The Little Girl

Small children are said to be the messiest creatures in the world, but who accounted for the children that preferred the word tidy without a not in the same sentence? Was it the little children that fold their clothes and organise their toys by importance? Or maybe they meant those little girls that rolled in the mud like boys and caught snails just because.

And then these little children would grow. As their talents and knowledge evolved, so their muddy foot prints and bowls of milk turned into low school grades and various other lesser obvious messes. Parents would swell with pride when their teachers told them how smart their little girl was, how well she got along with everyone. And then the bearded father would laugh at the teacher's worried face as she told him of his little girl's cheek. "These are too easy, my dad can spell them" the loose-toothed angel would tell her teacher when it came time to learn new spelling words.

But through all these scraped knees and wasp stings, the little girl would always get through. She would hold her giant pet frog that sat like a toad and pat her adoring dog that loved all in the world but those small and fluffy. She would move schools and meet bullies, but she would always learn; even if she did change along the way.

Maybe one day this little girl would become a forensic scientist or a teacher. Maybe she would fulfil her childhood plan of pairing with her best friend and own a mobile veterinary practice. Maybe she would become an author and sell hundreds of different books.

That little girl's foot steps are entwined with so many others and so many normalities, but they are her own and were woven in a new way that no one else could or would ever be able to copy. A head of her were so many paths, some paved by tiles or footprints from those before her, some just a light scattering of animal tracts, waiting to show their secrets. Good and bad. There are so many paths, and like those fallen behind the girl, she would stumble from one to the other and make her own. But all I can see when I look down right now are my feet, with aging prints behind me and toes itching to take that next step, to see where it will fall and what it will do. The little child behind me jumps from shallow ditch to shallow ditch, the imprints of our feet. Maybe I have changed, but our memories will always be with us. One day I will be like that crawling babe and those bouncing pig-tails, following another stranger I was meant to be. One day I will follow in the sand...