Todays evening walk..

I started from home like i do usually on my everyday walking route.. It was a very beautiful warm spring evening..birds chirping, splashes of colour from blooming flowers on the grass below and the trees above.. yellow, white, pink and purple.. The stream flowing gently beside my path was calming to the senses and the worries of the world felt distant and far away. How uplifting spring is!

I came across a mother and two children also enjoying the good weather, I thought. From a distance she looked like she was trying her best to steer the kids home after a good evening stroll. With a smile already forming on my lips as I approached the group.. I realised that all was not well. As I got closer I realised the lady, in her early 30's I guess, was quite inebriated and was still drinking from a cheap can of beer that she held in one hand a heavy looking bag in the other. The older kid a boy with a curly mop of dark hair could not have been over five years old and was trying to get his little sister to come back from where she had wandered off to. The kids looked little concerned at the state of the mother, may be they were used to it I thought. The mother was balancing her weight alternately between the heels of her feet and toes she seemed to be making a herculean effort to be able to even stand.. I was so disturbed and had to move on so as to not look like I was rudely staring.. But all through my walk the picture of this family kept coming back..

I passed by a cemetery a little later; a very pretty one with the trees in blooms and the graves all decorated with tulips and roses.. I saw a very young man engrossed in arranging a bunch of roses in a vase by a grave..I tried to cheer myself up but the image of the mother and children kept coming back.. Next I saw a duck and her family of 10 ducklings swimming leisurely by.. I couldn't but help stopping to look at them, the mother duck looking so calm and serene and graceful at peace with the universe as if to say, hey see my babies,, aren't they great.. And the little ones all 10 tiny ones like miniatures following her around, secure and comforted by her presence and without a care in the world.

But many hours later, with the chores of the evening all done and into the night as I sit down to pen this, the memory of the mother and kids still remains fresh.. Did they get home safe, did the mother just crash into bed the moment she got home, what about the kids' dinner, is there someone else at home to take care of them... Questions with no answers keep coming to my mind.