Importing, the continuing saga!

Went searching, the other day, for info on how to import files from Word into Blogspot. Found some! I understood the first sentence. The rest looked like a spider having a fit on a keyboard, ie, pretty well unintelligible to me. Still, I might have a crack at it, because someone's made it work!

Silent Night

I wrote this a year ago - it's befitting the coming season!

I wonder what time it is? I can't be bothered getting up and going to look at the stars; I'm too sore. Nothing my mother told me ever prepared me for this! Then again, I suppose she thought she would be with me. I thought she would be with me, along with my sisters, when I had my first child. I never envisaged being all alone. Well, I wasn't all alone, my husband was with me. But for all his years and experience, he was just as bemused and panic-stricken as I was, poor man. Child-birth is women's work. Still, we managed. The baby survived; I survived. But oh, I ache! The baby's sleeping; my husband's sleeping; even the animals are sleeping. The air is redolent with the smell of hay; of cattle, of a sheep or two - there's even a goat in the corner.

What an odd place to be! My husband sleeps on a bed that he made for us by pulling hay-bales apart. My new-born baby sleeps on hay, in a manger. In a manger! And we very nearly didn't even have that! Honestly, I thought I would be giving birth under a bush, tonight. Or - worse - on the side of the road! Why and how did we not think that everybody and his donkey would be in Bethlehem, tonight? Oh, that is not fair: no doubt Yosef thought of it. He was anxious, I know, as we approached the town, but he would not tell me what caused him anxiety. No, I alone did not think that the town would be packed to the rafters. I've been a little pre-occupied, lately. No doubt we would have started a day or two earlier, but I felt so sick! We had to wait until I was well enough to travel. Mother insisted.

... What's that noise? It sounds like a cat. Catching a meal for himself from some of the rats in this stable, probably. Oh! No. It's Yeshua. How funny new-borns sound when they cry? He wants a drink, I expect.

I sit up, as his crying becomes more insistent, then get to my feet. Huh! Fifteen summers old, and I'm moving like my grandmother! I fetch Yeshi, and settle back on the hay with him, leaning against a bale. Now ... how does this go, again? I did manage to give Yeshi a little drink, after he was born. Mother said that was vitally important.

"You'll know when he's taking the milk properly - you'll just know," my mother had said. Uh-huh ... She thought she would be with me for this, too, no doubt. Uh - no, she's right. She is right: the little man is getting stuck into his milk most satisfactorily. My body is aching less, the Lord be praised, and I doze, while the baby drinks. He is tucked right inside my robe, so that I am not exposing too much. Yes, maintaining decency, even in a stable. And he will be warmer there, too: the night is a very cold one.

I change sides: Yeshi has indicated that he hasn't had his fill, and he resumes as eagerly as when I first began feeding him. Again I doze, until a sudden slackening tells me that Yeshi has finished. I bring him out from my robe, rearrange the cloths that cover him (they were all I had, to cover his little body!) and rise to my feet, to put him back in the manger. A thought occurs to me then.

"Always make sure that he's brought up all his wind before you put him down to sleep." Funny how I hear the thought spoken in my mother's voice. I lift Yeshi to my shoulder, and begin patting his back gently. Standing beside the manger, I shift my weight slowly from one foot to the other, swinging my hips slightly. I'm almost dancing. Lifting one heel, then the other. How many times have I nursed nephews and nieces like this? And now, my own little son. Oddly though, my soreness dissipates a little more with the movement.

Yeshi burps suddenly. It is a sharp sound, unusually loud in the silent night, and carries on for a second or two. It makes me laugh, but softly, so as not to wake Yosef.

"Baby boy, such a sound to come from a tiny body!" I murmur to Yeshi. "Well done." I lay him back in the manger, and he's asleep before that little head rests on that hay. For a moment, I simply gaze at him. Ah, but now I'm so tired. And maybe I'll sleep for a while. He'll be wanting his next feed, soon enough!

I turn sharply toward the door, upon hearing an unfamiliar sound. Men are entering, four of them, and I feel very uneasy. I glance at Yosef, but he hasn't stirred. I look back at the men, and recognise that they are shepherds. I've seen plenty, in and around Nazareth. Not surprisingly, I wonder what they want, here. Perhaps they need shelter from the cold? Well, who am I to refuse them, when we needed shelter ourselves, not so long ago? However, I don't want to deal with this myself. I call to my sleeping husband.

"Yosef? Yosef, wake up!"

"Unpublished"

It's just occurred to me to wonder about publishing: If a short story competition stipulates that a piece of work must be previously unpublished, does that include blogging? Or not? I mean, if I publish something, I'm putting the words out there for folk to read, and blogging does that. I must check that out with various publications that actually run writing competitions.

Gotta be starting somewhere...

Well, this is a bit new. I thought it about time - or even past time - that I got back to a bit of writing. All right; easy enough, but this bit is right out of my comfort zone: actually making it available to read. My writing has usually been a way of getting the characters I somehow create and their activities out of my head, so that it doesn't ache. There's only so much room in there! Showing it to other people is (to me) akin to posing for a Life Art class. So here's me, posing! The posts are likely to be stories I've written or am working on. How very grammatical! Oh, well, it can stay like that, for now ...
Cheers!
Jacq