Writing In The Sand...

Writing In The Sand...
By Gloria Faye Brown Bates/Granny Gee



She sat playing on her tablet. She downloaded an app called ' Writing In The Sand.'


She used her finger to write her name in fancy print. She swirled her finger to make scurvy lines beneath her name.


She clicked above on the upper left side of the tablet to erase hued name.
'I LOVE YOU... SKIP' appeared on the screen. She clicked above to erase the words.


Her finger traced out a flower with six petals. She drew out a stem; she drew three leaves on it... then, she clicked to erase it.


She began writing... 'I LOVE YOU, SON. I MISS YOU WITH MY VERY HEART'.
If anyone was looking at the woman sitting there in the black pickup truck... they would see just an ordinary woman sitting there playing on her tablet. No one would ever guess how 'unordinary' this woman was.


No one would see the grief, nor feel the strange sensation in the woman's stomach. No one would see the quick tears fill her eyes. At a distance, she seemed to be absorbed in what she was doing.


The woman looked at the words she wrote with her fingers 'in the sand.' She took her pink stylus, raised it to upper left corner, clicked... erasing the ... pain... she'd wrote.


She lowered the tablet to her lap... she raised her head, looked off in the distance. She looked past the trees to the sky, her mind following her eyes.


She sat there, unaware of the tears in her eyes. She sat there lost in the past... no longer aware of the present.


In her mind... all kinds of things were happening. If one looked closely at the woman... they might see a smile appear, a frown. They might see the tears begin to flow in earnest down her face. They would see her hand reach up absent-mindedly ... touch her face, rub the tears away.


If someone watched long enough... they would see the woman's shoulders shaking; see her place her hand on her chest, above her heart. See her lips move... not hear the words she cries out silently.


No one would ever know, understand what they seeing. How could they? Their eyes would see only an older woman sitting alone, waiting for someone... quietly.


The woman smiled as the sound of the door alerted her... her husband was opening it. He got inside the pickup truck... smiled at her never knowing what she had been through while he was gone. She never told him... they were very close; he would worry, be upset.


She kept smiling, talking about ordinary things. Skip, her husband... would never know how far she traveled, as she waited for him.


He would never know that she wrote her grief ... as she was writing in the sand.