Red

Appears in

Published 2010

About

- Memory -

I am scrambling everything into a basket for a picnic, wondering what should go with the red peppers on the sandwiches, and if we have enough drinks and paper towels. They are bickering about which toys to take and how many books. The wonder of it all. I’d like to keep them this way — just hopping, scar-free, from one moment to the next.

I remember those moments, too, when long playful days skipped onto rainbow-streaked colours through the sky, as if a flutter of fairies had just danced across, and we could smell the night air beginning to settle. But we still had some adventure left in us, so we carried it into the dark and shone torches to illuminate it. We fell asleep to the colours of pompoms, still counting out the numbers of our badly-drawn hopscotch. Every day was like a holiday. We fell into our clothes after leap-frogging out of bed and marched our way through the house, demanding early morning answers to our curiosities.

I would love a moment of that back — that excitement at being allowed to leave the table, just to fly through a field of long grass and find a nest.