WHITE RIBBONS

Kazuri

When he left home, he was convinced any other place was better.

That night, he had a bad argument with his father.

He had already made up his mind to leave.

He was old enough; he wanted to experience life on his own.

Life in the city did not turn out as he expected, and soon he was doing all he could just to get by.

When he exhausted the legal means to earn a living, he turned to illegal means and this landed him prison.

He had been involved in a robbery where someone got killed and he could not believe it when the judge handed him a 20 year sentence.

Things had unraveled very quickly, from a farm boy to a business man to a prisoner!

While in prison, he thought of home and his father, would he take him back if he ever returned?

Nearing the end of his prison sentence, he wrote a letter to the father and asked for his forgiveness.

Part of the letter read, “I will be passing home on the evening train. If you have forgiven me, tie a white ribbon on the tree near the fence. If I see it, I will alight and come back home. If I don’t see a white ribbon, I will ride on and never come back.”

On the train home, he was anxious and could not even look outside the window. Approaching his home, he asked one of the passengers to tell him if there was a white ribbon on a tree near the fence.

“No, I don’t see a white ribbon” said the passenger, “I see white ribbons everywhere. There are white ribbons on the fence; there are white ribbons on the tree, what does it mean?”

He rushed out of the train into the arms of a waiting father.

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