Her nerves needed the rest.
Barely seven, she sent him to the big house.
A place where human sorrows murmur and emotionally disturbed, naughty lost boys without offence are schooled in the terror and glory of life.
A red-faced sausage fingered woman eaten by doubts, patrols a cold dining room, rolling pin in hand, ensuring plates are licked clean with alacrity.
“Waste not, want not.”
After a cold bath and colder cocoa, time for night terrors.
Bigger older boys, kick scream and bite their way around the weakest’s beds.
A natural selection of those to be swung out of the dorm window by their ankles.
Pendulums reflect the heavens.
Some escaped, were caught and returned to face the strap.
Cries for edification from the pulpit.
“Suffering ennobles.”
An hour is a long time spent when peering through railings for a once-a-month visitor.
A rare letter arrives like apricity, and tears miraculously dissolve words.
Later in life, a father, a distinguished gentleman, a husband, mined the last remaining pieces of a free imagination to tell anyone who might listen, with unmuddied simplicity, that it didn’t do him any harm.
“You can’t have butterflies without caterpillars.”
Sometimes we must get things straight alone.
Joe Lucking writes for Theatre, Radio, and Screen. You can find him on twitter @joelucking66
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