In The Eyes Of A Child

I suppose if the story that I am going to tell you needs to make any
sense, I should start at the beginning. Way back when I was a mere
toddler, and my memories are vague and spaced apart. Just after I was
born, my heavily pregnant mother, father and sister moved up to
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, breathlessly awaiting another sibling to be born.
We lived in a council house in a part of Newcastle which was not
altogether pleasant and modern, but where everyone enjoyed themselves
despite their lack of desire for posh food, and expensive clothes. I
remember one Christmas time; a couple of years after my brother was
born. My sister Kim, my brother Ben and I all grabbed our stocking from
the end of our beds, eagerly sticking our hands in and trying to guess
what the presents were. We congregated to the bathroom for some unknown
reason, where we sat on the cold enamel tiling of the bathroom floor in
the milky light. It was barely five minutes past six, and we waited
there with baited breath as each one of us slowly opened our presents,
trying to do it as quietly as we could without disturbing our parents
who were in the room next door. Our hearts filled with ecstasy as we
unleashed the presents from within their wrapping paper. The only gift
I can remember is my sister's; she received a ghostwriter pen. That
huge white plastic pen that had two ends. You wrote your invisible note
with the white end, and coloured over it with the purple end so it
became detectable. I envied her. I wanted it so badly I though about
snapping it in half so that she'd be disappointed too. You have to
realise, I was only a small child. We are all evil at that age. As for
the rest of the day, I can hardly remember. You have to understand, I
was barely four years old, and those memories are unfortunately
disappearing rapidly as I grow older. The more I think about them, the
more I lose significant pictures. Though there is one quite painful yet
comical recollection that I know will always stay in my mind forever.
My family and I moved from that council house into another one, further
down the road and nearer to my grandma, whose husband had died some
while back (according to my father, my grandfather's only wish was to
see me and my brother. He got both of them, but died 6 days after Ben
being born. This reminisce still brings tears to my eyes). I recall me
and my sister running down the back lane behind the houses we lived
near, which were littered with broken spirit bottles, fag packets and
wrecked bicycles. Even though the lane might've sounded and looked like
no place for children, we had countless hours of fun down there, racing
around and playing hide and seek. It was one of the best moments of my
life. But then the heartbreak began. My father, who was a brilliant
ambulance man, yet not quite a paramedic, had loved working in
Newcastle. Until he got a transfer to Torquay and work down there. He
told us we were going to live in Babbacombe, and I'd attend the
playschool there while my sister went to a special school, Steps Cross.
For you see, my sister had always seemed a healthy, lively child. Sure,
she was a slightly darker colour than me and her father wasn't my
father, but that never made any difference. And then it dawned on me.
Kim wasn't perfect. She was far from it. When she'd been born, five
years earlier than me, she was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis. A
genetic disease in the chest. It didn't occur to me that every day was
a fight for her life, and how many pills or cups of medicine she had to
take in order to stay as healthy as she could be. Me, I didn't know so
I wasn't worried. I simply carried on with my life. Of course, I didn't
know this back then. Anytime she had to go into hospital, or see a
nurse/doctor, it was everyday life. I stowed those memories away into
the far abyss of my mind. I always thought that love would see us
through to the end. That nothing could ever harm us, and even as I lay
awake at night listening to the sounds of windows breaking and drunken
laughter, I knew nothing would ever hurt me.