Recognizing the baize ruffle of the hills, we were soon at the fence posts of the derelict farm of our ancestors who had made their lives on this now indifferent sorrel strewn paddock.
A misshapen brick he picked up as though weighing the generations. The pine at the broken chimney had fallen theatrically decades ago and rested on one last blackened branch as though gesticulating. Dispassionately I would later think it was like a work of art here on that day with dad as he told the stories from his grandmother about the children born here and the drowning of a cousin; with a charcoal line I would be insinuated on the artist’s canvas holding out the just found horseshoe.
Grandmother needed a boy’s eyes to thread her needle mine were chosen; she had been a dressmaker but now in her tender dotage sang with tearful eyes the songs emanating from the transistor radio, remembered her husband’s lilting tenor that charmed passers by through the corner door of the grocer shop.
All I wanted was to play football, was good enough to play for the school but too slow I soon realized. I could not move across in time to complete what I knew how to do at the goals. But in the outer I jostled with the crowd, arm against flesh, heartbeats, loose contacts. I was one of them after all, thought I knew the players, famous roads so many walked along in myth, heroes even when I saw the champion overbalance and fall trying to urinate at the pub, one act at least I would soon be capable of emulating.