A man and a woman walk through the park together, holding hands. They pass an old woman sitting on a bench. The old woman is knitting a small, red sweater. The man begins to cry. He remembers the small red sweater his mum made for his little brother who died before he was old enough to wear it.
She held his hand tighter, looked around to see what made him cry and saw the old woman knitting. She wondered if he was crying for their unborn child or for the one they had already lost. Pushing back the tears in her eyes, she told him “we’d be fine darling”.
The old woman knitting looked up, she saw a young couple; the wife pregnant, the husband crying. She could guess they had lost a child, she knew how it felt. Her eyes went back to her knitting for she knew it was unmannerly to stare at them. One stitch later, she went to them, gave the man a hanky and standing tiptoed to touch their shoulders said ” don’t cry my child everything will be fine” and went back to her bench.
Blinking tears, he looked at his wife then the hanky and the receding figure of the old woman and whispered “Thank you ma’am”. They continued their walk round the park and getting to where the old woman sat smiled and waved .
The Sweater
28 Sunday Sep 2014
Posted Prompts
in