all the grandchildren out of the house … Robert, Grayson, Amanda, Edwina, and George are hanging out with Harry and Maggie in their house, and Andrew and Eleanor are with Glendella talking about the other side of this thing that has you so mad and comforting her along with the Trent group.

“And that leaves just you to deal with me … poor woman!”

“Well, no, because Grayson left me a blueprint,” Mrs. Ludlow said. “Amanda was worried about you bouncing off the wall when you realized you got your younger two kids back, so she and Grayson said to put Elmer's Glue on the table and glue you to it, so that's up next.”

Everyone in the vicinity heard Capt. Ludlow's thunderous laughter, long and loud.

“One thing about our grandmother; she's got the jokes,” Andrew said. “She will get you laughing, and that keeps a lot of things from getting us down.”

“Yeah, I really love that about Big Cousin Thalia – she doesn't make mean jokes, but really nice ones, and laughs with you, not at you,” Glendella said. “I think I can work with this grandma upgrade.”

“Yeah, you can, and don't forget your brown grandma upgrades too,” Velma said. “We've all got you, Glendella.”

Still later, Grayson and Amanda walked into the house and saw their grandfather almost asleep, stretched out on the sofa – that double dose of emergency medicine always made him drowsy – with a bottle of Elmer's Glue left on the side table.

“It worked!” Amanda said. “Grandma was able to glue him down for safety by herself!”

“See, that's why you gotta have blueprints for every plan, Mandie, so everybody knows what to do,” Grayson said. “Gotta have blueprints. Gotta have 'em.”

That conversation, and the laughter thereof that slowly filtered up like comprehending what he had heard had filtered down, got Capt. Ludlow's heart and blood pressure leveled off after the medication had done all it could.

“Lord, I love these kids,” he said, “so much that I gotta live and others gotta not die at my hands … so be it … oh, Lord, I love these kids … .”