Annie’s Love
by
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Mark kissed her on the tip of her nose. “Annie, we are going to have some great time together, I can tell that for sure. You could be more addictive than any drug we could find.” Mark got up from the bed, grabbed his clothes, and went into the bathroom. He came back out with only his jeans on and sat on the edge of the bed, fondling her. “Can I keep you here, just like this for a while?”
“I’ve got all afternoon,” Annie replied. Standing, she slipped into Mark’s shirt hanging behind the bathroom door. She didn’t bother with any other unnecessary clothing.
When Mark finally took her back to her dorm hours later, she tip-toed into her dorm room, and quickly fell asleep on her bed. The rest of the world could just pass her by. Mark Moss was all that was on her mind, among the dreams of an exciting future together. She could not know of the turmoil ahead for the two of them, nor of the child who would steal her heart.
***
Jeff Lipton sat in the tall grass around the tombstone and read the inscription. Florence Ann Ribold Moss; June 1, 1950 - May 10, 1974. A brisk October wind whistled through the tall oak trees that lined the cemetery fence. Dry leaves painted in vibrant fall colors whirled and scattered among the tombstones, and a pungent odor filled the air as some leaves burned in carefully raked piles along the roadway. Clouds obscured the sun, creating an eerie sense of gloom that settled into the late morning.
Had it come to this? To find that his birth mother had died so many years before, buried in a tiny cemetery in Iowa among other deceased members of her family (and his)? He suddenly felt overwhelmed. Was his grief in knowing that his mother was dead, or was it in now having come to what might be the end of his quest? Jeff reached out and touched the inscription, deeply etched in the cold granite, as though it would give him some sense of kinship.
Jeff felt the pain of the headache that had been increasing in intensity. It wasn’t so difficult to track her to this place. So why hadn’t someone tried to find him? He’d rest tonight, and tomorrow he would see what he could find out about Florence Ann Ribold Moss in the little town of Green Meadow.
Jeff walked back to his red Impala, turned the key to bring the engine to life, and backed down the gravel lane to the main blacktop into town. Unnoticed by him, an elderly figure carried a handful of fall flowers across the monuments toward the grave Jeff had just left behind.
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About the Book
Annie Ribold was a child of the ’60s, a time in history when the generations of teens and parents were vastly separated. Many young people were leaving home to join communes and alienating their parents, leaving families torn apart by their differences in politics and society.
A mother’s love comes in many forms, and Annie’s Love will give readers a better concept of mother love in the changing world of the ’60s and ’70s. Follow Jeff Lipton as he searches for his birth mother and his heritage. His investigation leads him from a cemetery in a small town in Iowa all the way to a local tavern in New York.
Annie’s Love is based on the print by C. Clyde Squires, entitled “Mother Love,” one of five prints depicting the various stages of love. These prints are in a frame given to my grandmother for a shower gift in 1916. The print was handed down to my mother and finally to me. Looking at these pictures, kept in my family for so many years, Annie’s Love is the first product of my imagination. My goal is to publish a series of five books, one for each of these beautiful prints.
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Other Books by Linda Kay:
Flavors from the Past: Memoirs and Recipes of Wilma Weiland Diekhoff
About the Author
Linda Kay Christensen, a former farm girl from central Illinois, has enjoyed many years as a bank manager, a self-employed accountant and tax preparer (CPA), and an online instructor for Keller Graduate School (DeVry University). She earned her undergrad in Business Management and her Masters in Human Resources from the University of Illinois, Springfield. Linda’s history in writing has included everything from business communication, teaching, and journaling to occasional poetry. Her inspiration for Annie’s Love comes from a series of five prints by C. Clyde Squires given to her grandmother in 1916 as a wedding gift. The characters in these prints will come alive in Linda’s series of the “five stages of love”.
Linda helped her mother, Wilma Diekhoff, complete her memoirs in a book that includes 200 recipes from family and friends. Wilma held a book signing at Barnes and Noble at the age of 82. Flavors From The Past is now available in e-book format on Nook and Kindle. Linda is married to Jerry, a former engineer and now a master gardener, living in Fredericksburg, Texas. They have traveled extensively, meeting many characters who contribute to Linda’s writing.