As a young boy in the olden days, his hair was fine as silk and white as snow, bleached by the sun’s vibrant rays, his complexion was fair and his cheeks were laden with pretty freckles, his manners were indefatigably polite and without any sense of strain and so he leisurely charmed all with whom he encountered on his journey through youth; and it was a blessed youth at that, full of riveting adventure with his childhood chums through mysterious forests, playful rough and tumble in sublime parks, charging across the soft green grass playing make believe and acting out their favourite scenes from the plethora of books his tender mother read to him in bed before his mind drifted into a sleepy slumber. His life was one of innocence and wonder and it was designed thus by his lovely parents, two souls tethered to one another with the unbreakable bond of true love, a love that would surely pass the gruelling test of time, as their very identities evolve in conjunction with one another, each completing the other’s deficiencies in a manner so graceful and without judgement or bitterness; such a union one reads of in fairy tales and old folklore.
Little Jean strode through the fertile fields around their bucolic cottage, which sat at the edge of a remote village known for its luscious wildlife and thick creamy milk fresh from their merry cow’s plump udders. In the summer he loved to roam the countryside spending all day in the great outdoors breathing in the purity of the earth and nourishing even the deepest depths of his psyche and in the winter he equally adored to bask within the warmth of the open fire with a mug of hot coco, gentle classical music from his father’s vintage vinyl record collection playing through a pristine ultrahigh definition surround sound speaker system, reading poems or silently snoozing or having warm intellectual conversations with his wise parents about life and the value of compassion, his yellow Labrador dog curled up by his feet occasionally gruffling or sighing with complete contentment, or jean would lie down on his back beneath their families grand piano as his mother tickled the ivory keys with her majestic touch, playing elaborate sonatas with such grace, such poignancy and perfection, a waterfall of notes showering down upon him as he lay in awe, utterly transfixed, enthralled, mesmerised, entranced, hypnotised by the sheer beauty of the experience.
His father loved to do the crossword puzzle in the traditional newspaper they still had delivered by hand to their door every morning, as did the entire village, and his mother also enjoyed knitting little jean innumerable scarves and hats and turtleneck jumpers, even making some for his small bunch of close friends with whom he shared a fantastic companionship and a real love that existed between them all and bonded them to one another, a connection that maintained throughout their entire lives all the way up to their passing.
He had an inexhaustible passion for the welfare of animals, his ethical compass nurtured and guided by his supremely intelligent and kind family, all of whom took a great interest in academia and subjects of an intellectual nature and, though he never met his grandfather, it is sincerely agreed upon by all who did that he is the spitting resemblance of him in both character and appearance, a great compliment to both parties involved, rest assured.
On rainy autumn days the whole family would often get together for an afternoon of light-hearted boardgames or silly word-games they themselves invented, laughing and smiling so much one might presume it was Christmas day, their jubilant nature’s all feeding off one another’s, so utterly perfect a scene of joy one could simply not fault it. These memories would go on to sustain little Jean through all the many long years of his adult life, through the inevitable tragedies of life that befall almost all human beings, that touch the lives of so many with such sorrow and despair, through the unavoidable frustrations of adulthood which – luckily for old jean – were so sparse, so rare, so few and far between, that he rarely noticed them when they did come along, let alone linger upon them or allow them to foster resentments or any other form of unnecessary additional negativity that would attach itself to his psyche if he failed to deal with the situation in the appropriate manner his parents taught him.
Short Story by Stamos Mardou