A Reminiscence by a Blogger

'Shrinky' is a blogger I like to follow because she hits home in so many ways so often. Her most recent post is reproduced below. But better yet, go to Shrink Wrapped Scream and read it, and some of her other wonderful writings.


SUNDAY, JANUARY 30, 2011

Rituals

He sits at the table, awkward and gangley, steaming mug of tea hidden beneath calloused fists. He tunes out as she fills up the silence. This she knows, but doesn't mind.


It is their dance.


Work boots shuffling, he focuses on the sugar bowl, whilst my mother examines his box of freshly harvested produce. It is still wrapped in the rich earth smell of the allotments from whence they were recently torn. As always, she tells him his vegetables are the sweetest by far. As always, he nods this as true.


His hands are too big for the room, so huge they are all I can see of him. Watching, I follow as they lift the mug to his lips. He takes a swallow of scalding brew, placing it silently back down again to the linoleum cloth-covered table.

Big John is a regular visitor to our door, as he is to everyone else around these tenement blocks. The frequency of his calls vary with the season, come the winter they are sparse.

But he always comes back.

As he will continue to do so for the whole of my life.


My mother makes her selection and agrees a price, digging some pennies out from her black, worn purse. John smiles and stands up, up, up. I stare up, up, too, craning my neck to meet with his eye. Connected, he winks, as I knew he would, and my belly performs a flip-flop of delight.


Our ritual now.


Bending, he enfolds his iron girder arms around me, raising me up level to his lined, gnarly face, scratching a rough, spiky kiss across my now tingling cheek. I shriek, as he tosses me high, higher, sailing, sweeping the ceiling, and (OH!) a split-second before descent,

(HUSH)

Time frozen...


Look..

I FLY!!