filling his sorrow with cake

prince ward & namesake : gerehu pom 2005 : two beautiful hearts. two shining promises. two old souls. my two little cousins.

Prince Ward and his little sister, my Namesake are my little cousins, still in primary school. They lost their mother 4 years ago and every so often a shudder runs through them like a little electric shock, reminding them just how deep their loss runs. Sometimes they exhale slow, sometimes they shriek. But its rare. Most of the time they just carry it around like a sad sack on their backs.

So I hold them close all the more. All. The. More.

Prince Ward has been the little fat one of the clan. Spoilt a bit by Auntie D and still young enough to eat sugar for play and old enough to know better.

His daddy, Ew, bought him a bicycle two weeks ago and ... it has changed his whole body. Changed. Overnight. No longer hunched over, slinging his shorts and chins over his hanging belly. No longer leaving the top button of his shorts undone. No longer puffing the stairs up to the verandah. No longer wheezing and no longer lacking energy.

He is playing. Again.

And what gets me is how little people can just SHED. SHED. Shed all that heavy just by PLAYING. PLAYING. It's like some kind of perfect remedy. That play should cure sadness. That play should soothe the ache. That play takes away the fat by fun.

And MyMama, who flew into town last night said it when she said Prince Ward was "filling his sorrow with cake". Now he is just starting to shake off some of the old heavy, and he'll always carry that, but it's not going to manifest itself around his waist or his heart. It's part of dealing and it's part of growing up.