YD6~19 South Africa departure, Homecoming at the Castle

Ready to explore the layers of life’s psychic tapestry, to the Vitrine of Consciousness, with Flash Memoir chronicle. Visit I-write4u2read.com: I’m offering you an exclusive opportunity to be part of the pre-publication experience. Here’s a glimpse:

The writer discovers Aetheria (consciousness) amid a journal, through a 10-year odyssey. Until birth, as an infant communicates a wish: Call me, “Sunshine.” Sunshine’s first two years, at nine-month intervals, she’s resuscitated under particular conditions. Aetheria’s puppeteering through a hostile milieu, persistent through Intensive Care Unit, challenges, until her mother packed and left home, the witches and wizards volatilized, to lead a healthy life.

Flash Memoir Description: 

In an abstract exploration, this paragraph delves into a transition, harboring a profound message that articulates a stark truth: The future carries no promises for Aetheria! With a suitcase bloated with belongings, compelled to fly off.

YD6~19 South Africa departure, Homecoming to the Castle

As I’m left, hoping to strike a restart in life, I carried Ilona’s thoughtful idea, my second-mother’s message, to the doors of Sandton’s Post Office at opening time. I stepped up to the clerk across the stretched counter, saying. “Morning, can I send a telegram?” To my dismay, her hand slipped off the counter’s edge. Her fingers returned, a single A3 red printed paper form gliding upfront - click - a ball-point pen paused, her eyes questioning. ‘_What do I write?_’

I’m awaking my childhood’s wilderness to people’s words fluttering around my head through the air, as expressing today, ‘_Let me phone. . . Let me answer a call._’ Blank minded, I faced the clerk’s fixation, I’m pulling to sight my flight ticket to read my arrival date and time. The clerk scribbles the red form filling in the cases, to read aloud, the sender and “I’m arriving tomorrow. . .” She counts the words. I’m handing her a 10 Rand bill. Upon returning my change, turning away I pocket, heading toward the wide glazed hallway front framing distant figures ascending and descending from the escalators. Step feeling feathery, ‘_This done!_’ I press past the plate-glass’ swing out.

I trail my earlier footsteps, on the landing I swing hips walk away from the escalators, a path through the mall. By a corner window display, to a nestling fluorescence tunneling into the shadows. I press past the glaze, to the naked concrete column amidst pooling gleams sleek and undulated to pace up to the sun-yellow Mercedes. Squeeze along cars’ flanks, with the Mercedes’ door grip, I step in, behind the steering wheel - slam - tweaked the ignition. Back out to the lane, maneuvering to pull away, I’m driving with steering wheel spins and counter spins an S-course past a myriad of taillight flange German insignia, to emerge into sunlight veering into the street.

With a flashback of the peri-urban planning’s building in the grasslands. Hence, mushroomed to disbelieve, elegant commercial architectural blocks dwindling as I’m crossing a few intersections. egressed, to the supple spread of suburbs lining the shallow valley. I’m destined to cross for the ridge. By the highway interchange, I’m driving through the underpass, onto borrowing to parallel the Old Pretoria road. Passing by Kelvin’s Southway apron entry, I couldn’t drop by Lionel and Gavin at home, on the spur of the moment. Past Northway ending the suburb, I spare a melancholic reflection along the service road. I duck the branching Buccleuch interchange, to turn off, entering the adjacent suburb. 

As the driveway apron opens offside to the gateway, I coasted up to steering for the gateway, to pull into the driveway, to Hilton Rogoff house. I’m coasting toward the front door and windows’ shaded reveal, for the far garage doors. With a steering wheel spin, by the furthest door, I pull up, tuning the ignition key off. I alight the car, track back to the entrance door, and press the call button. In the door's crack, Hilton’s wife appears, to greet Molly. Both doberman’s paws jump on the stable door’s bottom leaf on either side of her. The nervous Dobermans retrieved to the hallway behind Molly, turning in circles, among themselves, saying. ‘_It’s the building contractor. The one who came every month with a computer printout bugging Hilton to read out the financial report?_’ I handed Molly the car keys, thanking her, and turning toward the gateway.

