Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: PHOTOS and/or SOUVENIR(S) (vacation) (07/16/15)
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TITLE: A Time To Forgive. | Previous Challenge Entry
By Danielle King
07/23/15 -
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The rafters held secrets. Many years had elapsed; abundant tears shed. Now was the right time. Time to face facts.
Anxiety gripped, squeezing the breath from my lungs. Would a crushing revelation engulf me; annihilate me? What was I scared of, being hurt, hurting others? Bad thing – introspection!
Nothing had changed in fifty years since mother took a trip with aunt Maisy. I was a little girl. I didn’t want mama to go. “But you must not miss school,” she said. “My mama made me stay home from school to mind the little ‘uns. And that’s why I’m dumb.”
I didn’t care how dumb mama was. I still loved her and I did not want to be left behind.
I loved aunt Maisy too. She had red curly hair, just like mine and she laughed a lot. Aunt Maisy was an energiser and could kindle a spark at a wake. Aunt Maisy had exciting adventures, like travelling overseas to a land where the sun shone all day long.
And I thrilled at her escapades. She would recount in colourful detail the cultures and funny customs of the people she met; the strange foods she ate - even frog’s legs in France - and all the while snapping pictures to bring home for me.
And then she took mama with her. “She needs a tonic,” she told Dad. “It’ll do her the world of good.” I didn’t understand why mama needed ‘doing good.’ She wasn’t sick. Everything went on in the same way. But I did hear a lot of shouting at night after she’d tucked me into bed.
“Dad’s grumpy again,” she explained. “He’s had a hard day at work so we need to be patient with him.” I decided Dad was ‘run down.’ I’d heard it said about people who worked too hard.
Aunt Maisy promised to bring me a doll dressed in national costume. I owned four already from her jolly jaunts abroad. Mamma said she would bring me a surprise, something nice, “You’ll like it,” she promised.
And many years later, staring at the surprise on my lap, knowing exactly what was inside, I hesitated. Let sleeping dogs lie? Just a thought…
Carefully, with blackened fingers I began to peel back the layers of newspaper. The dust choked me at first; maybe the same dust mama said to, ‘let settle.’
On the inner layers the print was still legible; old news, same town, but a vastly different world. A world with different standards; a world where shame was heaped upon those whose moral values did not match up.
The last sheet of paper unearthed my surprise, the one mama said I’d like. She was right, I adored it. My heart shaped manicure set, all laid on red velvet with a ballerina in pirouette stance. She wore an exquisite French style tulle and pointe shoes with satin ribbons. When I wound a key underneath she would turn to the playful, ‘Dance of the Cygnets.’
I gave it pride of place on my dressing table, alongside my beautiful dolls in their individual colourful splendour.
It looked different now, in the light of age and memories. I turned the key and the ballerina danced on, after all this time. But it wasn’t her I’d come to visit.
I lifted a tag on the red velvet to open a vanity box beneath. A sealed envelope lay undisturbed beside pink hair slides and pretty ribbons. I always knew it was there.
When mama became sick I moved back home to care for her. She looked so frail and vulnerable, just like aunt Maisy and Dad before they passed. Out of the blue she blurted out, “No other mother could love you more than I do.”
She told me about a letter. “It would explain things more clearly,” she said. I gave her words scant attention, believing her mind to be failing. Shortly before her death she grasped my hand and whispered more puzzling words. “God forgives. And so must you, like I did.”
I took the envelope from where it had lain for so long. Carefully, I used a fingernail to break the seal. What was this, more of aunt Maisy’s holiday pictures? She was looking well, positively blooming in fact. And who was this dapper young man, arms draped all over her…
Dad?
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