5 Minutes 5 Stones

3 Feb13- Sunday night 8.45pm:

Joanna climbed onto my lap while I was busy doing my work in my study.  She put her hands around me and quietly whispered... "Pa, can you play with me for 5 minutes. Just 5 minutes and I will give you my chocolate." Fact is, day before, I was craving for her Hershey bar in her hand and hastily, she swallowed the whole bar just so that big bad wolf, i mean big bad dad, could not taste it. ;(

Stung by her words, I paused. Wife yelled from outside- "Time to go to bed."

I realised the urgency. A plea not to be taken lightly. I beg for 5min and quickly scrambled to see what i can teach... I mean, play with her. She saw my frantic efforts and said, I want to play 5 stones. Honestly, a special gift from Moses, I have never really known how to play 5 stones. I recall in my childhood days little girls sitting in pairs facing one another and throwing the five stones up and down.... not much fun I must say. A futile attempt to re-play from my memories, she laughed at my folly and we started creating new games. One stone dropped on her and hit her little nose and we both laughed. Ended up, rather than playing it the 'right' way, we had fun just throwing the stones at each other and dodging one another.

"TWO MORE MINUTES.. " the familiar tone warned. I really wanted to make treasure this little bit of time.... rather than scrambling for a story book, I playfully created a story just by using the 5 stones and my own body.... I took the 5 stones on a journey round my legs, my knees, my tummy- big enough to create quite a terrain, my shoulders. I used Psalms 23 as my plot and imagined what would happen if Stoney A dropped into the caves from the mountain... how stoney B, C, D started fighting to be first, etc. Totally unscripted it was just awesom watching her captivated and listening attentively to my cooked up tales.

"Times up..." Sweetie whispered, "thanks daddy." I knew those were the two sweetest words that I will not take for granted.