My daughter teaches her father the game of shadow stepping. She tells him how she is so good at it that she has never been beaten at school, gesturing with her hands as she talks about it. Dad was smiling sweetly as he listened. Father and daughter were just stomping around on the floor, looking like two monkeys having fun from afar.
Dad teaches his daughter how to play with hand shadows. He was proud to show off different hand shadows, including puppies, cats and rabbits, as well as giraffes, dolphins and elephants, and he even dubbed the animals' voices.
"I love shadows." She waved her hands at the shadow and it turned into a flying bird.
"Daddy is the big shadow, I am the little shadow, we are both black, there is no difference except that we are big and small.
"Yes, we are all the same, with the same outline and the same colour. We are all the same, we have the same silhouette, the same colour," said the father, walking slowly behind his daughter, "and now she is part of him. The daughter insisted that her father crouch down until he was hidden in her shadow, then opened his hands, "Daddy is part of my daughter.
"Does mummy have a shadow now?"
"Mummy is in heaven, and there are no shadows in heaven."
"Why?" The daughter wondered.
"In Heaven, there is light all around us, so there are no shadows. Dad also likes to use his hands to gesture at things he wants to say.
"So she can't play shadow games?" My daughter's eyes became moist.
Dad stood up and walked like his wife, "That's mummy's shadow.
The daughter snorted and burst into tears.
"That's how daddy becomes mummy, and I become daddy." The daughter also walked like a big black bear, just like Daddy.
Suddenly, the mother became the daughter again and danced like a princess. At this point, even the angels could not tell whether it was two people with three shadows or three people with two shadows.
My daughter loves shadows, and three of them at that.
After the accident, my daughter seldom had her face looked at in the mirror for fear of seeing her broken face, remembering the fear of the accident and the pain of losing her mother.
She underwent orthopaedic surgery to restore her vision, but not her appearance. When she saw the light again, she saw her mother smiling, but it was her father. At first she preferred to hide in the dark, but it was only when she played shadow games with her dad that she began to accept the light again.
"Why are the shadows only black? the daughter wondered.
"Then we can imagine that it has different colours. Daddy stroked her head.
"My shadow is pink, Daddy's shadow is white, and Mommy's is red. Does Daddy know why?" Daddy shook his head and pretended not to know.
"Because white and red make pink. My daughter followed her father's example and stood on her tiptoes to touch his head.
Dad taught his daughter how to cut out shadows, a small paper-cutting technique in which three figures are cut out of a sheet of paper, holding hands. She filled the three figures with cream, red and pink colours and wrote the words "Heavenly Shadow" on them. Dad put the shadows in his daughter's room so that they would always be with her.
The daughter loves the shadow, it is the shadow of three people.
The Shadow of Heaven" won the 39th Youth Literature Award in the Open Category of Children's Literature
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