Sunday, December 5, 2010

The Little Goat

Ballet Raices de Colombia, Harbourfront, Toronto

    Stan was eleven when his father died. Some people believed his father had died in an accident. Some people were convinced he had been killed by those who had borrowed money from him.
    Stan’s mother, who had had a good life with her professionally successful husband, suddenly found herself penniless and homeless.  Her beloved Stan was not her only child. He had an older brother and an older sister.
    The widow was offered a job as a cleaner. She rented a small room in somebody's house and she bought a goat to have a supply of milk for the children. When his mother was at work from dawn till sunset, Stan felt very lonely. It was then when he befriended the goat. He talked to her. He sang songs to her. He fed her. The goat followed him everywhere and she became his father, his mother and his best friend.
    Over thirty years later, when Stan had his first child, a tiny little girl, slightly bigger than the palm of his hand, he named her after the goat. Every day he would marvel at the little girl's cheerfulness. She brightened his days. She loved listening to the stories about Stan's little goat. She loved Stan to read her a bedtime story about a goat that became a world traveler.
    One day, when she grew up, she bought a pair of red pants, similar to those the goat in the bedtime book wore, and she headed for the world. She never saw Stan again.