I walked out of the driveway to Ilona’s waiting car, pulling the door grip, stepping in, saying. “How are you?” Ilona says. “[Flemish] Good day.” She starts the car, pulls away. Drives back out Buccleuch, veering onto the Old Pretoria road, onto crossing the Jukskei river, chatting updating on our family’s lives. At Halfway-house she turns off east, the stretches of country road before highways were built. From flanks roads, entered the ever moving airport’s roadway to the parking lot, stalling the car. I heaved my calf-gut bulging parachute suitcase from the trunk, closed the trunk lid, to head along Ilona toward the bracing columns to the athwart double-decked terminal. We crossed the shaded driveway, pressing the plate-glass swing to the light washing concourse. I’m pulling ahead toward the offside SAA, translucent orange fascia across the box counters in a row. Approached a gathered crowd of pike queues to a few ground stewardesses in a turquoise outfit. 

Crossed arms, Ilona stands back, while I’m shuffling in the queue. Until I’m in a scuffle, of my hands. Attempting in a whisk, my left hand raises my calf-bulging suitcase, my right-hand fluttering red carbon sheets ARC ticket with my passport handed to the stewardess. Onto brushing off besides the check-in counter, lending a hand, heaved my suitcase over the riser to roll along the baggage conveyor. The stewardess leans aside, drags my suitcase alongside, she tags, returns squaring up. She returns my travel documents, sending me to turn away toward Ilona. 

Eyes on me, Ilona unfolds her arms. We’re converging to stroll toward thinned, widespread figures on the gleaming floor. Edged to the offside wall, for an agape portal leading off a tunneling walkway. We step by, bypassing opaque glass walls, to approach an efflorescent ending. Across the threshold, to the food and drinks displays, at the cashier, ordered coffee. After paying and walking through the dining hall, Ilona, my second-mother, says. “[Flemish] Don’t forget now. Don’t forget to phone De-P’pa and De-M’ma when you get there.” We approached the panoramic window, stepped around a table, pulled backrests, and sat face-to-face across a coffee cup. Alongside, Jan Smuts’ SAA twin-jet engine aircraft, apart from a few International Jumbo tails along the apron’s concrete slabs. On the breeze of a thought, Ilona call listening, saying. “[Flemish] It may not get there in time?”

I spare a thought to evening Belgian post delivery, or the next morning. Teased to mind a messenger on horseback - clipity, clip — clop, clipity, clip. . . - Ride a cobblestone path through the countryside, unsaddle at the castle’s back door, delivering the telegram to our parents. 

With a smoke plume, Ilona’s cigarette on the ashtray, the frail trails consumed to ash. While loitering, I wonder. ‘_Where did you get all that news from?_’ Her memory, a spider web in the light of window corners, her thoughts on a breeze current recent detail about De-P’pa and M’ma. broken by loudspeakers’ omnipresent voice throughout the dining hall, calling to pay attention. Upon hearing my flight announced. Ilona rises in front of me, as I’m collecting my hand luggage, converging with Ilona walking away. We walked along the tunneling walkway, emerging to the concourse, into a flurry of people crossing the departure concourse. In the rear niche, the passport control row of booths. Ilona paused back, letting me walk on, she crossed her arms across her heavy heart, shading her gaze while grinning through a smile. ‘_How lucky of you, my little brother. How I wish to see de P’pa!_’ To the controller, I handed my passport page marked by my boarding pass. His nimble fingers rifling pages, at the drop of glances  matching names, fold the passport, he returns to me with a head wave my way alongside the glass booth.

