100 Word Stories: Are you going to finish that?

It’s carefully wrapped in acid-free tissue paper, in the drawer I use least. Thirty years on, the threads still bright, the last one still long, although I did take out the needle to store it separately.

You can stitch hope, with your fingers, and love, and anticipation, and all sorts of dreams, without ever imagining…

“Are you going to finish that?” he asks, seeing it open on my lap. Back then, he cried with me. And a year later, cried again when our daughter arrived safely. It was still too soon, for this, then.

“Yes. It’s time, isn’t it, Grandad?”