SUFFER THE CHILDREN
Word Count: 325
This one’s a keeper, she said, contentedly nursing the newborn boy at her breast. Yes, said her man. He was filled with pride. They had birthed five children in the length of their marriage, and this was the second they’d kept.
Two had been smothered and wrapped in the sheets on which they’d been born. The first one had died of neglect. This boy and the other, now three and a bold bright child, were well worthy of care.
He too grew up strong and clever, a joy to his parents and a close companion to his older brother who took time and delight in teaching his little brother the secrets he’d learned. Like the way to climb the old maple at the far edge of the yard. And where Indians hid in the caves near the river.
She wanted a girl, a little doll to dress up and play with since her boys spent most of their time together or their father would take them out fishing and later, to Little League games where they excelled at the sport. Three babies later she got what she wanted, a perfect little princess with reddish-gold hair and a soft rosebud mouth. And blue eyes–that’s what was wrong with the last one; her’s had been green.
She was their last, the last that they kept, this golden child that completed their family. She too, was much above average in intelligence and physical form. They were happy, well-adjusted, close. In school, all three were favorites of teachers and classmates both. In college, they learned to think for themselves, reach for their goals, find their way to full grasp of their dreams.
A doctor, a lawyer, a professor of words, together they used what they’d learned in their lives to assure their success, neatly severing bonds to the past to start their own perfect families and homes where slow old people weren’t part of the scheme.
Ouch – a rather sad and cynical commentary on the changing relationship between old and new generations. Weld done!
Oops – I meant Well* done!
Boy, Steve, it’s always exciting when someone reads something in your work that you as writer didn’t see. But it’s joyous when someone reads the same thing you believe that you wrote! Thank you!