Category Archives: characters

July 2, 2015 · 8:29 pm

Childhood Magic

He swore the flower had magical properties. It would never grow old or wilt and it would always return to him wherever he might drop it. He said these things with the long, thin, green stem clutched firmly in his little fist, the pink, purple and while petals radiating out from the center of the flower like the paddles of a windmill, softly catching the breeze and swaying with the motion of his stride.

He opened his little palm and watched the flower float up through the air, arcing over his head and gently descending towards the ground behind him before it was picked up by the gentle breeze of the late afternoon and carried off in a swirl of color.

“Your flower!” I warned, as I watched it disappear around the bend.

“It doesn’t matter. It will find me when it’s time. It told me so.”

Morning Music

The dawn chorus began long before the sun crested the horizon. The evening’s cricket performance was still in full swing when it was joined by morning songbirds—perhaps confused by recent shifting weather patterns—who struck their first notes in the deep blackness of the night, calling for the day’s beginning long before the appointed rise of the curtain.

Groggy and unsure of the hour, the woman lay in the purple-dark room awakened by nature’s alarm clock. She kept no clock in the room, always disturbed by the idea of her uneven sleep being measured, and relied on the music provided by her tree-dwelling neighbors to alert her to the day’s beginning. The night had been long and restless, punctuated by frequent, unscheduled wake-ups with unsolicited thoughts whispering her to wakefulness. But, the woman had found, her brain rarely cooperated with her desire to rest.

Sitting up slowly, she groped for the glasses that waited at the top corner of her bed and, finding them, slid them onto her face before reaching out to draw back the blackout curtains that covered the bedroom window. Darkness greeted her. She sat staring out into the night, confused—perhaps more confused than the birds themselves. However, now that she was awake and no longer needed to wrestle insomnia, she threw her legs over the edge of the bed and rose to start her day, wondering what time it actually was.

Water Wings

His little body buoyed in the water by the two green translucent balloons wrapped around each arm, the boy happy, but still nervous, groped his way around the edge of the pool, clinging to the wall like a life support system, shouting at the other children to wait for him. His fair hair was sheared down to the nubs, advertising a scalp shade lighter than his shoulders and arms, suggesting a newly shaved head in preparation for summer and below the surface of the pool blue, black and white designs swirled by the movements of the water hinted at hawaiian floral patterned swimming trunks. Target locked. He reached the island of floating blowup boats and boogie boards on which the other children were playing, nearly. He wold have to let go of the wall and swim to the middle of the pool if he wanted to join the game. The conflict was written on the set of his mouth and the frown of his brow and he determined if joining in the fun was a great enough incentive to run the gauntlet of his fear of swimming. The mental countdown commenced, his little lips moving as the numbers silently went through his head. As he counted down from ten to five, a look of fierce determination formed in his eyes. At five he began to prep for his launch by bounding his knees, feet propped on the wall’s edge, as if to gain momentum. At three the countdown burst loudly from his lips, “Twee, two, one, bwast off!”

Launching himself into space, the boy reached with outstretch fingertips, pumping his little legs as hard as he could, stretching his body as if to make up for the missing inches between himself and his objective. His confidence, so sharp at the start of his flight began to fade as the yawning gap before his safe haven did not seem to be closing. One last hard kick, one last reach of his fingertips. Target acquired! The pride and success beamed from his face but was tempered by a sense of disillusionment as he turned to the child next to him, his senior by at least four years, “They’re called water wings, but you weally can’t fwy in the water.”

The older child patted his fuzzy head and said, “No. But you flew from through space. Come aboard the space ship. I’m going to get the treasure.”

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Childhood Magic

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