SORRY, BUT I JUST DONT MISS HOME; Perhaps I dont miss it because I am home. Home in my head, my heart, my soul. Home in being cared for by my parents like a child, and having a Dylan Thomas Christmas without the snow, Years and years and years ago, when I was a girl, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the colour of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlours and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor-car, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and snowed. I sleep with a hot water bottle at my feet in a cold thick-walled cottage, under the eiderdown with flannel pyjamas and perhaps my childs body beside me, or alone, with only my heavy cloudy dreams for company, and I awaken at the darkest hour to silence more clear than a church bell on a frosty morning. I pray for peace and fall back into thick sleep till nine and roll out into slippers and a dressing gown fit for an Eskimo. The entire house sleeps on while I boil water for coffee in the tiny kitchen and watch a single magpie, like a bossy waiter in black and white, scares the humble brown sparrow and blackbirds. Red chested robin waits and watches for a fat worm from soil so rich and black, the green of the lawn, a golfers envy. Mum comes down, gorgeous hair loose and curly and we chat at the window, and I belong and am grateful. I feed my sleepy faced girls buttery crumpets with lemon curd, yolky eggs and beans and strong sweet English tea, served piping hot from the pot. Theres a jigsaw puzzle on the table and my step-dad and youngest child, battle away with it, while my elder daughter lies cuddled on the couch with a book. Mum and I talk the easy talk of the familiar, and a stream of sayings that have lain deep in the vault of my history, are awakened, and we laugh and sing snippets of carols, long since banned in American schools. We walk, despite the weather, on tiny winding lanes with signs at the top with words like Eglwys, Bryn, Pentre, Llanfair and Llanddona. Theres a tiny church as old as the hills, about six hundred centuries ancient, with a wrought iron gate, and ivy overgrown graves with Welsh surnames, Williams, Hughes, Rhys, Evans and Davies, and I say the names like a mantra, music to my soul. We go inside to a simple wooden pewed-church with a graceful altar, uncluttered, a window above it where the light shines through and I kneel and say the serenity prayer, closer to god than I dare to be. We go home and have tea, and Boxing Day bubble and squeak, Branston pickle and HP sauce, pickled onions and trifle, hot Christmas pudding with five-pence pieces inside, and more tea. My girls have decorated the Christmas cake mum made weeks earlier, thick, dense fruit cake with marzipan and rough icing. They put little Christmas trees, reindeer and a holly wreath on it, and we eat more. My belly gurgles and grows, there has been no yoga, no skinny, angry warrior woman Sian, throwing frozen pizza in the oven and battling the woodstove like Annie Oakley. No wonder I dont want to go back......Maybe I wont. This is where I belong. Amongst family, in tiny old houses, with hot tea, and green fields dotted white with sheep. Ive seen friends here, who were as miserable as I in the depressed Thatcher eighties, who wandered far, but came back, and made a life, and I ask myself, without regret, yet at a crossroad, should I now take the road more travelled, that leads back home?
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 16:20:42 +0000
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