Short Stories, Poems, And Big Ideas

The Red Umbrella

This short story is dedicated to my friend Skye, who understands me on a level that most don't. Sometimes, talking to you can be like a walk in the rain: renewing, calming, and heartwarming. Thank you for being with me in my mind when you can't be with me in physical form.

The girl was alone as she wandered through the city, her red umbrella by her side. She could see no colors at all, save the umbrella.

It was the only thing her mother had given her before she'd died; and now, three years later, the girl carried it wherever she went. To her, it was more important than air, for she'd seen colors before her beloved mother passed.

Now, all that was left for her to enjoy was the red colour; as her mother gone, she'd taken a piece of her daughter's heart that could never be replaced.

Then, as soon as the clock struck nine that evening, her mother whispered, "You will see me in the rain."

And nine-oh-one, she fell to her illness.

The girl had kept her mother's umbrella through the years that followed. Every time it rained, she'd stand outside under it and watch the drops fall. That was, after all, why her late mother had given her the umbrella. She wanted her daughter to feel close to her.

Nine was her unlucky number; her mother had said her last words at nine-o-clock, she was nine when her mother died, and now, nine years later, she was alone as she went through the anniversary for the first time ever, because nine days ago her father had fallen to the same illness.

She heard laughter and turned her head to the side. There was a nine-year old girl, as her birthday cake candle said, talking to her parents.

Standing there, with her mother's umbrella, she wanted to cry for her mother for the first time in nine years. She'd always felt her mother was close, but in more recent months, she'd fallen away; now, her mother's presence was no longer there.

The hole her mother left in her heart had grown widely over the past nine years. Now, there was more emptiness than anything left for the girl to feel.

For the first time in nine years, she cried. She wept for the memories she'd made and the memories she hadn't. She sobbed for the touch of a soothing hand on her back that she hadn't felt in nine years, and the beautiful smile she hadn't once given since it was lost.

As her tears streamed down her face faster and faster, the rain poured down as well, as if corresponding with the girl's tears.

A raindrop touched her bare ankle. It was only as the light droplet first made contact that the girl saw something she hadn't seen in nine years: color.

The sidewalk was red, the birthday girl's hair was brown, the sky was deep blue...

And it was all colorful, but just for a nanosecond.

And, for just that fraction of a moment, she felt.. full. The hole her mother had left was gone, replaced now by something different.

She couldn't name it, but it felt good.

A thought occurred to her: she'd never touched the rain, skin-to-skin, since her mother died. She'd only stood under her red umbrella.

The girl's shaking hand was held out to the rain.

As the droplets hit her fingers, she observed the world change from monotone to colorful over and over.

She held her arm out more, mouth open in shock as she observed the colors around her.

She spun in a one-eighty-degree circle, and came to a stop when she saw the Eiffel tower in the distance.

When she was younger, her mother promised that they could go together on her eighteenth birthday.

"I can see you in the rain, Mother," she said, as the wind blew. She allowed the umbrella to be pulled from her hand and fall to the ground behind her.

"And you are beautiful." She took off running to the tower, smiling for the first time in nine years.

She had a name for the thing that had filled the hole in her heart. What she supposed wasn't a coincidence, was that the emotion and her mother shared that name.

Joy.