Dedicated to: Kim Georgine
Granny Egg
made do and mended. She had an ancient draughts board held together by
Sellotape. One counter was chewed by a dog I never knew, the rest were replaced
by old buttons.
Every
stocking was neatly darned, each ornament was chipped from dusting and half the
photo frames were cracked. Her home was her and she was everything. She was
World War II and the world of work, she was cancer and dances, clutz and grace,
child and widow, and everyone she ever loved.
In a cabinet
in the lounge was a tiny china tea set. It was cream with pink roses and gold
edging. Not a piece was chipped or cracked or missing.
‘When can I
play with it?’ I would ask.
‘When you are
six.’
And when I
was six, she kept her word. We made scones and she taught me to make tea. She
bought sugar cubes especially and let me use the tongs. All the rag dolls came
to the party and we had milky tea with too much sugar. Her big, rough hands and
my small ones handled each piece of the set with such care.
While we
drank she told me that when she was six like me, she got scarlet fever. It was
1927 and she spent months in a room in solitary confinement, touched only by
nurses in masks. On her birthday and at Christmas, her parents could only wave
at her through a window. I’d never heard anything so sad. But then she told me
how when she got better, although they were not rich, her parents bought her
the best tea set money could buy.
Granny Egg
died when she was 93. My last words to her, sobbed into her bony chest, ‘you
will always be my most precious memory.’
And every
piece of the tea set was still perfect.
Words: 310
Challenge
from Kim Georgine: write a piece of flash fiction (300 words), in the first
person, with a theme of eternal moments.
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