Here's To My Dad! (See Pictures on Post Below!)

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

When my father traveled to Israel on a Canadian Trade Mission in 1967, he was particularly interested in visiting a Kibbutz. He was quite moved by the sight of the young children in the kindergarten who lived apart from their parents on these communal farms. I remember the slide he had taken of the little pairs of red shoes lined up on the bench in a hallway. He must have reflected upon this image as he wrote this tender story on the flight home.

The Little Red Shoes

Her name was Nurit, just a name chosen at random by the teachers of the Kibbutz. She never knew her father, who was struck down one evening by a truck, swerving suddenly to avoid a donkey cart on the side of the narrow highway leading to Bersheba. Her mother only saw her baby once before she, weak from complications, and with a broken heart, passed on to join her husband in the Garden of Eternity.

Nurit was now four years old, a strange child with deep, dark eyes, which would change as quickly as a flashing light from burning interest to quiet pools of secret longing for something that she would never know; the gentle glance of a mother’s understanding or the soothing comfort of a father’s knee.

This little girl was of course, the teachers’ favourite among the eighteen children. One teacher would usually hold her hand when all the other kindergarten kids would run eagerly off, in their little red shoes, after the supper hour to play and visit for a short time with their parents.

It was then that Nurit’s eyes would become most empty and still, and she would remain for a few moments, silently watching by the door, hugging her rag doll, her thumb always in her mouth at these times. Her eyes would light up briefly when the others would return to talk, as only four-year-olds can do, of their adventures of the evening.

Later, when darkness would come with the suddenness of the eastern night, and the others were sleeping, Nurit would lie awake on her small bed, and looking out the window at the stars, would murmur quietly to herself, "I am visiting with my Mommy and Daddy."

Then she would drift into peaceful sleep, a wistful semblance of a smile tugging at the corners of tiny mouth, while outside on the veranda rack in a neat row, rested eighteen pairs of "little red shoes".

One evening during the visiting period, Nurit became even quieter than usual. One of the teachers had gone to the library and the other was working on some new charcoal drawings for the next day’s classes.

Suddenly, the child slipped without a sound out of the door and ran through the orchard, so fast that she seemed to fly through the darkness between the great rows of olive trees. Emerging on the other side, she still ran, stopping finally, panting beside the edge of a deep "wadi".

It was here, in such a strange place, that she became frightened and whimpered for the first time, as she tried to catch her breath. Looking quickly toward the orchard, she, in the terror of the moment, felt the branches of the trees reaching out to her with crooked arms. She took three steps backwards and dropped quickly over the edge of the "wadi", swollen from a sudden afternoon rain, and was carried away by the rushing torrent of water.

The next day, three kilometres downstream, they found Nurit as the waters lowered, still clutching her little rag doll. When that evening came, her tiny body had already been buried, as is the custom.

Night, and the moon shining down on the veranda of the kindergarten of the Kibbutz by the Gaza, down upon seventeen pairs of "little red shoes". But high above, so the story is told, amid the countless stars of heaven, running straight toward the two brightest stars, which twinkled even more quickly and happily than the others, were two little red shoes.

And below, the children were sleeping peacefully in their beds, but no one was watching the stars from the empty bed by the window.

Doug Williams
Copyright June 1967

You did it again, Dad. I get tears in my eyes every time I read this. There are not many people who would be so moved and compelled to write about such a precious moment. Thanks for sharing with us your great sensitivity to all that you experience in this world.

Mother of Invention, still vividly seeing the teacher lining up those little red shoes in your slide.

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY, DAD!