A Gift From God

 


Kathleen was a bright child, with two older sisters and two younger brothers. The middle child in a family of seven including her mum and dad. They were a catholic family who decided to move from Ireland in  the 50’s to escape “the troubles”, coming to west Wales via the ferry. At first Dad had found work as a farm labourer, but now they had moved up to the valleys where they were just settling in to a house they were renting that had been vacated by a 92 year old gentleman caused by his death. Dad was now working in the local colliery and the children were settling in at the local school so it was a fresh start for everyone.
With rationing still in after the war, times were hard for everyone. But none of the children felt deprived as they were all in the same boat.
Her dad got a patch on the allotment to help provide food as did most of the men in the village. He tapped shoes, cut hair, sharpened saws, even making and selling clothes pegs to help make ends meet.
Her mum went to Make Do and Mend classes held in the school one evening every week to pick up sewing tips as well as swap all the local gossip. How she found time with all the washing, ironing, cooking, and cleaning was nothing short of a miracle. All this at a time when there were no vacuum cleaners, washing machines, or electric cookers.
Not that they would have been any use as the house was not yet fitted  with electricity. Cooking was done on an open fire in an old black lead grate, the only heat source in the house. Water was collected from a tap over a drain outside the door in the back yard. The tin bath hung from a nail in the wall outside except on bath nights when it was sat on the rag mat near the hearth and fed with hot water from buckets heated on the fire. Oil lamps lit the two downstairs rooms with candles for the bedrooms. Candles were also used in the toilet in the back yard, the only way to find the squares of torn up newspaper now being used as toilet paper which hung from a nail behind the door.

They were hard times, but they were happy times. Times when it was safe to let your children wander out of the village along the river bank or the old canal. To play on the coal waste tip long overgrown with the trees they cut sticks from to make bows and arrows or swords for sword fencing where after picking sides, one half would run off to hide and  then searched for by the others until they were all “dead”.
To make slides on the mountainside, coming down on opened out cardboard boxes with the bottoms rubbed with candle grease to make them go faster.
Kathleen could mostly be found playing jack stones, hop scotch, or skipping with her sisters on the pavement outside their front door.
She was hard of hearing and wore a hearing aid behind her one ear, with wires running to batteries worn on a belt around her waist. Because of this, she tended to avoid the rougher games. She had no trouble keeping up in school, indeed she was soon top of her class knocking the head girl off her “podium”. This made the girl quite jealous. She became jealous of her bright auburn hair, her blue-green eyes, her gentle Irish charm, her lilting accent, and the way she seemed to make friends so easily.

One day, Kathleen found herself rummaging through the rubbish on the local ash-tip just outside the village. It was a favourite pastime for lots of children as well as adults. Only a few days before, her two younger brothers found an old pram which with the wheels removed quickly transformed into a gambo with the aid of some wood, string, and hours of toil in the back yard. It was their pride and joy.
All of what she found was quickly discarded until she came across a pair of shoes. The soles needed repairing but they were better than the pair she was wearing or the plimsolls that she wore to school.
She was dusting them off when she spotted at the top of the tip the girl who was so jealous of her. Not wanting to take them in front of her, she hid them in some ferns when she thought she wasn’t looking so she could come back later and retrieve them, and headed for home.  

The jealous girl was quickly down to where she thought the shoes were hidden, but just couldn’t find them. She gave up and left. Kathleen returned a little later, found the shoes and putting them under her hand me down coat she headed home.
She found her dad in the back yard and showed him her find. He said they would need tapping, but after a good polish they would look like new. The next day Kathleen was sent to the ironmongers in the town with a note from dad for leather and shingles or sprigs. He repaired them on Saturday ready for her to wear to church on Sunday. He was right, they did polish up a treat. Kathleen loved those shoes. Her dad told her not to wear them to school but to keep them for Sunday best.

There were only three other catholic families in the village with their nearest church two miles away. As in the previous weeks, they all walked there together. All the way there Kathleen couldn’t help looking down at her shoes to admire them. She had a real skip in her step. Father William was glad to see his flock suddenly increased by seven again and had happily accepted them into his church. All of the family were a hit with him, but Kathleen was something special.

The following day getting ready for school, Kathleen couldn’t resist wearing her new shoes despite what her dad had told her. Between those and her plimsolls there was no contest, the shoes won. She was out through the door and down the street with the same skip in her step she’d had on the way to church, but this time wearing a grin from her deaf ear to her good one. She rushed to the school yard where everyone gathered to wait for the bell to be rung at nine o’clock. All of the children were quickly around her asking where did you buy them from and how much did you pay for them. She was just about to tell a big fib, that she had bought them in the town on the weekend when she was suddenly interrupted. “You found those on the ash-tip last week, I saw you“, said a voice from the back of the group.

Kathleen knew it was the jealous head girl who had spoken. Tears welled up in her eyes as despite her partial deafness she could hear everyone laughing, encouraged by the jealous girl. She felt humiliated and ashamed. Just then the bell was rung and everyone lined up ready to be marched in for assembly. All that is except Kathleen. She ran the short distance from the school to her house in tears, unable at first to tell her mum why she was so upset.
She couldn’t bring herself to go to school for the rest of the week and despite coaxing from her mum and dad she refused to wear the shoes to church on Sunday. The Priest commented on her arrival how pretty she had looked last week wearing her new shoes, and where were they this week?  Again with tears flowing she tried to explain.
He hid his fury as he told her God had sent them to her in her time of need. They had been a present from him, she was blessed, they were a gift from God. She was to wear them to school on Monday with pride.
As she left church he called her to his side and whispered something to her that she was to remember for the rest of her life.
When you get up every morning always face the sun, and all your troubles just like your shadow, will fall behind you.

She went to school on Monday wearing her new shoes and the episode from the week before was soon forgotten. She passed her eleven plus the following year and went to grammar school, and later went on to get her degree at university. By her mid twenties she was back at the school as a teacher eventually becoming a much loved Headmistress, but Kathleen never forgot what Father William had whispered to her when she was such a very shy and vulnerable child of eleven.
And the shoes? Oh she still has them tucked away somewhere.
She loved those shoes and could never bring herself to throw them away even long after they had been worn out.