Category Archives: Two Minute Reads

Two Minute Reads

Windy Day

A little girl in a grubby singlet runs around the clothesline, barefoot, shouting, arms outstretched as if flying. Sheets snap at her, driven by the breeze and she delights in their wet embrace, laughing as she extracts herself from their clammy arms.

 Her mother flaps at her impatiently, a mouth full of pegs muffling the threats the child knows may soon be realised.

Yet she cannot resist the dance of the sheets, round and round, always round, for the sheets are prisoners too. 

Once, she climbed the clothesline to release them from their restraints, sure they would fly free. They fell, a wet heap on a dusty ground and her elation sagged as quickly as they did.

Her mother forbade her to touch the washing line again.

But sometimes, when her mother isn’t watching, she climbs the clothesline and swings, spinning freely, like the sheets, on a beautiful windy day.

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Two Minute Reads

Sharing My Dream- With My Chickens!

As a small child, perhaps to soften the blow of getting a brother, I was given a whole bunch of chickens. Very small, fluffy ones. I named them after the Pooh Bear characters.  I credit my mother for being ever patient, and a bit of an animal whisperer, because even as a child, my imagination was wild.

I loved my chickens and thought they should be able to fly. So I put them on my swing and gave them a really big push. They promptly fell off, and some of them broke their legs. My mother splinted them with matchsticks, and they survived!

Swimming lessons in the toilet didn’t go so well, especially when I created excitement by flushing the toilet. My mother rescued them, resuscitated them, and warmed them up in front of the woodstove.

They all survived to adulthood, surprisingly! All I wanted was for them to be able to live my dreams.

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Two Minute Reads

An Accident- No Fingers Left.

With the arrival of my brother, my world changed. I was no longer the spoilt little princess. I was a big sister. I was forever being mean, I guess. But I do hope that the day I cut his fingers off, it was an accident. Not something more sinister.

He was little, just toddling. We lived on a farm. Farms have gates. Big gates. We were down at the dairy, and to this day I can see the concrete, the big gate, and the slight rise the gate was on.

I shut the gate. For whatever reason, his fingers were in the hinge of the gate, and they were cut off when I shut the gate.  All four fingers on his left hand. At different levels. I guess there was screaming and shouting and blood. I don’t remember that. All I remember is the gate, the concrete, and the tiny hill.

I wonder if I told him to stand there. To hold the gate there. I don’t know. I will never know.

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Two Minute Reads

Baby changes everything.

I was a much-loved first child. Golden ringlets, blue eyes, a flick of freckles, and a cheeky smile. I owned the place, toddling around the farm, like the princess I was. Then my world changed. At some stage, my parents decided that the perfect child wasn’t enough for them, and they decided to have another child. My brother. Snowy white hair, brown eyes, he was as cute as anything, or so I have been told. I didn’t like him much, apparently. I guess this is why I was caught leaning over his bassinet when he was barely a week old. He was screaming, as much as he could with me holding the sheet over his face. He was bleeding a little too, from the eyes. I had tried to shut his eyes, through the sheet, so that he could sleep, well that’s my story. There is no way in hell I was trying to poke his eyes out, as my parents love to say.

Straight away I knew my position as princess and perfect child was in trouble. And I was right!

The Princess I was!
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