I like my face. It will not win a beauty prize, And none will fall upon their knees, And none will praise it to the skies, Nor measure it in fine degrees.   But still, I like my face: I like my honest, laughing eyes, My largish nose, my impish grin. It may not win a beauty prize, But I’m happy with the face I’m in.   -           Catherine, May 29, 2021

  One of my happiest early memories involves ‘fooling’ my mom. One day when I was 4 or 5, I was playing outside, and I heard my mother doing laundry in the basement. I crept up to the edge of the basement window, careful to stay out of sight, and began making plaintive kitten sounds. From the basement, I heard my mother say, “Oh! That sounds like a kitten outside! It must be very thirsty. I will get a saucer of milk and put it on the ground.” Delighted, I scurried to hide around the back of the house. I peeked around the corner in time to see my mother carefully placing a saucer of milk on the ground outside the basement window. She called, “Here, kitty, kitty!” a few times and then said, “Oh well. Maybe the kitten will return if I go back inside.” As soon as she left, I crept up to the window again. I tried to lap the milk from the saucer with my tongue as I’d seen cats do, but it turned out to be a lot harder than it looks! Finally, I gave up being a cat and picked up the...

  by Catherine Maven 2021 When I first met my new neighbor Mary, I thought she was a robot – like those women in Stepford Wives. Her hair was always perfect, as was her makeup and her clothes. Although her kids were the same age as mine – five and seven – her house was always spotless and uncluttered, whereas mine always looked like a bomb had gone off. I met her husband, Sam, once, briefly, but he was one of those quiet guys that you can’t really read, and I seldom saw him. My own husband had run off the previous spring, and now saw the kids for one point five days every other weekend. Whenever her kids came over to our house, they played like normal kids – running and screaming over nothing. They were careful to keep their clothes clean, though, and they did check with Mary for permission for everything, which I thought was weird. “Gemma asked if I wanted some juice. Is that okay?” they would enquire, like Stepford children. “Sure,” Mary would reply. “Just make sure to ...

  Broken Glass by Catherine Maven Copyright © 2000 completed May 2009   She missed the road and had to retrace her route three times before she spotted the twin lines of broken pavement among the weeds off to the right of the highway. She pulled the car over onto the scanty shoulder, turned it off, cranked the parking brake, got out and climbed clumsily over the guardrail, sliding down the slight embankment in her city shoes. Stupid , she thought. I should have worn runners . Except who'd have guessed they'd have moved the actual road, leaving the street that led to the church to be consumed by weeds and wildflowers? It wasn't too surprising, though, when you thought about it. It had been a long time since a church had been a reason to divert a highway. She followed the crumbling street, hardly noticing the warm summer sun on her shoulders or the breeze lifting her hair just enough to cool her neck. She was preoccupied with thoughts and memories. This was a jour...

  The Origins of Guilt a fable by Catherine Maven Copyright © 2009   Once upon a time, the creators created a blue-green world of incredible beauty. They populated it with life of all kinds, from the microscopic to the stupendous. They gave whales and dolphins all the great oceans to play in, and otters and people wonderful lands and rivers to play in. They bestowed rainbows and butterflies, flowers and bird-songs, and billions of other miracles upon their creation. To protect the perfection of their design, however, they knew there needed to be some controls. So it was that every animal on the planet knew its place in the cycle of life and death, and operated from instincts too powerful to deny, instincts which protected not only each species’ existence, but the existence of all other species around them. But because they had created the world out of the pure joy of their being, the creators desired that at least one intelligence on the planet should be free from ...

  The wind on her face and bare arms was a delicious caress, just that temperature between hot and cold that left her skin tingling with anticipation. The sun was just beginning to peak over the mountains across the bay, causing a band of sunlight to sear the cliffs above her as she climbed silently in the quickly-thinning morning fog. The pale sand on the path was cool against her bare feet, and she pushed down harder to wiggle her toes playfully while she walked. The wind pushed the soft fabric of her sleeveless green tunic teasingly against her hips and breasts. She felt her hair lifted and tossed casually about, and reached back absently to stroke it down, thinking she must remember to tie it back before class began. There had been moments, on days not as inviting as this one, when she had regretted her decision to live isolated in the stone cottage at the bottom of the mountain rather than among the villagers on the plateau high above. But the need to recharge her energies i...

Kaitlyn by Catherine Maven Copyright 2000             “For Christ’s sake, Nancy! Do we really need all this stuff for a weekend at Jane’s?” demanded Richard as he re-entered the kitchen after his fourth trip to the Grand Cherokee in the driveway. He ripped a paper towel from the roll and mopped his face. “I’m going to need another shower in a second.” His more-salt-than-pepper hair was damp around the edges, and his mood-stone eyes were grey with tension, rather than the blue they shone when he was happy and in control. Richard’s eyes hadn’t been blue in quite some time, his wife Nancy realized sadly. Her own brown eyes looked sad whenever she faced them in the mirror these days, too. The grey in her hair had been covered with a reddish shade the hairdresser had called ‘lively’ and which Richard told her made her look like a hooker. She hadn’t been able to lose the extra thirty pounds she’d gained while pregnant, which m...