1569. A birthday treat

(The closing sentence for this story was suggested by Alex of Alex Raphael.)

Now that I’m older (I should perhaps say “old) I look back at my childhood and marvel. There were four of us, Natalie, Bevin, Cordelia, and myself. Our parents didn’t have much to go on. Dad was injured in the First World War and was frequently in hospital. It was his knees. Our mother made ends meet by cleaning other people’s houses. But us kids never went without.

When I say “never went without” I don’t mean luxuries like ice cream and vacations in Paris, I mean we had enough food (usually), and clothes to keep us warm, and school stuff. I realize now that our parents frequently went without themselves.

It was my eighth birthday. We never got much for our birthday, except perhaps a special cake our mother would bake, or maybe some homemade party hats, or some oranges. It was always a treat. On this particular birthday all four of us kids were messing around down at the creek, and we heard our mother call “Yoo-hoo, children!” It was a hot summer’s day. It was cool messing down in the creek.

“Yoo-hoo, children! Yoo-hoo!”

“What is it?” we called.

“Yoo-hoo children! I have a treat! It’s a watermelon!”

A watermelon! We’d never had a watermelon before! We started running immediately.