the boys and girls inside us

Aren’t many things in life this way?

People, sharing a space in time, for a brief while. You and a friend meet, then your friend leaves to meet others, and you wander off. You see them pleasantly gathering, and this leaves your field of vision as you go where your feet takes you. And your feet takes you away…and then they carry you back; you peer to see if your friend is still there, but he has left. ‘Where have they gone?’ you wonder.

But you realise that in that space and time, the moment you both shared is no more, and time moves on, and the clouds carry on drifting, and traffic continues its buzz and hum in the red and green rhythm of motion. The space remains but everything is fleeting as time carries people away; people continue meeting friends, and gatherings upon gatherings replace the gathering you saw…

You stand there wistfully, but the world has moved on.

So you move on.

When I was a little girl and my mother took me to school on the occasions I was late, I felt such a deep impregnable sense of sadness, standing within the school compounds as I watched my mother walk away. It was a feeling very hard to bear, I felt so vulnerable and alone, with my mother leaving but I – staying. I didn’t feel this way when I boarded the school van, only when I missed it and my mum had to take me to school herself. I knew I would still see her at home in the evening but, still, when I stood within the compounds of school and she remained on the covered walkway to wave me goodbye, I remember feeling miserable at her departure. I would walk a bit, stop, then look back and long towards her diminishing figure.

And when I came home, I felt relieved and happy to see her waiting as I alighted from the school van. And she would take the weight off my shoulders and comment on my untidy hair.

Some things never change, and we are all little girls and boys inside, aren’t we?