So I got on a plane

So I got on a plane and went to South Africa. The flight was long. I was distracted. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I stared out the window at passing clouds and sandy mountains topped with snow and wondered about the lives going on down below.  The middle east doesn't look like a place I would ever want to live. Dry and barren, dusty roads and trees only here and there. I hate the heat.

Eventually I watched The Bridge to Terabithia. And I sobbed. It's a sad movie (and it involves someone dying), but I also sobbed for my father and for everything that was and everything that wasn't. Memories about him jumped around in my mind - eating peanut chocolate in his car and wanting to be ill, his light blue Ford Cortina pick up, his limp.

His limp.
When I was a year old my father was working as a traffic officer. One of the many jobs he had before the age of 40. As I remember, the story goes like this (I'll have to check with my mom) - my father came home at lunch time and on seeing a bright red welt across my face, fired the maid. Apparently she had hit me. He then got onto his traffic officer motorbike and headed off back to the office. At least I think that's where he was going. I'll have to check the facts. He was travelling down Aliwal Street - a busy road in our home town of Bloemfontein, South Africa, when he was hit by a car and it went over his leg. It was a bad break. After that, his leg was significantly shorter than the other and he spent the rest of his life limping.

And as I see it - not just physically.