Dixie Comes Home : Tuesday WE Week 5

For the Tuesday Writing Essentials: Week 5:

"What drives and/or motivates your character? What issue or situation is important enough to your character that s/he would fight for it? Go out on a limb for it? Die for it? Write a scene in which your character demonstrates this drive or motivation. "

Dixie Comes Home

"Its on you now. I'm done. The paperwork will be waiting for you at the house, Dix. I'm sorry its come to this, but its damned well time for you to take some responsibility in this family. Its been just me for damned near thirty years, and I just can't anymore. I can't stand to see her like that. At least you're a nurse and can see it for what it is. You haven't laid eyes on her in two years now. She's not Mommy anymore. She doesn't even recognize me most of the time. I still don't understand why you have such an aversion to the home place, but thats your problem. She needs you now, and I have a family to think about, at least your kids are grown." Tears had slipped slowly down Doug's unshaven cheeks, as he spoke those words.  


Seeing Doug in such obvious anguish over Mommy's decline had been her undoing. Dixie loved her brother, and she knew he was right. She HAD neglected her parents, and put all the tough decisions on him over the years. She decided then and there to be the sister he needed. Her job could wait, her fun could wait, her life could wait. She was heading home, and in her eyes, it was nothing less than she deserved.  


Driving down I-70 toward home, Dixie was scared for the first time in a long time.

Heading down the lonely stretch of highway, Dixie reflected on her  life, and what a thorough mess she had made of things. "It wasn't supposed to be like this." Flashes of memory struck her like icy fingers down her spine, unwanted, but taking her back to '78 nevertheless.   

Making love to Bill at Christmas, vowing to love each other forever and a day.  

The letter Bill had written, informing her that she was not as important as some whore's brat.

The phone call from Mommy telling her how lovely the ceremony had been, and to "Get over it."

A vision of herself in the mirror of her dorm room, unkempt and swollen, after she had spent a week crying unabashedly.

The sterile pale green walls of the clinic.

The sound of the machine, sucking the life out of her.

The coldness she had felt afterward, both physically and emotionally.


Pulling the Miata into the driveway of the home she had not seen since she left for college all those years ago made Dixie realize how exhausted she was. It had been years since she drove ten hours straight, and her joints were singing an unhappy tune.  

Turning the key in the lock of the now silent house, Dixie entered hesitantly.

"I'm home.., God help me." She whispered to no one.