Separation...........too much to bear. Part 1 of a 2 part story.

‘They’re going overseas to have FUN! ……….and I’m going to lose my dog,’ exploded Jay to his best friend Jody.’

Jody just looked at him with wild eyes. ‘WHAT?’ he yelped.

‘They’re selling up and we’ll never see each other again!’ he ranted further.

Jody’s eyes filled with tears……..and so did Jay’s.

To the 10 year old boys whose lives really began on Friday afternoons when the school bus left them on their smallholdings on the outskirts of the town, this news was cataclysmic!

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Their lives of riding their bikes…….. dogs running free with them in the natural forest…….making dams in the small river…… mock fighting with sticks as they had seen the herd boys doing…….. sharing fat ‘sarmies’ after a swim in the pool, flashed before their eyes.

All GONE in a ridiculous notion that the all powerful PARENTS had.

‘Second childhood,’ I reckon muttered Jay. ‘Can’t they just get the memo that they’re old and settle down?’

‘How do you know?’ whispered Jody in abject misery.

‘They think I can’t hear them talking…..they thought I was asleep but I could hear their voices going on and ON. I went to ask them what was happening and then I heard my dad say that our gardener Sipho would take my dog, so I just listened at the door.’ He raised his finger,’ I know, I know I shouldn’t have done that but …….Fella, GONE, just like that,’ and he snapped his fingers.

Their eyes met………just a depth of sadness was there now that the tears had washed tracks down their dirty faces. The look said, ‘parents have the power to do anything and we are helpless.’

‘Come on, race you to the rocks,’ yelled Jody. Anything to release this pent up fear, dread and anger welling up inside them. The two dogs, also best mates, Fella and Jody’s dog Ranger leapt up from playing with each other and followed the disappearing bikes in a flurry of flapping tongues, canine legs and fur.

Earlier that day, Rose, Jay’s mother sat mute with anguish hunched over her 6 am cuppa on the chilly veranda. The view of the sun peeping through the mist held no charm for her. She realised that Jay ‘knew….suspected…….something,’ and her heart broke for him.
‘We have to talk to him Mike,’ she had said to her husband before she got up. ‘We’re going to face terrible consequences if we don’t.’
‘Yes,’ he had said curtly. Having been brought up in a series of boarding schools from the age of 7, he didn’t really understand the fuss. ‘He’ll get over it…..it’s our time that’s important. He’s only 10, he’ll adapt. Goodness knows, I did,’ and he rubbed his hands down his face in frustration.

The boys skidded their bikes up to the rocks in a dead heat and as the dogs tumbled into the whirl of dust, boys and bikes, it looked like a happy picture. But their faces were grim and they stared at each other without the usual feeble jokes and laughter.

Jody drew himself up on his saddle and said earnestly, ‘you know our English teacher Mr Poulson always says ‘forewarned is forearmed’? I think finally I ‘get’ what it means.’

Jay looked at him with a tiny glimmer of hope moving in the depths of his being. ‘What do you mean?’ he gestured hopelessly at themselves, the bikes, dogs, river!

‘Follow me my man, I HAVE A PLAN!’ He flipped the back wheel of his bike around and headed for his home.
With a shrug Jay followed. Mrs Aird, Jody's mom was great, always ready with the rusks and tea and sometimes even cooked up a mass of scrambled eggs with bacon bits that had his mouth drooling.

Head low, he dug hard with his feet on the pedals and speeded up to catch Jody.

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