Small Flowers

 

It has happened.

Something long dreaded.

It happened when I was walking around the school playing field. I wanted to get a little exercise at lunchtime.

Leaving the school, once in, is too complicated a procedure. There are doors that only open when the secretary presses the button. As I have, as yet, not been trusted with the code. There are badges clipped to clothing to be returned, and a note to be made in a book about the time you go in or out.

When my break is only forty-five minutes such procedures are terribly time consuming, especially if I’m kept waiting for the secretary whilst she goes through the finance figures on the phone.

So instead, I’ve started to walk around the perimeter of the playground.

One boy with a glorious eastern sounding name follows me. He is grinning broadly.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting exercise.”

There is now a gaggle of friends around him.

“Can I get exercise too?”

I laugh, and continue on my way, unaware that behind me very much in the Pied Piper tradition is a line of children following me silently.

I stop and laugh and tell the children to follow Eastern Sounding Name instead, and point helpfully in a different direction.

Eastern Sounding Name nods understanding, as I continue on my way.

But when I turn around they are all still there: a whole line of laughing children.

And so I continue my circuit with them all in tow.

The next day I walked the circuit, Eastern Sounding Name only followed me for a few steps. He wants though, to show me the blossom in the trees. Then his friends describe the colours of a butterfly’s wings, and there is a thrilling moment when someone shouts out, “Ladybird!” And they all dash off to look. But before I continue with my walk Eastern Sounding Name presents me with a short stalk on which there is a single blossom; and I accept it with delight.

Nothing escapes the notice of a child.

Seeing his gift, the others rush to give me flowers too.

I’m given a daisy, a dandelion and yet another daisy: a tiny posy of flowers.

Then I continue with my walk leaving them behind, treasuring these gifts.

At the far end of the field is a small group of girls, watching.

They look to be the same age as the group I’ve just left behind: they could be six or seven. They look fresh out of the egg.

As I walk, by one of them comments loudly to her friend.

“There goes that old lady again,” as if I’m a regular piece of clockwork.

Old!

It’s the first time I’ve been so labelled.

But children see with honest eyes.

Old!

So the labelling and compartmentalising has happened at last.

Old!

But I take comfort in, at least some amongst their number, could see that I had a grandmotherly love of small flowers.