<![CDATA[Nancy King - Monthly Stories]]>Sat, 05 Jul 2025 02:05:21 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[JULY 2025 - Monthly Stories]]>Tue, 29 Jul 2025 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.nancykingstories.com/monthly-stories/july-2025-monthly-storiesJuly Stories: World Tale: Shoes (China)

How do we decide what matters? The stories, Minerva, Snowshoeing, and Oranges, reveal the importance of paying attention.

]]><![CDATA[Shoes (China)]]>Tue, 22 Jul 2025 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.nancykingstories.com/monthly-stories/shoes-china
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There was once a man who wanted to buy himself a pair of shoes. He measured his feet, then wrote the measurements down. When he got to the market, he discovered he had left the measurements at home. 

After he found the shoes he wanted he went home to get the measurements. When he returned, the marketplace was closed. He could not buy the shoes. 
When he told a friend what happened, the friend asked, “Why didn’t you use your own foot?”

Shaking his head, he said, sadly, “I kept thinking about the measurements rather than my foot.”
july 2025 stories
]]><![CDATA[Minerva]]>Tue, 15 Jul 2025 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.nancykingstories.com/monthly-stories/minerva
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The woman who became my mother-in-law, Minerva Evangeline Cross King, was a tall, stately woman, born in Main, brought up to do her duty, to be kind and caring. Showing emotion was frowned upon. When my boyfriend introduced me to her, she said, “You aren’t the woman I would have chosen for my son, but you will be the mother of my grandchildren and we will get along.” Compared to my mother’s manipulation, this felt like a breath of fresh air.
After the wedding she asked me to call her mom. I couldn’t. We settled for Min. Unlike my relationship with my mother, which was tempestuous and adversarial, my relationship with her was cordial.

Although Min was now an administrator of a nursing home, she still had nursing credentials so when I was in labor, she stayed with me until she said it was time to go to the hospital. Once there, she took care of me during the 27 hours it took for me to give birth. In those days husbands weren’t allowed to be with their wives so she was a comfort, and more. When a nurse wanted to cut my long hair because it was so tangled, Min said no, she’d comb and braid it. Despite a variety of doctors attending to me, she remained in the delivery room, part of the team. When our son was born, she was the first person to hold him. When the baby and I came home, despite her eagerness to see her grandson, she always called ahead of time to ask if she could visit, treating me with respect and admiration. 

When my 18-month-old son suddenly became deathly ill, she used her nursing credentials to bypass bureaucracy and get him immediate care. Despite the admitting doctor and my family blaming me for his illness, she steadfastly supported me, knowing I had taken him to a family doctor that afternoon, knowing he had told me my son just had a little cold, not to be a nervous mother. During the next six months, despite my son’s recurring illnesses, unlike my family and husband, she never blamed me, continually reminding me I was doing everything I could do to keep him healthy. 

Over the years we became fond of each other, often visiting without our husbands. She was a capable woman who seemed to manage everything with seeming ease and yet, she once called to say she was in big trouble. “What’s the matter?” I asked, alarmed.

“I need to bring a chocolate cake to the annual church bazar later this afternoon. I bake pies but I’ve never been able to bake cakes. Could you possibly bake a chocolate cake for me to take to the church? I need it in a few hours.”

My first response was to laugh. How was it she could bake two or three pies before breakfast faster than I could prepare the ingredients, yet not be able bake a cake? Of course I told her I would. When I met her at the door with the cake, her relief was palpable. Thereafter, she baked pies for me. I baked cakes for her. 

When I learned she was in the hospital with serious heart problems, something I didn’t know she’d had, I rushed to the hospital with no thought except to see her. When I arrived, and saw a lonely glass with a few daffodils in her otherwise bare hospital room, I remembered her saying, “Don’t send flowers when I’m dead, give them to me when I’m alive.”  I held her hand for a moment and told her I was sorry I hadn’t thought to bring flowers. As always, she said what she thought. “Send them to me when I’m home.” I tried to hug her. She flinched. 

