This piece shows how an idea for a spin-off story can be used once more in a difference way. The poem entitled ‘ The Bridge’ printed below. The competition the prose is written for required a mention of a bridge, so I borrowed my own work. I hope you all enjoy reading it.
THE BRIDGE.
The sprinklers cast rainbows of water across the grass as I sat watching my small daughter play in the shadows of a magnolia tree.
After trying to occupy my thoughts with a popular women’s magazine I put it to a more practical use and fanned my face with its pages as I waited for my mother to arrive.
We always met in the park. Our unspoken thoughts coinciding in the knowledge we both needed a neutral meeting place.
Her infrequent visits to my home had always instigated a frenzy of housework as I optimistically hoped she would one day utter a word of approval. I was never organized and the dust which rested quietly on our furnishings enjoyed long periods of undisturbed tranquility.
My visits to her home set my nerves jangling, especially when the boys were young and constantly inquisitive, asking questions and making unflattering comments about the strictures put on them by ‘grandma’s rules’. I spent anguished hours worrying that their boisterous behavior would result in some precious ornament or plant being destroyed.

The boys had reached their teens when to my dismay, my mother’s namesake Vanessa arrived. From the time she was born this little girl was an astonishing revelation. After years of good natured chaos from our sons she was a quiet, introspective child, wholly absorbed with the natural world around her. She loved all things botanical and, anything with more legs than two. Already she could name a dozens more plants and insects than I had known existed.

Along the gravel path on the other side of the small ornamental lake which shimmered as a breeze stirred the surface, I could see my mother striding confidently toward the small Japanese style bridge which crossed the water to the path leading to where we sat.
Vanessa squealed with delight and rushed to meet her grandmother. I watched my child holding something up for her to admire and saw my mother take something from her capacious bag to show Vanessa. Never in all my life could I remember her listening so attentively to me.
In a moment of clarity I at last saw my role in their lives.
I had grown up like my father and therefore patently unsatisfactory in my mother’s eyes and would have always remained so but, by producing Vanessa I had redeemed myself. I had become the bridge which allowed these two souls to meet. I was their link. I realized that of all the things she disapproved of about me, Vanessa was the most perfect gift I could have given her. The thanks, praise and small commendations I had looked for all my life were given here in this park, each time we met.
I put my face up to the warmth of the sun and smiled at the illusions of age and time as their happy voices and laughter drifted across the humid air between us as they turned to walk hand in hand toward me.(C)



The End.