Ordinary

Ordinary

Ordinary. It was just the very ordinary look of her face, her hairstyle, the way she walked. Well maybe not her walk. Her shoulder’s bowed, she didn’t quite shuffle but walked stiffly, head down and even from the back she looked beaten and sad. Even her name was ordinary. Jane. Not Jane Doe at least, but Jane Brown. An ordinary Jane. Sad and yet hopeful. So very hopeful. It was her daughter who called to her. Not literally, but in her look when she saw her mother ‘in her cups’ again, or trembling so badly she couldn’t even hold her cup of coffee to her lips. The pained and worried look on her husband’s face. Her own mother’s set jaw to see her daughter sliding far too quickly down a slippery, rocky slope. And there was the new grandchild to be born. Her son and daughter kept hinting that as long as she was not ‘clean and sober’ - how she hated that phrase - she would be unable to see her first grandchild.

This was her second, or was it her third, attempt to find sanity and purpose in sobriety. It didn’t matter. She was going to stop this time and for good. She didn’t really have much of a plan, but she had a team of people supporting her, and friends that would be honest with her, take her by the hand and lead her carefully over the rocks. Jane Brown wanted to answer her family’s call - and the call of her own heart. Jane wanted to belong again, to live again. As she walked away from me, I saw her straighten, her head up and her step become stronger.

“The things you do for yourself are gone when you are gone, 

but the things you do for others remain as your legacy.”

~ Kalu Ndukwe Kalu