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My day in town

"My day in town" is a slice-of-life short story written by Russell Cavanagh about losing access to one's son in the family courts.

Full English in mind, I walk through the door and past so many empty tables. Greek owners, I think.

    “How many?” he asks. Greek, right enough.

    “Just the one.”

    “A seat here, please,” he says, showing me to a table behind a pillar and far from any plate glass.

    I respond by turning and leaving, pointedly eyeing undeniably available window seats before passing back through the door and out into late morning sunshine.

    In the park across the street a little girl wearing pigtails and a gap-tooth smile swings her pencil legs above precious few worldly cares. She is with her mother, her father hopefully at work.

    I know the girl will forget this day, perhaps until a vague childhood recollection much later when a thousand such times and many thousand such suns have passed.

    Stay loved, little girl, I think to myself, and never lose your trust in a future as yet unknowable - not yet, anyway.

     Looking at my watch I remember I will soon be in the family court. I will be in front of a judge, pleading the case for stopping my ex-wife from taking my own young son far away and into another jurisdiction.

 

 

 

CC BY-ND 4.0 Russell Cavanagh

Mark 10:9 - KJV

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