A special visitor in The View from the Terrace

Today something rather magical happened. I’d had a disturbed night worrying about various problems both financial ones and family disagreements. After I woke I lay there for a while feeling rather down and alone. I needed someone to talk to who would pick me up and tell me it would all be OK. My father always used to do that. He had that knack of making you feel better. He died when I was 15 in early December. The following year, on the anniversary my mother saw a robin. They were his favourite bird and after that she would always say that the first robin was him visiting us.

I got up to go to the bathroom and looked out of the landing window. There was a sparrow perched on the kitchen roof facing the garden. I watched him for a moment then he turned to face me and I saw a flash of red and realised he was not a sparrow but a robin, the first one I have seen this winter. And then I realised that today is the anniversary of my father’s death.