The Rise of Henry

I thought I would tell you about Henry today. Henry was my father's gardener when I was a little girl and he taught me some lessons about life that I even remember today. Both my parents used to work, my dad as a buyer in a big department store, he had an office that used to overlook the shop floor and it was always a treat to go and see him at work, where all the ladies would make a great fuss of us. My mum worked in the same store, but in the furniture department. This meant that on school holidays we were left alone in the house to be looked after by the maid and Henry. It was at a time when Zimbabwe was close to independence, although I was too young to understand what was going on, except that there was a nasty war. There used to be a big hill outside our house, I would come tearing down there on my bike, so of course if I ever fell off, it wasn't my parents who used to have to unpeel me off the gravelly road, it was Henry. Once I had a particularly nasty fall and Henry had to pick me up and carry me into the garden. He sat me down on the grass and attended to my wounds. My knees were all grazed and bleeding and he was doing his best to distract me from the pain. He took a penknife and cut himself on the finger and said "You see, we are different colours, but our blood is the same colour, we are not so different from each other." I have never forgotten these words of wisdom taught to me by the humble gardener.
A few years later, we had moved homes and continents twice, my sister went back to that sleepy little town in the mountains where we were born. She went into the store where my parents worked and guess who had my Dad's exact same job? Yes, it was Henry!!