September 28, 2024.
Sometimes it happens that, while jogging, you run into something exceptional. This was such a day.
Boil some water, grind some beans, ready the aeropress. Pour it down, push it down, slurp it down.
The morning ritual.
Running once every two days. Sportswatch around my wrist. 8.21 a.m., fifty four beats per minute, in sync with my age.
Coffee gone, sportswear on.
8.32 a.m., go-time! Concrete and exhaust fumes soon make way for open fields, an open view, fresh air.
Two kilometers further on, the track between the cornfields ascends to the highest point of Relegem. There ‘s a cloud hanging over it. “Huh? Is that a ladder?”
A shout rumbles through the cloud. “Hullooooo!” The roaring highway almost pushes the voice away, but I can still hear what he says. “Are you coming upstairs?”
8.44 a.m. I push the left button. ‘Registration paused.’
Curiosity pulls me up the ladder.
Slightly dizzy, I enter a foggy space. Am I seeing that right? A man on a swing?
He jumps up and yells "Boooooy!"
"Sooooon!" he yells again. Everything is shaken up. Do I even want to hear this?
He spreads his arms and runs over to me. I panic and make him stop.
He grinds to a halt and we look each other in the eye.
My belly cramps up. Something in me recognizes that look.
Suddenly a hand, a foot, a leg, an entire boy crawls out of my body. He uses all his might to prie himself free and yells “daddy, daddy, daddy…!”
I look on in quiet disbelief while the boy jumps in the man’s, my father’s arms and closely embraces him.
With the boy on one arm Sir my father approaches me and invites me into their happy reunion.
“How I’ve missed you,” he whispers into my ear. “I missed you too, I think,” is all I manage to say.
The boy grows tired of all that hugging. He jumps on my fathers shoulders and yells: “Swing, daddy, I want to swing!”
A minute later his daddy pushes him with both feet through the air.
“Why did you stay away so long?” I ask my father while the boy keeps yelling “higher, higher daddy, higher!”
The blush on his pale cheeks makes it look like warm blood pumps through his veins again. “Well son, that’s hard to...“. “Higher!” the boy yells.
My father pushes very hard indeed. A little too hard, so that the boy flies off the swing. “Higher!” turns into “Help!” and he falls down through the cloud to the ground.
I exchange a last look with my father…
I’m heavier and fall faster than him. It does not take long for me to be able to catch him.
We tumble down as he grabs me closely. With my arms around him I try to protect him from an all too painful landing.
The corn breaks our fall, Through the impact the child becomes part of me again.
09.02 a.m. I push the left button for a second time and continue jogging. ‘Registration resumed.’ “Love yououou," I hear from far away in the distance, but that might also be the wind, blowing softly.
The end.
In honor of
Jerome Ysenbaert
(15/08/1929 – 28/09/1974)