I lived in a large semi-detached house with a sprawling garden when I was growing up. My mother grew palms, a Christmas tree, dahlias and orchids in our front garden. In our back garden, she grew fruit trees- a mango tree , a papaya tree and a longan tree whose branches twisted and turned like some ornate bejewelled crown. From the piano bench where I would play for hours tunes from my head, I could look out at the sparrows that perched and frolicked about in that longan tree.
I still remember that tree today , in my mind’s eye, and recall the light and shade it bestowed upon those common birds, making them , for that moment- ethereal.
I loved exploring our garden. I especially enjoyed pulling weeds ( not anymore!), digging soil
and making ’chocolate soup’ with bits of stones, feathers and twigs. At the bottom of the garden was
a clump of what I then thought were ’diamonds’, left there by dwarves escaping from treacherous goblins.
These stones were my responsibility, entrusted by the dwarves. Each evening found me among those
‘diamonds’, poking them, rolling them over with my foot, chiselling at them with other stones and
then gathering them furtively into a ’special’ plastic bag. They broke off easily, and looked like orange crystals, glimmering in the sunshine when I held them up. What were they really ? I have asked my mother several times but she does not remember them. I still don’t know what they were, but they definitely filled me with great wonder and set my imagination spinning .
I must have outgrown those rocks when I started going to elementary school. I can’t remember when
they were removed, for I recall looking for them before we moved house in my teen years. But they
were no longer there.
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