When the morning comes

12 | youth

When I turned six years old, it'd also marked two years since my father had left my mother, my three elder sisters and me behind. Mum was still mourning his absence, whereas my memories about him had faded. Mostly. Except for one.

Raising three children on your own seemed tough to me, and I knew mum had always felt the same way. For months she had tried to give us the attention and love we needed, but at some point her heart bursted- and not in the good way. She needed to empty the remaining parts of what was left of her heart at that moment, needed to try and give everything place in all of the loose and broken pieces of her heart.

On one morning, she read the ad in a newspaper. A coffee group in the morning. Strongly, she had felt the need to go there. Since I had been six around that time, being a full time stay at home kid because I would start school after summer holidays, she had no choice but bring me along. The group mostly consisted out of women who pulled my cheeks, called me to be a heartbreaker in many years. The comment had always made me feel upset, because although I didn't fully understand what it meant, I knew my mother's had been broken- no, shattered. And I didn't want to do that.

Then there were the men, who had the morning off from work and came for some socialising. I'd never paid much attention to them, except for one in particular. The pastor, with his twenty-eight years old, just finished theology study and five daughters. He was the youngest among the group. Despite all that- he had the knowledge of a man who'd lived two lifetimes and a listening ear bigger than all of the ears that were in that room collected together.

Teddy Wood.

A few days before, on my sixth birthday, my mother had given me a stuffed horse. Filled with grains, smelling like lavender, which could be put in the microwave to fulfill the function as a hotpack that way. No matter how much I ate, I stayed rather skinny, so I was often cold at night. There was no message behind it being a horse, other than that my mother had saved for a birthday present for months and finding out the store had ran out of the other animals the day before my birthday.

It was the day that I brought it with me that I gained someone's attention. Standing in between my mother's legs, I had brought the horse up to her nose several times on purpose, giving me the attention I had, maybe subconsciously, been searching for. While doing so, I had looked over my shoulder, Teddy's direction, quite some times.

At some point he'd asked; 'What do you have there?' Right after, I had stuffed my fingers into my mouth. Sucked them. Pressed my body against my mothers'. "Ahrs." Came out- I'd turned self aware of my attention seeking behaviour.

"I've never heard of a 'ahrs' before.. is it a dog breed, maybe?" He pulled a thinking face- to which I giggled.

"Horse."

He'd smiled at that, lowered down to my height. I wanted to bring it up to his face. "I hope it doesn't smell like horse poop, then."

More giggles. "Flowers."

He sniffed it, closed his eyes and let out a deep, satisfied breath. He'd poked my cheek, I wanted to sit on his lap. He asked my mother- she approved. That's exactly where our bond started to grow. He was a sonless father. I was a fatherless son. I was the son he never had. He was the father I never had. That- and the flower smelling stuffed horse.

However, the flower smelling stuffed horse was also where a certain trait of me started to come up. The bond I had with my sisters was complicated. My eldest sister Neveah had been fourteen when my father left. Maeve had been thirteen and Ava eleven. I'd been four- there was quite the age gap, considering there was also a difference between the genders, we just didn't get along well.

Every day, it was them against me. They were in puberty, I just wanted to play. I was their annoying little brother, excluded every time, but needed when they wanted something from the kitchen or the shop.