Light

John sat down heavily on the sand near the water, his knees drawn up and his arms draped around them. He reached down and took a small handful of the pebbly sand, tossing it lightly up and down so the sand sifted gently away leaving a few small stones cupped in his big palm. He looked up from his hand and then threw the stones lightly out into the water, watching the spattering spots as they broke the surface. 

Ripples spread and floated away downstream. He kicked the thongs off his feet and reached his legs out, sitting still for a while and then leaning forward to ladle water over his lower legs, one leg and then the other, his back moving in a slow rhythm as if leaning to an oar.

“Looks as if you’re enjoying that John”, Angela said quietly.

The big man turned to look up to her, smiling, and then resumed his slow rhythm. “It could be a lot worse, couldn’t it?”

Andy came and sat down near John, and then lay back. He pushed his feet in and stretched up the bank, shimmying a little to get comfortable. The coarse sand crept in beneath his t-shirt and as he moved side to side he could feel it scratching away a deep itch. He felt his chest empty and he could breathe, his head emptied, and he heard the gentle burble of the river as an eddy doubled back on itself.

Sitting up eventually he looked past Angela, down the narrow strip of sand, past faces raised to the quiet sky.

“I think sometimes it is very hard to know what the future will be. But sometimes you just have to remember it will be made of times like this too” He looked up to Angela as she spoke and they held each other’s eyes for a while. He smiled at her as he hadn’t in so long, and she smiled right back.

 When eventually the group made their way back to the lecture theatre, collected their things and slowly drifted away it was different. No one rushed to be gone. If anything they lingered where before they raced away single file down the gloomy hallway to the glaring car-park beyond the doors. ‘See you next time’, some even called to each other.

Andy lingered until he was the only one left.

“That was a great morning Angela. I’m sorry for the first part. I didn’t mean to make anyone think there was no upside to this. Just the word future is a big one for me these days.”

Angela straightened up from picking up the handouts and boxes of pens and things she always brought along, holding them in against her as she faced him.

“Andy it was just nice to hear someone speak. And speak openly. You’re right, most of the others here, most of the people I see each time, are not even sure they want to be here. Because they just want this to all go away so they can go back to doing what they love doing. I’m so impressed that you know you are working towards being something else. But it can’t be easy, it is a huge hole to fill in your life.”

He smiled as he picked up a packet of pens that had gotten away from her and Angela accepted them back into her free hand.

“I would be a lot happier in myself if I knew that my life wasn’t just the hole left by giving up the job.”

“I think that’s what you need to work on Andy. It’s different to most of the others. You need to be able to remember what it was that you were best at in the job. And then remember that you would have been that good at the same things in your life outside the firefighting. You’ve just forgotten that, you’re still linking everything to your work. When you can stop doing that, then you’ll be getting really well.”