Guardian - A Photo Prompt Story

 

I do not know who took this photo, I found it online and could not source it. This is NOT my photo, I was just moved to tell a story about it. Message me if you know it's attribution so that the artist receives their credit due. :D

Guardian

Ruth Hinman 11/26/2023

Photo Prompt Story

There’s a guardian who sleeps all day and stands watch outside of my house at night. She never moves, she never speaks, she just stays still and watches over us because she has lost her own family and guards us as her own. 

A long time ago she was in a different place and a sudden explosion separated her from her sisters and brothers.  She prayed for safety as she flew far far in the breeze and fell asleep while fire still burned her edges and shriveled her limbs. 

When she awakened she was here at the bottom of a tall pole and the cool rain was feeding her and awakening her. She did not know this place, the smells and tastes were different from her home. And as she grew a little girl spoke to her and told her she was beautiful and brave and brought her water on hot days and petted her blooms and buried her sweet young face in the spreading vines and leaves. In the cold months the girl would come and talk to the guardian telling her that the warmth was coming again soon and sure enough each spring the guardian would blossom and begin to grow again, each time taller and stronger and supported by the growth and decay of her previous season. 

The young girl became a woman and the woman still visited occasionally, when she visited her own mother. And one day the woman brought her own little girl to meet the guardian and introduced them. 

I was so amazed to meet the guardian my mother had told me about at night when she tucked me in that I was in love with her already and touched her lovely blooms and leaves gently. And then one night the guardian paid my mother and me back for all of our love and admiration, and she repaid the kindness of her maker who brought her here from the fiery blast that separated her from her own family. 

I was sleeping here on my grandmother’s loveseat with the light of the pole where the guardian stands watch at night when I heard a terrible screeching of brakes and a loud crash and screaming and awakened and raced to the window. It was my mother’s bright blue coat under the car and I ran fast down the stairs and out into the darkness. The drunk woman in the car kept trying to drive and a man dragged her from the car. And I knelt beside my mother and cried into her hair. 

The guardian’s bright yellow light flickered once… twice… three times above me and then my mother coughed and screamed my name and the ambulance was coming and I heard people gathering and my grandmother was there calling me away from my mother and the yellow light turned more and more white as cars and people gathered with lights. 

My mother was put on a rolling bed and she grabbed my hand and told me to thank the guardian, because it had been her voice that called her back to me. Watching that ambulance pull away with my mother was very hard, and I turned and went to the guardian and buried my hands in her leaves, deep into the old growth of years and years and I tightened my fists around her skeleton and my face in her soft green leaves and I cried and I thanked her and I held on to her tightly until my grandmother pulled me away to go to the hospital. 

When we returned early in the morning the yellow light was dark and the guardian stood proud there on the corner of the property and I could see that my mother’s blood had been washed away from the road, but not from the leaves where I’d pressed my bloody hands and face and I went and touched the dried brown smears and I thanked her again for saving my mother. 

These days I live here in this apartment with my mother and my grandmother who is now too old to care for herself and so we have come here to help support her. I’m older, too old for stories of guardians who came from far away places to stand watch over me. And still, every morning I stop and lay my hands on her sleeping or waking form and I thank her for her service. I thank her for her silent watch. 

My mother doesn’t know I took some of the guardian’s seeds last year and I took them to different light posts around the area and I planted them and on my way home from school every day I water them and I encourage them to grow and I tell them about their brave strong mother who protects me. This year they are stronger and still so young, so small and fragile that I must protect them until they are big enough to protect someone else. 

My guardian knows, though. I know she does. This world needs guardians who simply watch over us, and she proudly watches over me and my mother here every day without a word.