Sakura

A man is celebrating his 80^th birthday. He watches an eight-year old girl play under the cherry tree in his garden. Sakura looks quite western (his dad is American), but still keeps the straight black hair and slanting eyes. She is wearing a white dress and a white petal falls on her lovely tiny nose. She rubs it, then looks up and waves at him. He smiles back, and recalls the day when he saw her grandmother for the first time.

He was ten and she was five. His father had taken him to the garden and pointed at the little girl that was playing under the white blooming cherry tree. She was the most precious creature he had ever seen. In her white dress, her whitest skin contrasting with her jet-black hair, he thought that was what angels must have looked like. He instantly fell in love with her and knew he would never love any other woman in his life.

She died some years ago, and he buried her under the cherry tree that he planted when they first arrived in London, to remind them of their native country. When they came they had nothing but one another and had to work really hard to get through.

Sakura is the flower of the cherry trees. For Japanese people, cherry trees blooming means spring has arrived. For him, after so many years, it still brings back memories of that innocent pure girl playing under the white petals as if anything else mattered.