One moment can change everything

Here are series of short stories about one event. These are dedicated to a very special man, my uncle Pete. He was raucously funny and had the best bear hug imaginable and I miss him still x He once gave me a huge compliment. He told me I never changed, that I always had a smile somewhere inside just waiting to erupt even when I was angry.

I got this idea when my uncle was knocked down and killed. It was an accident and all those concerned couldn’t make sense of it at first. We still can’t. It has affected us most profoundly and always will, with its far reaching tentacles.

            Soon after I began to wonder why we do things, that is to say send our children to school or work hard and never spend time enjoying life. I came up with no real answers just open thoughts really, a see-saw of life’s off beat balance.

            I will post these little stories at the top of the page so if it’s the first time you have read these start at the bottom and work your way back to the top. If you have been to this before welcome back and I hope eventually you will see the smiles.

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The Beauty of Her

It was the most beautiful face I have ever seen, not in the glamour model sense of beauty but of the kind that lasts, an inner quality that you would never grow tired of looking at so deep was its richness. Serenity oozed out of those eyes that held my gaze and would not let it go. She always had a smile that you envied, one that enjoyed life’s simple pleasures that most of us never achieve, someone who would take time out of her day to brighten up yours.

Unwittingly she came between my wife and me; she crept through my thoughts as a ghostly wisp, a thread of silk that held a belief in me that my wife could never share. For my wife had gained the material things that we had dreamed about and instead of enjoying the benefits she had relentlessly pursued the next must have dream. She wore me out.

I always tried to cross Rachel’s path in the mornings to get my daily fix of her but that morning I was too late. I tried to bump into her in the car park but she wasn’t parked in her usual spot and time was running out. I had an important meeting to get to and wanted to put together a few last thoughts. I knew they would consolidate all we had to offer our client, making it hard to turn the deal down. As I drove this familiar road I saw a harassed mother with a buggy, a dog on a lead and a little one on a bike. Unsteadily they came around the bend and down the hill. I knew instinctively what was about to happen and swerved just in time as the little one fell at an awkward part of the road, right into my path. Relief shuddered through me as my evasive action saved a young life. I looked in my mirror to see the mother who now was tied up by the dog, the buggy tipping while franticly trying to retrieve the bike and child. When the most horrendous jolt spun my head in time to see the face I loved for so long crumple.

I was out of the car and at her side within seconds. Aware of people around me shouting and swearing one was on her mobile explaining the scene. I held this most precious life as it escaped its bodily cage and drifted around with an atmosphere of calm, as deep inside me, carnage warred. Not taking in what was reality; I looked for any signs of hope and took her hand that held a hair. For some reason that held my attention and its one thing I will keep inside of me.

            For the first and last time I held her close and as her warmth seeped out, a gust of wind blew the hair as though it was her wisp of life. It took off hitting a ray of sunlight swirling on a thermal ever higher, stopping time and when no longer I could see it, reality came crashing down.

            My flash backs are relentless, the image of the child crying looking for its mothers comfort and that singular hair making its assent to the great unknown. To have saved the child I had killed my love.

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It was just one hair; she had just ran her fingers through her long glittery soft ringlets and one single hair danced on the breath of the breeze as joyfully as its owner went about her life. Time had not yet matured her out look on it and fun was the only thing time should fulfil, it landed back on the seat it’s donator had departed from as though to take her place. I refrained from lifting it gently up and letting it free to explore the out-side world alone. As I privately shook my head at my own exasperated need to get the day’s timetable done, I took her to school.

She was fine in the playground talking to her group of friends. I passed the precious minutes in friendly chatter as the bell went, she came over to me and a hug pursued that broke my heart as the uncertainty vibrated from her body and through my flesh, I looked into the eyes of youth that asked the question why; for which I had no answer and smiled with all the radiance of motherhood and gently kissed my beautiful butterfly as it took flight upon it’s fragile and oh so gentle wings. These wings would be dented, crushed even before this day was out but I told myself it was for the best. Did I believe this, no, I was not convinced, as my history had none of the battles for knowledge that my ancestors have had, no I had not gone through the humiliation that ignorance of the world around you brings. I forced her grasp to slacken and propelled her towards her day of education. Have I regrets? Yes many.

Should I teach her from home? I could through my own understanding, books and the World Wide Webb. All she needed to know without the statts and tests, the worry of how well she should be doing and how much more I should be teaching. Life would be so laid back and how it is meant to be.

As I pull the car out of its resting place to one of its journeys for the day. First to the part time job, shopping and back home to the house work that always seems to get the better of me, I think to my self could I give up again the freedom of a job and the financial independence, to become a full time companion, teacher and mentor to my child and as her hair was lifted by the air conditioner and landed on my hand, a gentle kiss so much appreciated, so much loved. This simple part of the day made the vivid memory of her group of friends, embrace me and I started to relax understanding it was the best way, the only way open to me.

She needed people to interact with in a fragmented society. Isn’t this what life is all about the ability to communicate your loves, likes, dislikes, concerns, your ideas and opinions and this is what I hoped she would truly be learning.

I breathed in the solitude and with the reassurance that I was truly right to have stayed at home for the first few years at least, even though my career had suffered and people had made me feel a lesser person, I forced a smile on my face and got on with the day. It feels as though I have two full time jobs now to fulfil; that of housekeeper, the supporter of the family unit and a job I took for convenience but would never reach my full potential in. Those first few years had been her foundation on which her life would be built on; this had been a sacrifice worth paying and with a picture of my dreams of the life to come, calmness washed over me.

In the distance of this long and fraught road, full of hidden turns, I saw the cars that had no time for steady drivers and groaned. You meet them all the time they say, what is the point of slow speed limits, it just encourages people to overtake, with disregard to the actual road its self, hidden turns and all; “anyway I’m a good driver I can handle a car.” But in reality the car is not the problem it’s the fact that other people have a right to be on the road and they are not all in cars.

There was nowhere for me to go, to over take on such a road is so irresponsible and as the crush of metal came; as I knew it must, so did the pain. I lifted that single hair to my lips to whisper that last farewell to my precious gift of life and as the crumpled car came to a stop, life was lifted out of me and that single hair and me dance on the breeze a sorrowful ballet entwined together, lifted, then gone though perhaps not forgotten, especially by that one single gentle butterfly.