strange surroundings

representative photo, not actual!


My aunt and uncle live in a very beautiful, quiet street, in a very desirable area, and have done so since the seventies, I suppose. The trees are tall, the mountains are near by, my uncle can walk out of the house to go hiking, which he does every Wednesday night and on weekends. The Eucalyptus trees scent the air, the house is wooden and echoes the smell. It is simple and peaceful and even though I have only visited here a few times in my life, perhaps aged two, fifteen, seventeen, twentysomethingelse, it feels like home to me.

The house is filled with my aunt's beautiful crafts, needlepoint, weaving, a host of beautiful soft blankets knitted in glowing colours which we wrap around us against the cold and sadness now. Everything in the house is her and even though a tragedy took place here, it is still peaceful and comfortable. It doesn't feel like she is not here. Quiet and happier to be at home, she spent most of her time here, rarely venturing far. So she has imprinted herself here with the tens of thousands of hours she spent reading, working , listening to the birds and to her soft soothing music. She yearned for more I know, but she had the life she was comfortable and happy with. My mother would have been the same, but she chose not to stay here, to choose bad, selfish, messed up men instead and swapped this seaside respectability for life in depressed Ireland, beautiful in a different way.

I see them together, side by side on the grass talking, the long flowing hair of their youth perhaps, or shorter and threaded with grey as it was when they died. Can people really find each other after death? Wouldn't it be wonderful to know for sure either way? Maybe not. Why not keep the picture to comfort us for now. My daughter asked me tonight at bedtime if I would die before her. Working out that I would because I am older. I tell her that I will be an old lady, that she will be a grown up woman, a mama... I hope it's true, I hope it's true.


I was going to say I found it hard to write here, that I needed my familiar messy desk and uncomfortable chair. But maybe I'm just tired. Marshalling thoughts, organising and recounting, it's too much to face sometimes. So you just start writing and work on something else.