FRANCIS GAY
Words we didn’t say, Are the hardest of all, The note we didn’t post, The friend we didn’t call. Do that thing now, And you’ll be glad, Better than thinking, I really wish I had.
Kevin and his family recently moved home. He told me about watching his three-year-old daughter Laila explore the back garden.
“She was walking so carefully,” he said, “I couldn’t help asking what she was looking for. She looked at me as if it was beyond obvious and said, ‘I’m looking for exciting surprises, Daddy!’ She just took it for granted that the world was like that. Full of interesting surprises.”
I caught the wistful look in his eye and took a guess at what he was thinking. “And then we grow up. Right?”
“Yeah.” He laughed. “I stopped believing in such things a long time ago. And, honestly, it did me absolutely no good. Now we have Laila, I am letting her re-teach me how to see the world like that, and I am feeling younger by the day. Now...isn’t that an interesting surprise?”
For some, Kevin. For some.
I’d stirred myself to do a little gentle gardening in the sunshine.
Looking at the verge along our fence, I asked my sweetheart about the greenery that had sprouted there. Not really knowing my plants, I asked if I should pull them up or not.
“Those aren’t ours,” she told me. “They come through from our neighbour’s garden. They will flower in a few days and they will be beautiful.”
“So...we’re keeping them?” I ventured.
“Yes, please,” she said. And how could I disagree?
I moved on to the next job on the list. And, it occurred to me that we might all strive to live our lives like that, lives that if they impacted on another’s or overflowed into someone else’s space, people would want to keep what they found there.
Flower. Be beautiful. And may your love and kindness not be hemmed in by fences.
George (whom I’d never spoken to before) told me he was selling up and moving to Portugal.
He had a new relationship and was starting a new chapter in his life – at 71!
“How did that come about?” I asked.
He warned that it was a long story. The condensed version included friends in Glasgow, Birmingham, Portsmouth, Paris and Braga.
I noticed that every time he talked about visiting those friends, he mentioned new friends he had made in the process.
“It sounds like all the good things in your life have come about because of a network of good friends that you’ve been good to in return?”
He looked puzzled, then he asked: “Isn’t that what life is all about?”
In an ideal world, George, like the one you seem to have created.
Enjoy your new chapter, my friend, and the new friends you will undoubtedly make!
On the day cafes reopened in our area, I had my breakfast near a table occupied by five ladies of distinguished years.
Their chat was all about who had got married, who was ill or had got better, who had died and who’d been born. For every person mentioned, there was a full explanation of their family tree.
I stopped on the way to pay my bill, apologised for eavesdropping, and suggested they were “just checking who everyone belonged to”.
“Young man,” said one of the ladies (which made me smile more than a little), “when you get to our age, you realise one thing above all else. We all belong to each other.”
They asked me about myself for a while, then I had to go. But I left content that the information I had supplied would be remembered and would be lovingly woven into the greater family tapestry.