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Wings
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The day Rictor was born, was a Sunday – a perfectly normal day for a normal child to be born. Yes, it took a little while before he cried, but there was nothing much peculiar about this, and the doctors soon dismissed the case as job-done and rushed to the other rooms.
Maria looked outside the hospital window, the weather was fine for monsoon and had started to drizzle. She had not been so glad in a while, not after her husband died, three months ago in a plane crash while returning from his service in Afghanistan. She hadn’t seen the corpse, for there was nothing to be shown. Remnants of the crash had been vaporized almost instantaneously, leaving no way for the fragments to be identified. “Technical defect in the military plane”, they had said. Maria was silent now. What was at first an enduring smile, soon turned into a contemplating seriousness. Nothing in the world could she want more than just having her husband sitting next to her, at that very moment, with their baby, in his arms.
It was raining wildly now. As it turned out, it was not a perfect day after all, only that a good thing had happened to her – Rictor. She looked at the baby, smiled a little, and wondered how could something be this beautiful! She had already decided that the name would be Rictor – after her husband. Amid all this sea of emotions, which was deafening-loud in her mind, she whispered, “You’re my world”, softly and then loud – loud enough to set aside all other voices. It was a feeling of pure serenity that only a mother can feel – when selflessness takes over one’s ego-centric existence and one conspires for somebody else’s well-being. At that moment, she vowed to take the best care of her son and never let the absence of a father bother him, and outside, the rain felt for her.
Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. Rictor learned to walk very early. Loua, in one of her monthly visits to daughter’s, was taken aback in utter shock to see her grandson toddling up to her along with his Mother. “Five months Maria! Ain’t never seen nobody of that age walkin’ like that, what yo’ been feedin’ him?”. And then, the tradition continued, with grandma popping up more and more frequently now and then, to witness more of Rictor’s activities. Rictor to her was a miracle, and considering the depth of her spiritual beliefs in all those petty angel & demon stories, watching him grow was the least she thought she could do. Every time she came, she brought a box full of homemade cookies, which Maria never let her give to Rictor. They would have their breakfast on the porch, with Rictor catching butterflies in the garden, they had him always in their eyesight. On one such fine morning, they were, as usual, having breakfast on their porch, and Rictor was busy playing in the garden. Fed up and defeated by pondering over her cookies being devoured by the wrong person, Loua out of her boredom tried making a conversation. “Why don’t ya join back to your painting classes, Maria?”. Maria hesitated, “I have told you Ma about this an..”. Loua cut her, “You know like I met Mr. Rogers a few days ago, and he said that you were doin’ just fine, in fact, better than most of ’em, so maybe you should try considering things again as..”. “But Ma, Rictor is the only thing that I want to be with right now, he needs me, and also that…what… the hell!”. Loua looked in the direction Maria’s eyes gazed. “Oh, Christ…How did he..”, Loua was nearly in a fit. It so happened that Rictor was swinging a branch of the tree in the garden which was bent-hard by highly strained wires tied to an iron pole at the other end, such that it nearly touched the ground – a basic household makeshift to let the shrubs crawl up the tree. But unfortunately, the supporting wire broke off due to high stress, and poor Rictor got hoisted nearly ten feet up along with the branch. They raced with all their might and vigor to the tree, but it was quite...
The day Rictor was born, was a Sunday – a perfectly normal day for a normal child to be born. Yes, it took a little while before he cried, but there was nothing much peculiar about this, and the doctors soon dismissed the case as job-done and rushed to the other rooms.
Maria looked outside the hospital window, the weather was fine for monsoon and had started to drizzle. She had not been so glad in a while, not after her husband died, three months ago in a plane crash while returning from his service in Afghanistan. She hadn’t seen the corpse, for there was nothing to be shown. Remnants of the crash had been vaporized almost instantaneously, leaving no way for the fragments to be identified. “Technical defect in the military plane”, they had said. Maria was silent now. What was at first an enduring smile, soon turned into a contemplating seriousness. Nothing in the world could she want more than just having her husband sitting next to her, at that very moment, with their baby, in his arms.
It was raining wildly now. As it turned out, it was not a perfect day after all, only that a good thing had happened to her – Rictor. She looked at the baby, smiled a little, and wondered how could something be this beautiful! She had already decided that the name would be Rictor – after her husband. Amid all this sea of emotions, which was deafening-loud in her mind, she whispered, “You’re my world”, softly and then loud – loud enough to set aside all other voices. It was a feeling of pure serenity that only a mother can feel – when selflessness takes over one’s ego-centric existence and one conspires for somebody else’s well-being. At that moment, she vowed to take the best care of her son and never let the absence of a father bother him, and outside, the rain felt for her.
Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. Rictor learned to walk very early. Loua, in one of her monthly visits to daughter’s, was taken aback in utter shock to see her grandson toddling up to her along with his Mother. “Five months Maria! Ain’t never seen nobody of that age walkin’ like that, what yo’ been feedin’ him?”. And then, the tradition continued, with grandma popping up more and more frequently now and then, to witness more of Rictor’s activities. Rictor to her was a miracle, and considering the depth of her spiritual beliefs in all those petty angel & demon stories, watching him grow was the least she thought she could do. Every time she came, she brought a box full of homemade cookies, which Maria never let her give to Rictor. They would have their breakfast on the porch, with Rictor catching butterflies in the garden, they had him always in their eyesight. On one such fine morning, they were, as usual, having breakfast on their porch, and Rictor was busy playing in the garden. Fed up and defeated by pondering over her cookies being devoured by the wrong person, Loua out of her boredom tried making a conversation. “Why don’t ya join back to your painting classes, Maria?”. Maria hesitated, “I have told you Ma about this an..”. Loua cut her, “You know like I met Mr. Rogers a few days ago, and he said that you were doin’ just fine, in fact, better than most of ’em, so maybe you should try considering things again as..”. “But Ma, Rictor is the only thing that I want to be with right now, he needs me, and also that…what… the hell!”. Loua looked in the direction Maria’s eyes gazed. “Oh, Christ…How did he..”, Loua was nearly in a fit. It so happened that Rictor was swinging a branch of the tree in the garden which was bent-hard by highly strained wires tied to an iron pole at the other end, such that it nearly touched the ground – a basic household makeshift to let the shrubs crawl up the tree. But unfortunately, the supporting wire broke off due to high stress, and poor Rictor got hoisted nearly ten feet up along with the branch. They raced with all their might and vigor to the tree, but it was quite...
