If Wishes Were Swings….

Tempestuous, torrid, testing, too much….or as they say in France terribleh.

The past two weeks have been hard to cope with. Dealing with grief is hard, especially when you are beset with a lot of grief-inducing situations at once.

And if dealing with losing dear people in my life wasn’t enough, on top of it all we are selling our stake in the bar. The newly-opened bar. One of my husband’s partners assaulted him. Assaulted. Because is a drunken fool. I can say no more because it is in the hands of the lawyers but I now know this to be true –

Money (or the potential taste of it) = the true colours of a person= get away from that person as soon as you can= run for your life and don’t look back.

I shouldn’t be shocked, part of me is made up of a diehard cynic, but the other part, the part that constantly searches for kindness and hope and the nature of a dreamer is appalled. And saddened. Oh, the games people play….

Sometimes you think you can’t take any more of the sadness and the grieving and the feeling of being let down. It seems like the world is doused in shadow. And then you see something. A simple thing, but it changes everything.

I saw a pink swing hanging from a tree. Out in the street in front of a house with a turquoise door. The swing was so pink and so unexpected that I thought I had possibly lapsed into a spate of daydreaming or had stepped into the pages of a picture book.

As I stopped and gazed at the swing a little girl with mud on her face and a rip in her red tights came out of the house with the turquoise door and climbed onto the swing. She began to swing back and forth, back and forth.

I thought she hadn’t seen me but after several swings she spoke.

‘You can make wishes on this swing,’ she said.

‘What do you wish for?’ I asked.

And this is where the magic of seeing the swing, of finding it, of feeling entranced by the pinkness of it, took over and crystallised into the shape of hope and dreams right there on the street. I expected the little girl to wish for toys, an iPhone, fancy clothes, even money, but this is what she said –

‘I wish all the animals in the world would have someone to love them and that nobody would hurt them.’

‘I wish people wouldn’t get sick and would always get better.’

‘I wish everyone in the world had enough to eat.’

‘I wish the trees would grow all over the planet.’

‘I wish mummies wouldn’t cry cause they were lonely…’

How does a child, a five year old child have the sense of empathy and the maturity to wish for such things? How does she have the wisdom?

Her name was Emily. She had on a nice corduroy dress with flowers on it; her hair was neatly brushed, but she had a dirty face. And a talent for making wishes.

Just when you think the world is going to hell in a handbasket along comes Emily, bringing out the sun.

‘Everyone should have a swing for wishes,’ said Emily as I waved goodbye.

‘And everyone should meet an Emily at least once in their lifetime,’ I thought.

If swings were wishes….