Nobel Laureate?

Sybil Blau walking along the beach in search of literary inspiration.

The nest was finally quiet. Everyone, with the exception of Sybil, were either on their way to school or work. George as always was running late. He barely had time to take a bite of his toasted bagel with butter before he was chased out by Sybil who was sure he would be late for his first meeting of the day. Timmy had left for school and as always with plenty of time to spare. He was the most organised of the Blau children. Timmy laid out what he was going to wear to school at the end of his bed the night before. So, when the alarm sounded, all he had to do was follow a well established pattern.

On this particular morning though, he didn’t wait for Julia with whom he usually flew to school because it was a Monday. And on Mondays, Julia nearly always put the dinner to cook in a slow cooker and this Monday was no exception. So, she was running just a few minutes behind her normal schedule.

Rosa was Rosa. That meant she woke up a few minutes after she promised her mother she would and thereafter scurried around not knowing what she was going to wear, and invariably ending up blaming her mother for her ill advised choice of clothing. However, when Sybil had offered to put her clothes out the night before like Timmy, she objected saying, “who wants to be like my brother!”

But now, even she was gone. Before Sybil sat down on the balcony and drank her coffee which Julia made, she stood there with the mug in her wing and faced the calm ocean. She stood and then emulating her husband of many years, took in a deep breath of salty ocean air which nearly made her cough, and let it out slowly. She then opened her eyes and said out loudly, “next stop Africa!”

Sybil only did that on the mornings when Elizabeth didn’t come by to convince her of the joys of yoga. So far she had not succeeded. Elizabeth though knew it was only a matter of time before she got through to her cousin. If nothing else, Elizabeth was persistent. She had first tried to get Sybil to join her on the sand and meditate about 5 years or so ago, and so far she much preferred her coffee to screwing her body up like a pretzel, which is what Rosa called yoga.

Sybil walked back inside for a second and surveyed the damage, particularly from the whirlwind called Rosa and decided she need her coffee more badly than before. So, she collapsed in her chair, raised her mug to her beak and took a sip of the coffee made as always to perfection. ‘What would I do without my darling daughter?’ she thought and then shrugged her shoulders. ‘I guess go to Starbucks,’ she replied to her own question.

The sun was above the horizon. The noisy seagulls as always were floating above her on the unseen thermals screeching away at the top of their voices. A couple of them, including the non binary one, came close to the nest and she shooed them away in no uncertain terms. She was afraid they may dump yesterday’s fish dinner on her or on the balcony which would mean she would have to get up and clean herself off. She had suggestd that George buy an air gun, so she could at least have it propped up on the balcony as a deterrent. But George was more concerned about Sybil’s aim than anything else.

At that time of the morning there were humans and dogs prancing on the beach below and they might become unintended targets. So, a shout from Sybil was usually enough to keep them away. She slid down deeper in her chair and closed her eyes. It was going to be a beautiful day. And then a thought came to her. ‘I wonder why my parents called me Sybil and not Virginia like Virginia Woolf, or Jane as in Jane Austin?’ Soon that thought led to another and another and before long Sybil decided she would change her name to Louise May Alcott Blau. It had a certain ring about it.

“After all,” she said loudly believing there wasn’t anyone around, “after all, I am going to win a Nobel Prize for literature one day.”

“I totally agree!” she heard a voice close to her. She then realised the one and only time she said something like that, she would be overheard by the shyster of the family, Elizabeth. Sybil calmly opened her eyes and turned to face Elizabeth who was standing next to her with a Starbucks coffee in her hand.

“Where did you get that from?” she asked.

“Walmart,” Elizabeth answered calmly, and then added before gullible Sybil believed her, “no silly, Starbucks of course!”

“I didn’t think there was one close by?”

“In Jacksonville,” she replied and then grinned, “about 10 minutes as the crow flies.”

Sybil shuddered. “Now that we have a Falasha community living close by, I wish you would stop using that analogy.”

Elizabeth took a sip letting out a loud noise which annoyed Sybil and said, “so, how’s the writing coming?”

“It isn’t,” she replied and then looked at Elizabeth’s cup of coffee and then at hers. She was about to tell Elizabeth that if she brought her a cup of Starbucks every morning, she would meditate with her, but realised that Julia would be very hurt plus, spending every morning with her cousin was a fate worse than death. So, she refrained.

“Do you think I would make a great writer?” she asked squinting as the sun was getting stronger.

“My dear cousin,” remarked Elizabeth, “I don’t know about winning a Nobel Prize for Literature, but if the notes you write to the children’s teachers are anything to go by, you could become a rich author.”

“How do you know about the notes?”

“I’ll give you one guess.”

“Rosa?” Sybil asked.

“Yes of course! She is actually very proud of your writing. In fact, I feel that sometimes she stays home from school purposely because when she goes in the next day she asks her teacher if she had received a note from you.”

“How do you know all this, and it’s not from Rosa,” Sybil stopped for a second because she was going to add, ‘Rosa doesn’t like you,’ but instead took another sip of her almost cold coffee.

“Mrs Jacob told me.”

“She did?” Sybil sat up for a second and looked at her cousin. “How do you know Mrs Jacob?”

“She’s in our Bridge Club and whenever she gets a note from you, she brings it in and reads it to us. So yes my dear cousin, you should write a book.”

“What about?” asked Sybil not quite sure of the subject matter and then smiled as an idea came to mind. “I could write a love story about a Sandpiper and a muscular vulture.” She then lay back and sighed loudly.

“Just make sure it’s a fantasy.”

Sybil groaned and closed her eyes. “That’s all it could ever be,” and Elizabeth left without saying another word.