BackPack Episode

Ok, so not really connected to what I've been writing about, except in a nebulous, how-time-does-fly kind of way.

I'm going to record this now while it's still sore.

At work, we've collected money to buy the children at a nearby orphanage all the things they're going to need for the new school term: stationary, books, and bags to put them all in.

Here in Joburg, children tote all their schoolbooks and paraphernalia with them every day in backpack bags-must give their backs something to complain about later in life, but anyway: there on the floor near the door was propped a black and blue backpack bag, among dozens of others. It looked exactly like the one Shevek used ten and eleven years ago.

Suddenly, those ten or eleven years just collapsed. I was standing in the HR room at Osiris Trading, looking at my son's school bag.

And that familiar lion's paw ripped down across my heart.Again.Literally, I was in physical pain.I nearly burst into tears where I stood.

Good Gods-what kind of things do we do to ourselves that have the power to hurt us so much so many years later?