ORDINARY DREAMS

ORDINARY DREAMS

Everyone expects me to do extraordinary things, which is good. But sometimes it mounts pressure on me, pressure and fear. Fear of not meeting up to expectations. Ordinary things are a lot easier and they are real. No forming is involved.  This one’s for all of you- us, with ordinary dreams.

She was always running.

When she was little, father bought her shoes that had wheels underneath their sole; they kept her on the move all the time. On one occasion we were on our way back home from school when she hit one of the most feared kids in our school on purpose. It was a dare. She fled, leaving me to take the blame and apologise for my little sister’s misconduct. That was before secondary school.

I failed the first common entrance examination I wrote, so we ended up in the same class. I remember my English teacher usually warned me to be careful with sister.

“Your sister is running fast. She has caught up with you already and will soon overtake you if you don’t put on your own running shoes”

 I had failed her English test for the second time that term. She would be surprised to learn that I write for a living. I went home and told father to buy me a running shoe if he wanted me to pass English test. He laughed and laughed.

My sister was everything good. She has fast legs and was very swift. Back in secondary school, our games instructor described her as a mini-cheetah. She made us proud, made father proud. He loved her dearly and treated her with the same dearness and love. We were just two sisters and a father. People say my sister looks like our mother and father told us that in her youthful days mother was a record-breaking runner. I got jealous sometimes. Those days, when father came to pick us up after school both of them would share a bear hug but as for me, he just pats my head with his giant hands. In the evenings, instead of helping me out with the dishes she would sit with father under the mango tree that stood in the middle of our yard, listening to him play the flute. I listened too but from the kitchen. At such times I reminded myself that father loved her more because she looks like mother a lot.

I love my sister. I know she loves father and I too. When she turned twenty, father took a wife. I was twenty-one. She didn’t take it well. It shattered her. She didn’t want a step mom to share her father with. I didn’t want one either but I didn’t runaway like she did. She just couldn’t take it anymore. The sight of father now filled her with anger.

She stopped coming back home from school often until one day we never saw her again. We didn’t even know if she graduated but father sent her money for her fees and up keep regularly.

It hurt father too much to see her slip away. He was happily married but unhappy. I did not miss the preferential treatment she received from father but I missed my sister. I missed listening to her talk about her dreams. She wanted to be an athlete. She worked diligently towards it until father’s wedding. Father’s marriage changed everything.

 Sometimes father jokes that she resigned because she had gotten to the peak of her career by running away from home, away from him. It made me laughed but it also made me cry. I saw the lines near his eyes and the sadness in his soul each time he talked about it. He wished he could make it up to her, he wished she would forgive him and come back home.

She wasn’t missing. We saw her on TV and in magazines. She didn’t run on tracks anymore. Her long-slender legs had other uses. Father said she abandoned her dreams for ordinary ones. In my opinion she still runs, only on runways this time. Maybe her dreams got a little altered or maybe they took a vacation but they certainly weren’t abandoned.

 She will run again someday, soon. When that day comes I’ll be sitting by father’s grave mourning him, rejoicing her return. When that day comes, she’ll run back home.


written by sylvia............  nyc work.