Watching my younger daughter run ecstatically through showers of rose petals with her love at her wedding, seeing my older daughter laughing on the swings in the park with my granddaughter, I ask myself when did I grow so solemn? I wish you had known me in my youth, stomping in my brown leather mini dress with my bank manager boyfriend who dumped me soon after for a partner without an overdraft, because the wild- eyed folk singer tweaked my ruffled blouse-and I did not object in the manner required by a future Bank President’s wife. You would have smiled at the earnest teacher I tried to become, who somewhat slowed the route to the Headmistress’ chair and accompanying salary by covering two rather nervous clergymen with glitter at a Church School Christmas lunch(one of whom later became a bishop). I would you had known the not -at all- textbook mother with flowers in her hair who screamed with delight as she pushed her babies down the Champs Elysee on an overdue Paris honeymoon, waving my first published double spread in the incredibly liberal UK national newspaper, the Guardian, who gathered mussels for supper on a mist-shrouded Breton coast and drove ten miles to put them back in pouring rain because they had not yet sung their last song of the sea and besides we had Saucisson Sec and bread a plenty. You would have liked the rather more rotund figure who shed middle-aged inhibitions like confetti during a spontaneous rendition of Good Morning Starshine at a Swedish production of Hair, not realising I was the only one in the theatre on my feet swaying and waving my arms in what passed for rhythm, who scattered a coach load of German tourists in a passage tomb on the Channel Islands where I called the old Druidic Awen chant to see if it really would roll across the ceiling and ricochet round the walls(it did). Once I led a thousand people and more at a Witch festival in a made up chant, threatening if they did not join in they would have to listen to me caterwauling for another half an hour minutes and two minutes later we raised the roof with a chorus of delight- and afterwards I stroked a silky wolf who licked my hand. Occasionally the wild girl comes for a visit, hanging on precariously on the back of an elephant in Thailand, resting a tiger’s head in my lap and discovering the magnificent creature definitely was wide awake, riding round Uluru at sunset on the back of a Harley Trike splashing through the shallows on Cairns waterfront, dress tucked into knickers, swirling and twirling in the cascading tropical rain. I believe as I sit here in the twilight playing a recording of the folk singer who tweaked my ruffle and stole my heart so many decades ago, that girl may one day come back again for another dance and laugh at the joy of life still flowing..
Posted on: Sat, 12 Apr 2014 18:14:52 +0000
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