Lynn Henschel
Stories (16/0)
Bluxorf
It’s happened to everyone, but more so when we’re children: you’re about to go to a place where a bathroom is unavailable. Most of the time, that means you’re taking a long ride in the car. But sometimes it means you’ll be at the movies, a concert, a play, or even in church, knowing that you’ll have to step over people or interrupt a performance in order to leave the room for the bathroom.
By Lynn Henschel6 months ago in Fiction
HONK
That horn. That big, curvy, brass, old-timey horn. Mom and Dad had gone on one of their regular trips to Cape Cod. While not necessarily into antiques, they did like the unusual, things that were fun but mellow. Our house was very conservatively decorated in what I would call Colonial Irish: lots of oak and brass, with some tartan patterned furniture, delicate table lamps, and a huge roll-top desk. Not my style, and not as warm and welcoming as my best friend’s home, which was filled with mismatched tag sale items and had a very “lived in” feel to it.
By Lynn Henschel9 months ago in Poets
The Congregation
VOCAL: If Walls Could Talk The Congregation If walls could talk, they would say that today was a good day for her. At the age of fifty-five she was the youngest resident at Shimmering Pines nursing home. At about the age of forty, she began to notice small changes in herself: her walk didn’t feel the same, sometimes speaking didn’t feel the same, some days she couldn’t remember common words for objects like “bird” or “dish”. But that stubborn Irish will kicked in, combined with a lifetime of danger-denial, which she learned from her mother, and she never said a word, to anyone. And anytime it reared itself in her mind, she just slammed the door on it and banished it away again.
By Lynn Henschelabout a year ago in Families
The Reader
VOCAL: Dads Are No Joke “That shark is the size of our driveway”. The very words that my Dad whispered to me in a packed movie threatre in July of 1975. I was only five but he took me to see JAWS with him. I was mesmerized by the whole thing. Later in the movie, he whispered, “That shark is made of rubber”, because he didn’t want me to be scared. And that’s the kind of Dad he was.
By Lynn Henschel2 years ago in Families
Slap
VOCAL: Campfire Ghost Story The cabin in the woods has been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Finn Ryder had owned his own cabin now for twelve years, since 1971, and it sat directly across the small lake from the abandoned cabin. On more than one occasion, he has considered buying it, but as the years past and the old cabin deteriorated, he knew that trying to restore it would just be too much, not in just money but also in time.
By Lynn Henschel2 years ago in Fiction
Antipasto Squares
I grew up as an only child in an Irish household. Neither of my parents could actually cook. I literally existed on breakfast food (for all three meals) and TV dinners. However, I also spent every single day of my life from birth with the three siblings across the street and their parents, Jim and Lynn. Their home was almost the exact opposite of mine: always chaotic, always a litttle messy, and homemade food galore, for almost every meal, every day.
By Lynn Henschel2 years ago in Feast
A Hard Day’s Fright
VOCAL: Graveyard Smash One of the benefits of being fifty-one years old is that I have amassed quite a catalog of music. Aside from what I actually own, I enjoy a wide variety of genres, with my favorite probably being 70’s and 80’s rock. I’m also a huge movie fan, and horror movies have always held a special place in my heart. I know it sounds weird: why would someone want to be deliberately scared? I wish I had a good answer to that. But being scared, or even just being thrilled and titillated with anticipation, is fun to me. Being scared makes me feel alive. And what’s better that curling up with your BFF or your better half and holding onto each other for dear life because of a scary movie or TV show?
By Lynn Henschel3 years ago in Beat
Maggie
It was the summer of 1976. I was six years old, and as usual, my parents and I were on our annual camping trip to Nickerson State Park in Cape Cod. We were accompanied by three more pairs of aunts and uncles and a total of fourteen cousins, all sharing three adjoining campsites. We were like a commune but without the weirdness.
By Lynn Henschel3 years ago in Humans