After Ilona’s last look and farewell wave, I stroll to branch off. In my strides, shifting eyesight crisscrossing to margin open displays, too elaborate glitters to walk through aisles for tax-free glittery gifts. Ingrained by De-M’ma’s humble exigencies, besides her children’s presence, extended family, or people. The stores linger before dawn’s to my mind. ‘_Need I buy a gift_?’ I stepped with a curiosity throughout the airside-hallway, upfront to meet the embarking crowd, the people funneling to a trickle to turn to descend the adjoining ramp. In my approach, to a South African Airways attire ground hostess, I slowed to a snail’s pace. Among the last passengers, I trailed a few figures egress the terminal, cross the concrete apron, to climb the boarding stairs, flashing to mind the Jumbo door framed a reception breaking up the wall of the aircrew, as an air hostess leads me into the cabin depths. people cluttered the aisle, stretching arms overhead, stowing carry-on in overhead bins. At a pace of hands launching bins - click — click a click . . . - I turn a shoulder sidling past to economic class, following the tags to square up to an empty seat, stow my hand luggage - click - squeeze past knees, lowering into the window seat.

I glanced through the porthole at the airport terminal at dusk rotates away. Taxed the airfield to a turnaround of brightening distant field lights to shadowing sheds, returning to a skyline terminal, parking on the runway. Whine up jet engines, my seat twitch brakes release, onto thrust, pressing me in my seat. The aircraft accelerating, a reverberation through the cabin, passing the terminal to soften airlift. The evening blocks of houses flattening to speckling starry lights, miniaturizing traffic headlight beams, streaking highway spikes into the darkness. Spared with the little boy in me, who played with Dinky Toys with Igor. We modeled from a front yard masonry sand dump, Goma’s extinct volcano, the piedmont suburban street, overnight, a tropical downpour washed away. 

Aloft, I’m loitering, counting back twelve years, seated abreast Jean, Alitalia’s brand-new Jumbo. After we stepped from Temple Shalom. Meet guest at the Rosebank Hotel’s reception hall, to a first dance, greet guest farewell. To my humble surprise, the Italian captain, popped open a bottle of champagne. Meals dished up, arteries’ lights tracings vanished, with the horizon, cabin crew quieted, passengers settled with dimming lights.

At the dawn of cabin’s artificial lighting, breaking through voicing. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain. We are landing for a refueling at Cape Verde. . . You are asked to disembark for the refueling process. We appreciate your cooperation before continuing our journey.” In a pitch-black hole, keeping my sanity, I’m tracing our route by the bulge of Africa. we’re on a clandestine glide to land on an ocean island, touchdown reverberating through the cabin, breaking the air quietening to an aerodrome’s thin spread distant lights arising as we’re taxing. At a standstill, amid passengers rising from their seats, I trail to descend the boarding stairs, across the asphalt to the terminal’s interior. 

After a while, among passengers in the hall trailing out the terminal toward the Jumbo’s sheen against the night without horizon beyond scarce lights guarding airfield equipment. We climbed the stairs. Passengers ahead spread through the cabin to their seats. I return to my seat, loitering by the whining engines, taxing, to the trust pressing my seat, reverberating the cabin, to lift, and airborne, lights dimmed with the cabin going to sleep. 

I’m dozing off, to awake, thinking, we should have crossed the Mediterranean Sea. Until buoyant in my seat, an ongoing descent through a cloud blanket. In a gray atmosphere touchdown, release braking, taxing past Zaventem International Airport’s terminal curtain wall, coming to a halt. I’m siting back as the aisle crowed, collecting luggage from the overhead bins. As the aisle thinned, I sidled past a few passengers to greet the aircrew, to exit. Descend by the boarding stairs, amidst passengers, I trailed the concrete apron entering the terminal, disappearing behind the curtain wall. 

We stepped to the arrival floor, the flux, men, women and children weaving to the passport control booths, without concern for the passport controller’s stern eyes, my coming home Belgian passport. Then, I located the crowd scattering to approach the carousel. I whisk my calf-suitcase to follow people, tricking away. Pass a pair of custom officers, my eyes fixing the end doors hinge to close after the vanishing figures. 

