Songs For Your Mother Gordon MacMillan (good books for 7th graders .txt) 📖

what my next move is going to be. As I take a big step to close the gap between us, Luke bolts and I slip. By the time I’ve recovered, Luke is halfway down the adjacent aisle. He’s flying forward as fast as his little legs can carry him – and five-year-olds are fast.

I set off after him, and now more people look on as I chase him down the confectionery aisle. I call out his name, and he pays no attention. He rounds the corner at the bottom of the aisle and disappears. As I run, I’m struck by how quickly Luke and I, father and son, have stopped working. First, a few weeks back during that night at TSP’s, then with Susan and now, in a moment lacking the high slapstick that the situation suggests, I’m chasing him through a supermarket.

I’m right behind him, and I know that I’ll catch him in a matter of seconds, and then not so much. As I slide around the corner and into the next aisle, I slip, and my muddy trainers provide no grip, and I crash into a sizeable promotional display tower of Quality Street. I go flying, and it isn’t at all how I imagined this would pan out. I’d been thinking that Luke would take off on his bike and crash around the store causing all kinds of bike-related mayhem. Only it isn’t him at all. It’s me. This whole thing is back to front.

I’m thinking this and I am crashing to the supermarket floor. Plastic boxes of chocolates are sent in all directions, rolling and spinning from the impact. I land hard on my shoulder and fall onto my back, splitting open a box of Quality Street as I go and scattering individually wrapped chocolate across the floor. It’s all gone quiet around me as I lie there and stare up into the glare of fluorescent light. I’m spent, and I’ve no desire to get up. I feel like shattered glass. I don’t know where this comes from, only that it’s rapidly fallen upon me. Poking at the edge of my consciousness is something else. Despite the state I’m in, I know that I have to get up even if I don’t want to.

One of the critical things I’ve learnt over this last couple of months is that: you have to get up, and you have to give the semblance that you’re trying your best. So, I do that. I give the impression of getting up. I use my left arm to push myself onto my side, and I sit up. Luke’s standing halfway down the aisle, looking back at me as people peer into the aisle and hastily walk on by.

A redhead teenage girl in a supermarket uniform has appeared and has her hands over her mouth. I can see her trying to work out how this could’ve happened. If I started to tell her, I know I would begin with the words ‘it’s a long story’.

‘Oh my god, are you okay?’ she asks.

‘I think so, sorry about the display,’ I say.

‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘Do you need a hand? Sure you’re all right?’

‘I’m fine. I think I might sit here for a moment,’ I say. The girl smiles awkwardly at me. Another older member of staff turns up. To be honest, my record in this store with children is not a strong one. The older woman smiles kindly at me as if she understands my plight and starts to help her younger colleague pick up the scattered chocolates and boxes and place them back in the cardboard display with its trimming of snow-covered houses. I want to tell her that, apart from my poor record in supermarkets, there have been successes along the way. However, like everything in life, there have been ups and downs. I feel like I should have a report card, and it needs regular stamping to show this.

I rest against the shelf behind me, and I sit there. I close my eyes for a second or two and take a deep breath. I breathe out slowly as I work out what I’m going to do. I don’t mean in the next few seconds, or the next minute, or about how I’m going to get out of this store.

I’m thinking beyond that as I realise, without too much difficulty, that this is not going swimmingly.

Luke has his arms clutched to his chest, and his fingers grasp at his chin and mouth. He is looking at me uncertainly, and I’m looking back at him in the same fashion. There’s an ocean between us in all senses. It’s all of that water that he flew across with Josie to get here. It is still here now, and we’re being tossed around in the swell. It doesn’t feel as if we’re the masters of our own destiny. The rose-tinted optimism that swept over me on the walk down here from the park isn’t there as the spectacles got knocked from my face as I crashed, limbs flying wildly, through tubs of chocolate.

Luke steps slowly towards me until he’s standing a few feet away from where I sit.

‘Why don’t you get up?’ he asks me.

It is an excellent question. I don’t say anything. What I’m thinking is that I don’t know why I don’t get up. I suppose, like one of those fighters who has taken too many punches, it’s easier to stay down. Like my earlier daydreams of urban domesticity, it’s more comforting. That said, I also know that I can’t stay down and that staying down is not an option. Not when you have someone depending on you. Not when there’s a child who needs you.

‘Get up,’ Luke says.

When I still don’t move, Luke starts to repeat it and starts to jump up and down and say ‘get up, get up, get up’ as fast as he can so that the words are tumbling from his lips. I take a deep breath and haul