Something fallen

Friday Fragment #42

It’s still there on the ground when we come back. There, where it had dropped from her hands, although really from my hand, since her hands, set beneath mine, had merely been a funnel of unruly fingers through which it was as likely to pass as catch. I saw the crisp first: our tiny piece of litter from earlier. Back then, she had heard the rustle of the packet, had lifted two tiny arms to acknowledge and demand without words. She brought her hands together and interlocked her fingers, loosely, like an inverted gathering of campfire sticks. I pulled the crisp free of the bag and reached down to her as she reached up to me, and tried to find her forefinger and thumb to receive it from my own. It fell through her fingers and hit the ground. She quickly craned her neck to see where it had landed and voiced a meditative ‘oh-oh’. Then she came again, extending further upwards at a stretch. And this time I found her hand and her hand in turn found her mouth, and she smiled and let out a small groan of contentment. I looked behind to where the previous crisp had fallen, thinking of the dog yet to be walked, following in our steps along this trail: something to be claimed not long after we were gone. Several hours pass before we return the same way and I see it there on the ground once more. As litter, though degradable, I feel a soft stab of embarrassment. No dog has yet managed to seize it, no foot has yet crushed it into the weather-beaten stone onto which it fell. She sees it again too and a refrain of ‘oh-oh’ chimes once more, and she looks up to find my gaze and I’m amazed that she wishes to communicate this remembrance. She is her father’s mirror, and it’s true that only a smile that reaches the eyes reflects happiness. She looks down again to the ground. A square thin of fried potato holds both our attentions. Her stare focuses on the crisp like a torch beam, mine wanders the immediate area, taking in each companion decaying form: leaves the colour of a purse that my mother used to own; some greying matter barnacled to the stone. In front of us, the street lamps slowly wink into life: that stuttering process which must first reinforce darkness before it can relieve it. Up above, the clouds bank darkly. The wind blows into us, letting us know that this absence of colour will soon visit here too. Rain will wash and begin to change this form that slipped from her grasp. Parts of this ground already bear the same hue, below as above, one more mirror to share. Not long now before our little mistake will more rapidly start to decompose; before this tiny blot of shame that bloomed into happiness will be erased.¹

‘Friday Fragment’ is an additional weekly instalment to my A Thousand Fragments monthly newsletter.

1. I’ve spent time this month with my nephew, remembering the happiness of those first years, where one young life leans into and against another. I revisited this piece of writing from a time when my daughter was the same age.