The Gift

The ball that came from the sky wasn’t really huge, but the children saw it really big. I guess that points of view change while we’re growing up. Sometimes is difficult to understand kids. But I understand them and it mustn’t be something difficult. Because, believe it or not, we all were kids (except for Trunchbull).

The ball fell into grandma’s house. Luckily she wasn’t home, so she wasn’t harmed. Kids gathered around the house, which was pretty damaged (not as my grandma, she was safe). I went to see the destruction by myself, I had heard rumors of an enormous green ball with blue spots falling from above and injuring my grandma. But she was safe, and when I knew it I felt relieved.

The ball wasn’t that giant. Although, yeah, it was big if we compare it with other common balls. Now the question was: where did it come from?

The adults started to answer with “logical” responses. That it fell from an airplane, that it was thrown by some machine by mistake. Things like that… but none of their answers convinced the children. Adrian thought it was an alien’s toy. Dita thought the ball was like a sh** of some unknown bird (s*** was a word that she learned from her older brother, Ethan). Daniel thought that as he liked a lot balls, some she-ball had heard of him and fell in love with him; so she had came right away from Ballville to find him. Daniel was kissing the ball at the time firefighters came.

Everyone tried to find an explanation for such an event. My grandma arrived some minutes later and she smiled at her destroyed home. The entire town there (except for the kids) thought she had gone crazy already.

Firefighters didn’t mind on looking for an explanation, they just took off the big big ball and went away. The people started to go to their houses. Kids were really sad, I noticed it in their faces. They already had thought what they were going to do with the ball.

But the saddest person there was Melinda, my grandma. I went with her.

“What’s wrong granny?” I asked her silently. She just waved her head. “Why did you smile?”

I had a single answer: “When I was a kid, I dreamed of a really big ball, I wanted to see the biggest ball on Earth. I really wanted that. And now I saw it, I’m just a little sad I couldn’t play with it, but that wasn’t my dream, I just wanted to see it.”

That night was grandma’s last night. We buried her with a smile in her face.