Editors Note: Every once in a while I come across an article that I enjoy enough to post it here. Below is one such article. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Nick

MY GLASSES WERE FROM HEAVEN, SENT BY AN ANGEL

By John Elliot

It was a sunny day, in mid June, the summer of 2004, when I’d decided to go for a mid afternoon stroll in my local park. The air was filled with the fragrances of early summer flowers, birds sang their merry warbles, and the grass was freshly mown, as I casually ambled my way along the myriad of pathways. I was enjoying a relaxing and peaceful afternoon, just taking in the essences that mother nature, and the park keepers had provided. I had decided to rest a while, and sit down on an old wooden bench near the river, and have a cigarette. The water gurgled, spluttered and swirled its way under a nearby bridge to my left, and the small waterfall on my right made its pleasing sounds.

At first I never noticed the pair of glasses, at the other end of the bench, and I must have sat there for over an hour, just taking in the tranquillity of my surroundings. They were in a leather pouch, with the usual yellow cleaning cloth wrapped around them, and looked fairly new and very expensive, around $200 at least. There was no identifying marks anywhere as to whom they belonged to or the opticians who had supplied them. I could have easily left them there, in the vain hope that the owner would remember where they had left them, but it was getting late, and our tranquil park by day is no place to be at dusk, as the local teenage gangs gathered there on a regular basis to ply their ever increasing illicit trade in drugs, and generally harass any unsuspecting passers by. I decided to take them home with me and plan a course of action, I could implement the following day to find the owner of the glasses.

The next morning I was up early and decided to print off some flyers using my computers resources, with contact details and explaining how I’d found the glasses in the park, and I set off distributing them to all the surrounding shops, newsagents and the local police station notice board too, hoping to catch the attention of their owner or at least a friend who knew of their loss.Weeks, and months passed, still nothing was forthcoming so I resided to the fact that the owner may have been just passing through town, happened upon the park and rested a while, unaware they had left their precious glasses. I simply put them in a safe place and just forgot about them altogether.

The following summer I returned to the same spot in the park, and there I was enjoying the sunshine, when I noticed fish swimming in the river so I leant forward to take a closer look as they looked so beautiful, shimmering beneath the swirl, and at that moment my own glasses fell from my face and into the water, I watched in horror as they simply disappeared under the bridge with the fast flowing current. I was devastated and sat in tears knowing I couldn’t afford another pair. I must have looked a sorry site, sitting there with my head hung low, and the teardrops dripping from my nose, when an old lady sat beside me, put her arm around my shoulder and asked if she could help.

I told her what had happened, how I’d lost my glasses in the river. She smiled and said how strange, about a year ago her husband had lost his glasses in this very park, but he was unable to return, as he had a severe heart attack and died later the same day. Now I cried even more when I told her how I’d found those same glasses on this very bench, last June, and how I’d put the flyers out everywhere, and how they still sit in my cabinet back home. I told her that she was welcome to them as a keepsake. She smiled back at me with a lovely twinkle in her eye and said, maybe those glasses were meant for you all along, maybe you should go home and just try them on. We sat for what seemed like hours, talking and laughing, and I never did find out her name, or that of her husband as I eventually watched her walking slowly off into the distance and disappear out of site as the golden sun was setting behind the great oak trees at the far end of the park, I remember the lovely orange glow everything seemed to have.

I hurried home, retrieved those glasses from their place of safety, paused a few seconds, closed my eyes, then tried them on. I was truly amazed, it was as though they really were made for me, and yes the tears flowed once more. To this day I still ware those glasses with pride and occasionally think back to that unusual day when I found them, and the wonderful afternoon spent with the old lady, the owners widow. Fate and destiny are strange bedfellows for which I’m eternally grateful.

~ Author John Elliott aka Oaky Wood (2006) ~

John Elliott aka Oaky Wood is the co-founder of The Corner 4 Women
http://thecorner4women.com and also the owner of Oakwood Gafix group of websites
http://oakwoodgrafix.co.uk is a Poet, Writer, Artist and Webmaster.

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