Once upon a time there was a girl, a most impatient girl, cursed with the name of Patience.
What, you might ask, would prompt reasonable people to look down on a scarlet scrap of newborn rage, shaking clenched fists no bigger than a walnut at the world, tensing it’s tiny body in indignation; and name it Patience?
Easy. Inheritance.
That’s right. There was an Aunt Patience.
Rich, single, approaching old age and of very uncertain temper.
So the tiny Patience and the old Patience actually had a lot in common. Both were afflicted with unsuitable names; both were targets for manipulation by close relatives, and both were cursed with acuity of mind. They were also about to be drawn together in a singular adventure, designed by Fate to test their mettle, their endurance; and of course, their patience.
Malicious Fate took a hand in a big way. A rather cruel hand. The Bitch-Goddess Fate dealt little Patience a deathly blow. Her parents died.
She was just three months old, and would have been as uninteresting as any other milk-dribbling puddle of sweet baby-flesh: rosy, dimpled and deliciously scented with that special magical baby-scent designed by nature to drive adult humans into paroxysms of ecstasy - except for the rather disturbing, and precocious character traits she insisted on displaying with alarming ferocity: a temper.
And what a temper…The sweetly rounded face turned puce, the rose-bud mouth yawned wide into a toothless grimace of menace, and she yowled. Patience did not cry. A sound a demon from hell would have been proud to claim, was her trade-mark. She had the lung capacity of a Bel-canto Diva, and the persistence of a dung beetle.
So there she was. Three months old, and the only two people in the world that could have been expected to find her reasonably adorable were dead.
And that was when the old Patience got the whammie. The powers-that-be deposited little Patience squarely on her shrinking hands.
Now old Patience wasn’t actually that old. She was 59. An excellent age for a woman. Unencumbered by romantic expectations, blessed with reasonable wealth, she was used to happiness. She took it as a matter of course. Patience was happy, selfish, content, and intolerant of anything that might threaten the status quo of her divinely set up life.
So here, sudenly, was the end to joyful liberty...
What, you might ask, would prompt reasonable people to look down on a scarlet scrap of newborn rage, shaking clenched fists no bigger than a walnut at the world, tensing it’s tiny body in indignation; and name it Patience?
Easy. Inheritance.
That’s right. There was an Aunt Patience.
Rich, single, approaching old age and of very uncertain temper.
So the tiny Patience and the old Patience actually had a lot in common. Both were afflicted with unsuitable names; both were targets for manipulation by close relatives, and both were cursed with acuity of mind. They were also about to be drawn together in a singular adventure, designed by Fate to test their mettle, their endurance; and of course, their patience.
Malicious Fate took a hand in a big way. A rather cruel hand. The Bitch-Goddess Fate dealt little Patience a deathly blow. Her parents died.
She was just three months old, and would have been as uninteresting as any other milk-dribbling puddle of sweet baby-flesh: rosy, dimpled and deliciously scented with that special magical baby-scent designed by nature to drive adult humans into paroxysms of ecstasy - except for the rather disturbing, and precocious character traits she insisted on displaying with alarming ferocity: a temper.
And what a temper…The sweetly rounded face turned puce, the rose-bud mouth yawned wide into a toothless grimace of menace, and she yowled. Patience did not cry. A sound a demon from hell would have been proud to claim, was her trade-mark. She had the lung capacity of a Bel-canto Diva, and the persistence of a dung beetle.
So there she was. Three months old, and the only two people in the world that could have been expected to find her reasonably adorable were dead.
And that was when the old Patience got the whammie. The powers-that-be deposited little Patience squarely on her shrinking hands.
Now old Patience wasn’t actually that old. She was 59. An excellent age for a woman. Unencumbered by romantic expectations, blessed with reasonable wealth, she was used to happiness. She took it as a matter of course. Patience was happy, selfish, content, and intolerant of anything that might threaten the status quo of her divinely set up life.
So here, sudenly, was the end to joyful liberty...
Manuela Cardiga
No comments:
Post a Comment