During the time I knew her there were many times when I wanted to tell her how much I cared about her but never found a way to do it. She was a woman who didn’t speak about her feelings, nor did she encourage anyone to talk about their feelings with her.

How do you show love?
july 2o25 stories
]]><![CDATA[Snowshoeing]]>Tue, 08 Jul 2025 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.nancykingstories.com/monthly-stories/snowshoeing
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As the four of us put on our snowshoes, I appreciated the cloudy day, cool air, and crisp crust covering about five inches of snow. A perfect day to snowshoe. There was no actual trail so we followed the leader as he made his way across the countryside, intent on a vista about three miles from the trailhead. 
Three miles of hiking on a well-worn trail is a whole lot easier than snowshoeing the same distance on snow, especially after the sun came out and softened the snow crust. I often sank into deep wet snow, making the snowshoe hike much harder than when we began. I was grateful when we stopped for lunch, resting while we enjoyed our camaraderie. 

When we started back, I began to feel a slight rub on my right heel but ignored it, keeping up with the others, sometimes clambering over fallen trees and rocks not immediately visible under the deep snow. We managed to avoid crossing a stream of melting snow. The slight rub on the back of my right heel was becoming a more noticeable pain. I ignored it. 

I hadn’t realized that the way to the vista was mostly down. Now the snowshoeing was much harder as we moved uphill in mushy snow. The spot on my heel was aching but I didn’t feel like dealing with it. I kept going despite the increasing pain but couldn’t keep up with the others. 

One man noticed I was moving more slowly and asked if anything was wrong. I shrugged and said I thought I might be getting a blister on my heal but I’d take care of it when we got to the car. 

I snowshoed as best I could until I finally got to the car. When I took off my snowshoes, I thought I’d wait until I got home to take care of whatever problem there was on my heel; The leader, who noticed how slowly I’d been moving on the way back, asked to see my foot.

More than a little embarrassed I took off my boot and sock. A huge blood blister on my heel.
“How in hell did you keep snowshoeing?” he asked, sounding annoyed and concerned.

“I didn’t feel like taking off my backpack, sitting down in the wet snow, taking off my boot and sock, then rummaging in my backpack for cream and a bandage. I decided to keep going.”

He chastised me. “Don’t ever do that again. If you feel a blister coming on, even if it means sitting in wet snow, take care of it while it’s small. What you have now is a mess that could have been avoided if you’d paid attention to what mattered. You won’t be able to hike for at least two weeks while it heals.”

When did you let something small become big because you didn’t feel like dealing with it?
july 2025 stories
]]><![CDATA[Oranges]]>Tue, 01 Jul 2025 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.nancykingstories.com/monthly-stories/oranges
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I enjoy eating an orange for breakfast. One morning I realized I had eaten the last of my oranges. I couldn’t drive to the store to buy more because my car was in the shop. The mechanic had told me it would take at least three days to get the parts and fix the problem.
I suppose I could have breakfast without eating an orange, but this didn’t appeal to me. I decided to walk to the store, a bit more than two miles from my house, and buy oranges.

I have a habit when I’m walking of telling myself stories. As I walked to the store, I didn’t pay attention to where I was walking given that I regularly drive the route. I found myself walking up a somewhat steep hill and noticed I’d come to a dead end. Puzzled, I realized when I drove, I never drove up a hill, much less to a dead end.

I walked down the hill to the main road and saw I’d turned in to the wrong road, which was just a little way from the road I wanted. Sighing at my lack of attention, I walked on the correct road to the store. Not thinking about weight, I bought a four pound bag of oranges and a few other items I needed and put them in my backpack.

Two plus miles isn’t normally a long distance for me, but I soon began to feel the weight and shifted it to relieve the stress on my shoulders. The walk back felt longer and harder than the way to the store.

When I got home, a friend called. I told her about wanting oranges and walking on the wrong road because I’d been daydreaming. She laughed and said, “You’re 88 years old and you walked on a wrong road, more than four miles, to buy oranges? Why didn’t you ask me to pick some up for you?” 

“I didn’t think to ask,” I told her.

What happened to you the last time you were on autopilot and didn’t pay attention?
July 2025 stories
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