“Ready?’
“Ready!” comes the excited, whispered reply.
I fumble for matches in the warm dark. The air smells of spices, wood and the sea. It is filled with the far-off sounds of
creaking ropes, splashing waves and the chatter of a thousand languages.
My match flares, then candlelight shines in my daughter’s wide
eyes and illuminates a world reeking with mystery and adventure. With huge
grins and her small hand clasped in mine we sneak onboard a ship that sails the
Seas of the Universe at the speed of imagination (so much faster than boring
old light…).
In a land looking suspiciously like a Minecraft Realm we
build magnificent castles and dig for emeralds, fighting off zombies and running
from skeletons – escaping their arrows with gleeful shouts and sailing on...
We find a place where dragons live with people in huge, deep
caverns. Flying on their backs we whoop
with delighted fright as they soar and swoop through the sky, the wind chilling
our faces and tearing at our hair.
In a fortress made of huge tree trunks and clay, in the
middle of a desert kingdom, we feast on far-away foods and dance with nomads wrapped in their bright, desert cloaks as
a sandstorm groans around the walls and rattles the big wooden shutters on the
windows.
…and then we’re climbing the tallest tree of a vast jungle
to watch rainbow birds fill the sky with noise and colour, joined by a troop of
chittering monkeys who sit on our shoulders and steal things from our pockets.
Finally, after sailing through outer-space watching the gas
of nebulae curl from our outstretched fingers we arrive, exhausted and happy, at
a ramshackle cottage on dunes near the sea.
We curl up on the back porch in a nest of cushions and soft ancient
blankets. After sipping hot chocolate
and coffee from chipped old mugs we close our eyes and drift with the sound of
the waves. My little girl falls asleep
with her head on my shoulder, one small hand wrapped firmly around my index
finger…
………………….
“Hey. Time to go.” A
kick to my foot wrenches me back into hard, electric light - the candlelight had been pushing back a darkness of an entirely different kind. My daughter’s Mum jerks her head toward the
bedroom door. I carefully extract my shoulder
from under my little girl’s head and gently unwrap her fingers from around
mine. With a final kiss to her forehead
I fetch my shoes and head out the front door, into Reality.
The Real World is nothing like the one my daughter and I
keep in our heads. In the real world,
people fill the seas with rubbish, burn down the jungles, blow up the desert
fortresses and kill all the dancers inside.
Stupid fights happen over stupid things.
Diseases kill, pain really hurts and everything can feel hard, indifferent
and alien.
Colourful people can be forced into gray, colourless lives; trudging
head down on a treadmill year after year until, old and exhausted,
they sit in Death’s waiting room watching telly and wondering what happened to
their dreams.
It's a place where relationships break and little girls are
swept up in events beyond their control, but which hurt them to their core
nonetheless. It grates and screeches
around us with all the charm of a fat man flopping on a prostitute’s bed and
saying “Come over ‘ere darlin’…”.
I know our world is imaginary.
I know we are supposed to embrace, face and deal with the real one and
it is silly to think we can escape it for any length of time at all, but I
yearn for ours still. I know she does
too. She tells me sometimes in those
rare, quiet times when it is just us.
So.
We will endure this place of Reality like a student sitting through a boring lecture. We will do our best.
...but all the while we’ll be staring out the windows, waiting for our next precious moment.
...and when it comes, we will run.
…straight for that warm, dim corner smelling of wood smoke
and cinnamon and the Seven Seas of Adventure where, with her small hand clasped
tightly in mine…
…we will light another candle.
