RIP Story: Sept 23rd, 2024

The rain was her favorite kind of day. Not mummy, no. The rain was evil to mummy. She’d asked for a raincoat and hat for her birthday. A gift her mother secretly questioned, but Leena’s Dad was happy to take her splashing around the streets and walking around the park where there would be no other kids but lots of puddles.

Leena and her dad walked out of the apartment. The cars were moving fast, and their engines were loud, but Leena only heard the water in the gutters and downspouts from the buildings. Her Dad carried an umbrella, but he didn’t use it. He wore hats too and the water drops falling from the brim of their hats made the outing more fun. A familiar path to the park took them away from the sounds of the streets and into the waterlogged gravel pathways of the park.

At first, the wet crunch of the gravel took Leena’s attention away from wet fields in the rest of the park. There were no puddles in this part of the park. The dirt paths closer to the trees would have more splash zones. Leena saw the first puddle of this storm in a field. It was wider that she was tall, and she became a cheetah as soon as she saw it. Her little legs churned as fast as they could. How big a splash can I make?" She thought to herself. The moment to jump was a few steps away then she felt her legs come out from underneath her. She hit the ground, rolled then came to a stop at the edge of the puddle. Too stunned to be hurt, the dog that knocked her over licked her face. “EW!” she said as her dad reached where she had fallen over. “Are you ok?” he asked.

Satisfied she was not hurt; her dad shared a laugh with the dog’s person. It was her uncle, “but he’s not really my uncle” she would tell her friends. Leena knew her parents were only children, but for some reason she still had several aunts and uncles. The three people and one dog spent the next while walking around the park, in the rain. Leena chased the dog though puddles and turned her fresh raincoat into a muddy tarp. “It’ll wash off on the way home,” her dad said.

On the way home, Leena was thinking about her mummy and the fun times she had missed. Her dad took her into a store and asked Leena if she would like to get her mother anything.

Fifteen minutes later, Leena’s dad walked into their apartment holding a sleeping child with a heart balloon tied to her wrist. “She wanted you to have this. The balloon, of course,” her father said.

Thanks for reading, see you tomorrow.

EPILOGUE: Simple. I thought of my walks in Paris during the rain while writing this.