Change the world

Change the world

“Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. Coming, ready or not.” Harriet uncovered her eyes and looked around the dimly lit barn. The only light was rays of sunshine coming in through the gaps in the walls. She immediately spotted her sons hiding place, as he was stood behind the ladder to the hayloft with most of his body showing. “Hmmm, I wonder where Jack could be.” She watched him convulse with spasms of laughter as she pretended to search around the barn for him. “I know where he is.” She darted around the back of the tractor, hearing the giggling increase as she went. “Oh no. He’s not here.” Looking up at the old broken down tractor, she was transported back to a time long ago, when life was much less complicated.

“Grab onto the wheel, quick, quick or we’ll end up in the ditch.”

Harriet squealed with delight as her dad took his hands off the steering wheel and let the tractor veer towards the drainage ditch. “I’ve got it Daddy.” She grabbed hold of the wheel confidently and steered the tractor back into the centre of the track.

“Well done, co-pilot. You saved us from catastrophe.”

Harriet could feel his chest rumble against her back as he chuckled when he spoke. “I will always be here to save you,” she uttered solemnly, with the complete seriousness that only a five-year-old could muster. “You know Daddy, you just have to hold the wheel a bit tighter, and point it a bit straighter, then I wouldn’t have to take over.”

His chuckling intensified as he loved how serious his daughter could be. He loved how she always wanted to save everything, from the newborn lambs that she insisted on adopting when their mothers rejected them, to the planet, with her dragging the kitchen bin outside every week and emptying it onto the floor to sort through and ensure that all the recycling was in the right place. He realised every parent thought it, but he knew his little girl was going to change the world.

“You’re so cold Mommy.” Jack’s high pitched voice called out, breaking through her thoughts.

Harriet’s head swung around in the direction of Jack’s voice, but she purposefully looked past him, wanting to continue the game a bit longer. Instead, she walked to the opposite side of the barn and lifted up some old sacks to peer under.

“No, he’s not under here.” Her eyes were drawn to her old bicycle, the one her dad had sworn to her he’d given to one of the neighbour’s daughters many years before. She hadn’t known he’d hidden it away in the barn, like the sentimental softie that he would bluffly insist he wasn’t.

She picked up her bike slowly, running her hand over the handlebars reverently, remembering all the places she had ridden and all the freedom the bike had given her.

“Dad, please. It’s important I go to the rally in town. It’s something I really believe in.” She’d been sixteen and so headstrong. She knew what she wanted, and she was going to attend the rally whatever he said.

“I said no, and that’s the final answer.” He dropped his work boots onto the floor with a sigh, sitting down in his armchair, resting for the first time after a long day working on the farm. He had no doubt his daughter was going to change the world, but he wasn’t letting her go out late on a school night, however good the cause was.

Harriet turned to her mom, trying to persuade her that she should be allowed to go. “Mommmmmmmm.” She cringed as she heard the whine in her voice, but they needed to know how important this was to her.

“Harriet, your father has said no, and I’ve said no. So that is the end of the conversation.”

Harriet glared at both of her parents and flounced out of the room like the melodramatic teenager she was. She stomped up the stairs to her bedroom and brooded about how unfair it was. Until she heard both of her parents go to bed for the night. The one advantage of having parents who were early rises was they also went to bed early. She checked her watch. If she hurried, she could make the last hour of the rally. She put her flashlight into her pocket and crept out of her bedroom and down the stairs, being careful to avoid all the floorboards that she knew squeaked.

Once she was out of the house, she hurried across to the barn to grab her bike and was quickly flying down the driveway to freedom. This was the first night she’d made contact with the group of people who would go on to be so important in her life.

“No Mommy, you’re still really cold.” Jack’s giggling voice shouted again, making her smile.

“Oh, I was sure he was under the sacks. Where could he possibly be?” Harriet turned around slowly, allowing him time to reposition himself behind the ladder so he was still ‘hidden’ from her. She took a step towards the middle of the room.

“Warmer Mommy.”

She saw Jack pulling his stomach in as he spoke, obviously trying to make himself look as thin as possible, so he could remain hidden behind the ladder. She grinned, “Hmmm… so he wasn’t behind the tractor, and he wasn’t under the sacks. Where could he be? Where could he be?” Her eyes searched the barn, looking for potential hiding places other than the one he’d chosen. “Oh, I see where he is.”

Jack was now laughing hysterically with the excitement of playing with his mom.

“He’s in the chicken pen.” She dashed across to the old chicken pen, pushed up against the barn wall. She wrinkled her nose slightly as she got closer to it, as the smell reminded her why she disliked chickens so much. She looked around the back of it, already knowing she wouldn’t find Jack, but she did find the message she’d scrawled in marker pen across the wall of the barn the day she graduated from university. She winced slightly, remembering her dad’s angry reaction to her defacing his barn with her inspirational writing. She had not enjoyed spending the summer on pig pen cleaning duty, which was only broken when she moved away in the autumn to start her first real job. She hadn’t thought about the quote for a long time and had assumed her dad had painted over or sanded it off many years ago, but she should have realised how sentimental he was. He didn’t seem to have thrown anything of hers away.

“ ’Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time.’ Barak Obama.” She read out loud the words that had shaped so much of her life.

“Colder Mommy.” Jack was now sat on the floor by the ladder, unable to stand anymore due to his glee about winning the game of hide and seek against his mom.

Harriet glanced down at her watch and saw that it was time to go. “Hmmm…. Well, there is only one more place to look.” She strode directly across to the ladder, and snatched her son up off the ground and hugged him tightly. “Found you.” She kissed his cheek and squeezed him hard, feeling him wrap his arms and legs around her. She knew she didn’t have too many more years of this unconditional love, and grabbed onto every moment like this she could, as her job kept her so busy they were few and far between.

She heard the door of the barn scrape open and turned to look over Jack’s head.

“The car’s ready.” The man in the black suit nodded deferentially to her as he spoke.

She reluctantly nodded in acknowledgement, as she was in no way ready for this. “My mother?”

“She’s already in the car.”

Harriet put Jack down and brushed the dust off her black suit, turning to her son to do the same to his black clothes. When she was satisfied, she took his hand and walked towards the door.

She paused briefly in front of the suited man, who handed her the speech she had to make today. She had made hundreds, if not thousands of speeches, but this one was going to be the toughest of her life. She glanced down, reading the first line of the eulogy she was about to give. ‘Saying goodbye to my dad today is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. He always said I would change the world, and now I promise him that is what I’m going to do.’

She kept her head down, blinking a few times to get the tears out of her eyes, squeezing her son’s hand a little bit tighter before she put her head up, drew her shoulders back and took a deep breath.

“Are you ready, Madam President?”

“No, I will never be ready, but I’m going to do it anyway.” She walked out the door with her son, straight-backed, not letting the weight of her grief show. She was ready to face the loss of her father and ready to face her country.