A special childhood pt 1

Her earliest and most treasured memory was the face of her mother.

She had to have been really small, like a few months. She remembered her mother’s face so well because it had stood out from the blurred shapes and colours that had been surrounding her. Of course, she had had no name for that face then. But she had felt a theretofore unknown emotion stirring inside her when she had beheld that face.

Before she had turned one, she had also started to hear her mother’s voice. The voice had stood out, too. It had been so much gentler and quieter than all the wailing, screeching noises around her. It had been the only sound that had not made her cringe.

When she was 18 months, she had begun to understand her mother’s words, and when she was almost two, she had started talking to her.

For some inexplicable reason, the talking had seemed to upset the blurred shapes and resulted in even more wailing and screeching. She had asked her mother for the reason and had been given the most puzzling answer: “They are afraid. You talk, but you do not walk. Learn to walk.”

So she had set about learning to walk. Walking had been difficult. She had had trouble to make her feet touch the ground. It had taken her the better part of a month to achieve contact. Then, it had got easier. Within another month, she had finally mastered the difficult task. She had been able to walk. This had obviously upset the blurred shapes, too. More wailing and screeching had ensued. But she had been able to focus on her mother’s smiling face and collapsed into her open arms. Her mother’s voice had whispered in her ear: “Now you can walk, we will meet elsewhere.”

The worst two days of her young life had followed. She had not been able to find her mother. Her face, her voice had suddenly vanished from her world, leaving only blurred shapes and wailing, screeching noises behind. The calm and clear focus of her senses had disappeared. She had felt a new wetness on her face. She had thought is was her life seeping out of her, as she had never before felt so powerless, so utterly without energy.

Then, on the third day, she had decided to do something. After all, she could walk now, couldn’t she? So she had concentrated hard, made contact with the floor, allowed her toes to sink into the scratchy fibres of the carpet, and had set about walking.

She had walked through unfamiliar blurred shapes, had felt her toes touch a new, smooth and cold surface, which had come as quite a shock and nearly stopped her in her tracks, then another kind of surface: cool, but not unpleasantly so, soft, yet a little scratchy. This time, she had not felt the urge to stop. This new surface was welcoming her, not rejecting her. So she had walked. On and on. Farther than she had ever walked before. And finally, she had found her mother.