This piece was written for the prompt ‘The most beautiful’. It made me nostalgic just writing it.
She hoarded buttons, twine, sweet paper wrappings and cellophane, pretty packaging and glossy magazines and kept them in a special box that they hauled out on rainy days. They would stick and glue and make models and collages which now adorned the shelves and walls.
Sometimes they would dress up and she kept a musty chest full of squashed hats, cowboy waistcoats, pirate eye patches, swords and capes which they would don, transforming the playroom into make believe galleons, saloons and spaceships. Furniture was dragged around, dens were built and strange names, voices and accents adopted.
Occasionally they would bake where she directed his creativity a little more closely, not wanting to waste gallons of milk, pats of butter and bags of flour, but their favourite was always chocolate Krispie cakes, which he managed without too much supervision.
She adored the little years when he was receptive, responsive and gleeful. He listened and learned, regurgitated funny things he heard that made them laugh. He could keep himself amused for hours on end in his own world, safe in the knowledge he could explore literally and figuratively as far as his imagination allowed.
And then he went to school, leaving the magic world she had created for him behind. He came home with a new vocabulary, new songs she hadn’t taught him and new artwork in whose creation she had played no part.
He had been an only child and now he was flourishing and it was the most beautiful thing.