I’m pulling the tail-grip towing my suitcase by the swing of both doors to a greeting crowd, to De-P’pa’s eyes overbearing the greeting crowd. I wiggled my way amid the greeters, pressing my way to the rear, disillusioned, De-M’ma. I’m sticking with De-P’pa, turning away, leading to the concourse gleam from the distant light strip. We exit, onto crossing the driveway. Car keys tingled at De-P’pa’s fingers, to walk in the fluorescent tubes shining the naked concrete skeleton from the midst of sleek cars, to the gray Volkswagen Polo, Wagon. De-P’pa lifted the tailgate, walked away as I heaved my suitcase to the car. De-M’ma, lingering to the passenger door, to flip the backrest forward, stepping to the rear bench. I step to the bucket seat with the closing door, as De-P’pa fired the engine, backed up and drives away, exit the garage, leading onto the thoroughfare inbound. 

Before the Brussels Ring’s overpass, De-P’pa steered the off-ramp, borrowing the north-east intersection. We cruised in trickling traffic along Brussels’ eastern outskirt, due south to a deviation’s off-ramp from the Ring South under construction. De-P’pa veered across the lane, engaging the thoroughfare, driving away from the Waterloo’s town. He drives the outbound country road. Past the General Napoleon’s last headquarters. The country road stretches until Four-Ways’s Brasseries in the far yellowed whitewash brick corner to a hipped tiled roof. Crawled the grass beaten corner, throttle away from the far corner to the asphalt narrowed field road, a stretch toward Nivelle. We slowed, entering the village’s crutches of warped whitewashed brick houses, the car turn across the oncoming lane in their midst.

On a ride through Houtain-le-Val, we emerged on oxen and cart concave cobblestones road, through lords’ farms to grazing fields. Woods’ edge approached from the distance to arouse through brushwood, raising the four corners steeples to the castle’s pitched slate roof. Until we coast to steer, tires rolled crushed graved paving through the classic garden, dwarfed approaching the front bluestone castle’s portal. DE-P’pa drives by ashlar windows to a mass of terracotta bricks to a girdling path clearing the rear garden to hunter’s woods rotating away. We pull up square to the rear monumental portal, to a halt. De-P’pa and I climbed out, before De-M’ma alight the rear car - smack - closing the Polo, as I heaved my suitcase. De-M’ma reaches for the door key, in her purse, in a candid tone, saying. “Here we are, my boy!” Rises the bluestone porch, inserts in the escutcheon plate her big antique key, turning, pulls the key, her palm to lie on the door lever, cranking. De-P’pa crosses the threshold, De-M’ma followed, stepping indoor.

I walked into winter’s crispy air, De-M’ma paused by a fresh bouquet in a vase, saying. “[Flemish] These flowers have been here for two months.” As De-P’pa turns at the crux of the white marble vault to school-wide crisscrossing corridors, he figures into the niche of the elaborate marble balustrade, treading the white stairs. With De-M’ma, I followed along the broad handrail, climbed dogleg stairs to the upper floor wooden landing, an eerie silent empty shell. De-P’pa vanished into a corridor center door to a front room. While De-M’ma leads on the running dark wood floor strips, to the end door, short of the spiraling staircase, De-M’ma pauses. 

De-M’ma reaches for the lever cranks  - clang - the latch echoes from the wooden door. De-M’ma leads me into the bedroom, at first sight a barn straw mattress underneath a wide draping Eiderdown bulge. I turned towards a Victorian cold valve along a swanneck spout over an encased wash-hand basin, to pose my calf-suitcase alongside the vanity cabinet. I turned away, following De-M’ma - clang - closing the door, midway - clang - pacing the back swing door, clearing De-P’pa turned away from the island table’s burning bulb, standing up the fireplace switched on the small television set, broadcasting in black and white the news. De-M’ma, steps to the table head, poses her purse, but pulls back, asking. “[Flemish] What would you like for lunch?” Turns away, adding. “Come, let’s go to Nivelle, shopping. “