This piece was written on 15 November 2002.
A girl of about five years of age peered expectantly
through the bars of the gate. Her chubby hands gripped the bars with great
expectation.
Her short golden hair shone as no known shampoo and
conditioner could improve the texture. The gentle breeze calmly tussled it
without moving a single strand out of place.
The almost cherubic face was bright with cheeks like bright
red apples and still exhibited the chubbiness of childhood. Her skin was free
from cuts, scratches and bruises and yet she had not been mollycoddled from the
experiences of life. Her blue eyes glinted with undiluted happiness and there
was nothing to mar her pupils with bright sunshine or tears of sorrow. Her eyes
were wide open with anticipation. Her mouth was curved upwards with a delicate
and beautiful smile.
There were no possessions that would distract her from the
enjoyment of the place and the pleasure of the new companions that she had
made.
The dress that she was wearing was clean as though her
mother had replaced the previous one after a day of playing in the dirt. It was
important that she was to look her best as her daddy was coming home. She had
spent the recent past in tending the plants around their home and had now
become intent in the one purpose of greeting the one who had been away from her
for so long.
She peered down the clean road that was devoid of any
rubbish or graffiti, which shone without the glare that is typical of sunshine
on tarmac after showers. It was a road that was not cluttered by crowds of
people or inhabited by those in want. It was dissected by the gate, which the
young girl was clinging onto to stop any undesirables from entering the estate.
The house that she inhabited was close to the boundary so
it was an easy task to look out for the father that she loved so dearly. The
house was well maintained without any need for renovations and yet it was
different from the previous houses that she had known. There was no drainage as
there was no rainfall as the flora was watered by means that she did not
understand. The river meandered through the estate seemed to supply all the
liquid that was required. There was plenty of space in which to play and yet
there was nothing either inside or outside the house on which she could harm
herself. The temperature was always well regulated so that all the inhabitants
would be neither too hot nor too cold.
Out of the door came her mother, eager in the visual search
for the one who was missing from the family at that time. The cares that had
been laid on her in the past were erased from her memory as she was caught up
in welcoming her husband to this new start in life. The lines on her face,
carved by sorrow and tiredness, were eradicated as no oil or portion could
achieve. The joy that she experienced in her youth had returned and there was
even a hint of playfulness. Her lightness of spirit had been returned to her
after she had arrived at their present location and the weights of daily life
had been removed from her shoulders. There were no longer weekly chores to be
undertaken but there were tasks that the community joined in to perform so that
all of them would benefit, so that each person would fit in according to the
abilities that they had like a giant jigsaw puzzle.
Her health was better than it ever had been in the past,
although she had never had anything that would inhibit her busy career or
active social life, which included the almost obligatory twice weekly visit to
the local gymnasium. Somehow her new location had put all that into perspective
and she had new and better freedoms now. She could now enjoy new friends, no
longer having pretensions that had come in between her and her old
acquaintances.
There was now a different perspective on people, places and
events than she had ever experienced before, certainly before her daughter and
herself had moved to this location. There was almost an air of reliving her
childhood but in a way that would never end.
She now had time to spend with her daughter as she never
had before, wanting to spend time with her as a companion rather than being an
irksome irritation that stopped her from competing the jobs that needed to be
done. They were able to talk and laugh as they never did before, the only gap
being that man in their life was not with them at present. They were both
looking forward to the moment when he would be sighted.
The woman came up to the girl at the gate and gently placed
her feminine hands on the shoulders of her offspring. There they both looked
out, hoping to see him from any moment.
Occasionally there would be other men and women who would
be admitted by the guards through the gates, which would only heighten the
hopes that their loved one would be with them soon. The guards checked the
credentials of each person that came to the gate and those they were expecting
were welcomed onto the estate with politeness and enthusiasm. With each new
arrival would come the certainty that
the moment that they were expecting, almost with bated breath, would draw
closer.
Suddenly there was a likeness that could be barely
distinguished, a faint shadow, in the far distance. As the person came closer,
their hearts bounded within them, as they knew without any measure of doubt
that this was the one that they had been expecting. It was like waiting for a
train to arrive at a station, observing it coming around a distant corner but
all the while knowing that it would reach it allotted destination however
impatient the passengers would be.
The young girl gripped the bars in anticipation as the
familiar outline began to emerge out of the haziness of the distance. There was
a remembrance of how her father used to stroll – with an air of wellbeing and
being at peace with himself and the world. That gait had been replaced in
recent months with a walk that resembled the after effects of a slog with the
amount of business that he had to attend to and a sense of being world-weary/
There seemed to be nothing to hold him down and those ubiquitous and seemingly
ever-present briefcases were absent. These burdens were symbols of everything
bad in her life – they robbed her of precious times with her daddy and seemed to be the third party in her
parent’s marriage. Events had caused them to disappear and would certainly not be missing those
objects that tried to come between the three of them.
Her daddy looked up and saw his wife and daughter waiting
for him, for they would have squeezed through the railings if they could in
order to shorten the time before they were all reunited. It was now clear on
his face that he was delighted to see all so familiar faces. The recent
catastrophic events that had happened to him had left no scarring and no other
physical deformity would ruin his body. The familiar half grin had returned to
the man whose face had recently been obscured from his family by the jungle of
paperwork.
His walk became faster and faster as he approached his new
home. This location was certainly much better than the hospital that he had
just left. He could see already how well his wife and daughter had settled in,
having moved into the new estate whilst he was on the hospital bed. His desire
was to join them as soon as possible and he was steadfast in his resolve to
reach the gates so his life could start all over again. He waved to them and
they responded in kind, the family unit only separated by the bars of hard
metal.
Her daddy soon reached the checking are where the guards,
who had never seen him before, made sure that he was expected and that all of
the papers were in order and had the appropriate red seal.
As soon as he was greeted and allowed in by the security
team, he ran over to where the expectant couple were waiting. He took his wife
into his arms and gently hugged her around the waist. There was the tenderest
of kisses that passed between them. He was aware of an impatient tugging of his
trouser leg as his daughter sought to attract his attention.
He bent down and, with one arm, scooped the young girl so
that she was at his eye level. There she noticed a glint of happiness in his
eyes that had been absent for several years and she was pleased that her father
had found again the pleasure in life that had departed from him.
He tussled her hair and remarked how well they looked and
that moving certainly seemed to have been the improvement they had sought and
that had seemed to be always out of reach.
“Daddy,” the girl asked quizzically and looking directly
into his face. “I heard that you were involved in a terrible accident and that
you had serious injuries so that the emergency services had to cut you out of
the car, Is this true?”
The man looked straight into his daughter’s face before
replying.
“It is certainly true. I was horribly injured so that the
people in the hospital did not know for a long time whether or not I was going
to die. We were all in that car, although you may not remember the experience,
and we all suffered terribly so that the doctors and nurses had to attend to
us.”
He looked out to the estate that lay before them before
continuing. “But look, we are now in such lovely surroundings. So this what
heaven looks like!”
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