Humble Beginnings

She ran her fingers through those golden beads of wheat that shone bright that particular morning. She didn’t know a lot of things, that girl. She didn’t know what becomes of the soul when death strikes, she didn’t know if there really was a soul to begin with and she didn’t know what to count as the beginning itself. She didn’t know the taste of wine, she didn’t know trend analysis and she most definitely didn’t know how in the world that damned thing called the internet, worked. She didn’t know of a black flower, she didn’t know the names of the artists of her favourite band and she had once even put Argentina on the map of Asia. She didn’t know the names of common trees or even what to call the person who drives a train. Train-driver? If that was the case, she didn’t know why they weren’t given specific titles like that of a pilot or a chauffeur. And then, when she stretched that thought on that particularly jaded morning, she wondered why she hadn’t thought of the bus driver who suffered the same insult hollered blatantly at him by the English language. So if there’s one thing you can be sure of right about now, is that the girl really didn’t know a lot of things.

But as she spread the fingers of both her hands taut, her palms facing downwards and scooped into that sufficient heap of gold, she began to check something off that infinite ignorance of hers. She raised her hands continuing that scooping movement and allowed her fingers to get intimate with the rough grains; she was getting to know something new. Something useless, possibly insignificant and absolutely inconsequential, but it counted. And as the wheat grains began to break away from that intimacy and slipped through her fingers, abandoning her existence, she knew the touch of wheat. She knew that. So now if anyone asked her whether or not she knew how it felt to run her fingers through a treasure of wheat grains, Cara would say that she did. She would say, ‘I know’.

That was a beautiful thought. It was good to know, it was safe to know. And it made Cara so happy; it made her so excited that she strived to stifle the giggles that escaped her, like a little child. And like that little child, she let her fingers run wild through the wheat grains. She gathered, clutched, dug further in, held and just as violently released what she now knew. She was entering a trance. The wheat was seeping into her skin and ecstasy was taking over. They were getting to know each other, they were understanding aspiration. Strangers to life, they were falling in what could have been love.

‘Breakfast!’

And she snapped out of it. She had been careful to contain her arms, so no one could relish what was hers, so her affair today morning became our secret.

Cara began to leave; it was her turn to abandon the wheat.