Take a moment and enjoy
With teenagers becoming the new battle ground in the Middle East, it’s made me think about the parents of the dead kids on both sides in Israel and Palestine. Just how terrible must it be for everyone around you to be claiming their murders in geopolitical terms, in terms of history, in terms of one group of people set against another.
The missiles launched externally must mirror their inner landscapes which surely rip and shred with every memory of their child as a baby, a little kid running everywhere in a nappy, a young child questioning and tipping drinks. The look in their eyes on trying chocolate for the first time. Every framed photo of their child in their living rooms that those parents ignored or didn’t notice much day-to-day are now starring from the shelf or mantelpiece and forcing yet more tears to their eyes, more memories to their minds. The way they made you laugh or go mad and will never do so again.
KFC
I have decided to take every moment I get to enjoy my sons more. No longer will I sigh as they play in the garden in their socks and turn the oatmeal carpet grey as they traipse inside the house, no longer will I scream as they return having eaten a KFC just as I pull from the oven a chicken dinner. I will stop and take stock and savour the moment. I will stop moaning and pray that all the awful things that can happen to anyone’s children, who are so vulnerable as they leave the house and forge their own lives, never happen.
They dropped some towels, they forgot the time, they played loud music late. Nothing like that matters when you think of the parents trying to grieve quietly as political groups shout about their child’s death. Perhaps we should all look at those photos more often. My resolve is to moan less and enjoy more.
