Reflections
I posted this story on my main blog but I make no apologies for posting it here as well. While this is one of the shortest pieces I’ve written it says a great deal.
In a field, not far from our house there was a pond.
Actually it was a bomb crater which had been created when a plane was forced to jettison it’s payload during World War II; local wisdom was that it had been a Luftwaffe bomber.
We were under the strictest instructions to be careful around the pond because it was deep and, being a bomb crater had very steep sides. Being a non-swimmer and somewhat afraid of the water I always obeyed that rule.
When I was still only 10, on bad days when someone had made me do things that I didn’t want to; I used to kneel at the side of the water and just stare at my reflection for a while.
The boy I saw in the water was usually very sad and often had tears on his cheeks; I used to talk very quietly to him in an effort to cheer him up. Eventually I would leave and head back home with my best smile firmly in place.
Some nights, while I was waiting for sleep to come I used to wonder; was the boy in the water still weeping?
October 27, 2010 at 10:27
Brilliant, man. Brilliant. Ta!
(But, please, tell me: Have you ever been able to comfort him? Or, when you lie down in bed now, all those many years later, and think of him… does he still kneel there? Is he still crying? And if he stopped crying, was it from getting better… or from finally dying of it?)
October 27, 2010 at 11:05
Sometimes I do still see him kneeling there, a lonely, frail little figure. On very bad nights I find myself reaching out to touch him, but I can’t of course. Eventually he stopped crying but mostly because it didn’t achieve anything.
I think I was about 14 when I realised that no help was coming and if I was to keep on living (not a certainty at one point) I had to do it all myself. The abused child had to go away and the seemingly confident, witty little genius had to take his place. I don’t know how many people I actually fooled although I know that my best friend John and his parents didn’t believe it for a second so I had to keep the lies going.
October 28, 2010 at 08:24
“The abused child had to go away”
That is probably the saddest sentence I know.