Child’s Heart is a Colourful Clay Pot by donkelly

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· @donkelly · (edited)
$0.28
Child’s Heart is a Colourful Clay Pot
![30706172_1931380190227878_6398430273341215299_n.jpg-1.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmY9rHHdAKsDndEskMWqETvcTDU3bhnmhN7TWqXRWrUakN/30706172_1931380190227878_6398430273341215299_n.jpg-1.jpg)
When my baby sister, Debby, was seven years old, she planted a tree. I say seven because this is the number she uses when she can’t remember her actual age at the time something happened.
I think she was a bit older though, maybe nine or ten. Like many children that age, she believed the world was her stage, and as a generous artist, she graced it with many specters of childhood creativity.
Debby sang beautifully in the children’s church choir, as beautifully as a child from a long line of toad-like singers could manage. She was a superb dancer though (still is, by the way), a skill she, no doubt, took from Mumsy whom, we heard, was a fire dancer in her hay days. My sister also loved to draw and paint and mould. For years, we had this drawing she did of our older sister, Becky. And then there was this small centrepiece she moulded out of clay and painted with postal colours.
That piece was a thing of pride for all of us. That is, until the day a guest toppled it and pride became pain. Her ‘antique’ had fallen to the ground and broken into a thousand little shards of rainbow. What we didn’t know then was that my sister’s colourful heart broke just as much as her little clay pot.
She never moulded again.
Debby moved on to less fragile adventures. She wanted to love things that wouldn't die a sudden death because of one wrong move by a stranger – a stranger who would never know what a broken clay pot meant to a child. So, yes, she moved on. To things with breath and wings and tough skins.
Behind our house, a small shallow swamp housed a number of creatures that flew, crawled, hopped, and slithered. To our mother’s eternal horror, her Baby would go hunting for toads and grasshoppers there.
The grasshoppers she played with for hours before setting them free. The tiny toads, on the other hand, she’d keep for days in a bowl filled with water and any other substance she thought they might need. Every day, after school, she would sit with her ‘toadly’ friends. Talking. Nurturing. Growing. As soon she sensed they were becoming too weak, she’d take them back to the swamp, release them into the wild, only to return with a new set.
It was during this time that my sister decided to plant the seed of a pear fruit she had eaten. She planted it in front of our house, beside the canal. No one knew what she’d expected, but the day she found her seed had germinated, Debby was beside herself with glee. Never had she been that excited about anything. She was right there every day, watering it, cultivating it and pretty much just hovering over her new project. And for every inch that little plant grew, my sister’s heart grew twice as much. Which was a good thing because only a large, joyful heart could have survived the years to come.
We all shared in her joy, of course. But we knew from experience that it was only a matter of time before something else caught her attention. She would soon forget all about her precious little tree, it would wither away and she would move on to the next project.
We were all wrong.
THE END…
Just kidding.
Tomorrow, I’ll tell you more about this magical tree and the special child that gave it life, about the man who fought to protect them both, and how this tree saved us all.
👍  , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and 81 others
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vote details (145)
@hrishikeshmatre ·
@donkelly would like to read more memories about this magical tree...
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@donkelly ·
I'll definitely present it
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