It was no wonder 8 year old Judi grew up able to tell fine stories that usually had only the glimmerings of truth as their seed.
She was growing up with a wildly imaginative, creative mother, Eileen Edith called EE. (Her story about the origin of her name had her listeners entranced.)
Judi also learned to love growing things along with her mother’s milk as EE had the proverbial ‘green fingers’.
Whether it was an avocado pip spiked with matchsticks propped up in a glass jar, hovering over water to grow the roots, or landscaping her garden, she always had a deep urge to plant and nurture things………..Judi included. She was thought to be an extremely lucky girl when it came to moms, unusual though she was.
With soil grubby hands they stood up one day from their planting and surveyed their handiwork, cool drinks in hand.
‘You see this JJ,’ Judi’s second name was Joyce and EE instinctively followed her pattern. (She named the dog next door HH – designated because his name was Harold and she said he stank Horribly!)
‘You see this JJ,’ she repeated swinging her arm in a wide arc across the flower bed they had just finished planting with 100 seedlings. ‘THIS is going to be a sheet of colour in a few weeks, a rainbow garden…………’ And Judi in her mind’s eye could see it exactly as indeed it happened. Within those designated few weeks, the seedlings from ‘Fabulous Flowers’ nursery burst with their promise and was that sheet of colour.
So enchanting it was that a reporter that year featured it in a glorious photograph in the local newspaper as
‘A Herald to Spring’.
Image source Pixabay
One Sunday after church, JJ with EE, her dad Paul, (though his second name was Patrick, he for obvious reasons was not called by his double letter) were having ice creams as their usual treat after the service.
JJ was unusually quiet. She adored Sunday school and often re -enacted the stories she was told. The songs they sang were legend especially at bath time.
‘What’s going on Muppet?’ her dad enquired, dabbing her freckled nose with vanilla, ‘you’re quiet. What was the story today?’
Image source Pixabay
JJ stared thoughtfully at her motorbike, model- aeroplane, war story mad, dad and after licking a dribble down her cone she launched into re- enacting the bible story.
‘The story today was about when the Fair Oh finally said to Moziz and his big…………. akshally HUGE family, he was crying ‘cos his first born son was dead and it was his fault. He had to plan the funeral. He shouted at Moziz that he was sick of frogs and boils and bloody, she put her fingers to her lips guiltily, water………flies too. So his family should just
GO GET LOST!.’
She flung out her arm imperiously as no doubt the Fair Oh had done.
She licked her ice cream enthusiastically until with a crunch the final bit of cone was gone.
‘So Moziz vamoosed, just like that,’ with that she tried her best to snap her fingers probably as the teenage fill in teacher had done. (On that particular Sunday it was Robert, their neighbour's 17 year old son who occasionally could be persuaded to help out.)
‘Then they went, the whole crowd of them, cows and chickens, kids and grannies……….all the dads and moms……..e v e r y b u d d y!’ she exclaimed.
She warmed to her story.
‘They were going quite well when they heard soldiers coming in trucks. But there was a sea that was coloured in the wrong colour because some kid had picked up the red crayon, anyway Moziz had to make a plan quickly because they could hear trucks and army tanks coming to kill them for running away. So in any case Moziz got the sea to go away and his family finally ‘got their act together’ and they were going through on the dry sand,’
JJ looked very thoughtful at this point but she picked up the story bravely.
‘Then as the last little boy got across, the sea came back and all the soldiers got drownded and the fighter jets got hit by huge waves and there were no submarines………..obviously.
So they died but not Mozis who then had a heck of a time getting his family to the promised land.
THE END!’ she said dramatically and offered to eat her mother’s ignored ice cream that was dripping onto the pavement.
‘Wow,’ said her father, ‘JJ is that what Robert said happened?’
‘Well dad,’ she sighed, ‘you’d simply never believe the story he told!’
Shaking their heads and smiling broadly the little family they wiped their sticky fingers with tissues from EE’s bag and drove home.
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