I have had a house guest for the past ten days. This is not the best situation for me. I am a solitary type and when there are others around, even my husband or child, for more than a bit I become slightly frantic. Claustrophobia grips me and my temper is short, my speech terse and unloving. In this small house anyone but a hobbit would find themselves shrinking into a corner at the press of bodies in the kitchen, the trail of shoes at the foot of the stairs, the untidy aspect of every single room.
The Return
It rained today as Emma and I walked to school. It had started in the night, great gusts of wind and rain hammering at the windows in my bedroom under the eaves. Emma, as used to be the case when David traveled more, slept with me. It had been months since she’d joined me. Her long legs migrated to my side of the mattress and her heat woke me before the rain. Only a few inches shorter than I am, Emma had suddenly taken over not just my bed but my body, in a way. She sprawled, jack-knifed, splayed and scrambled in her dreams until I had to shove her away. I lay in the dark listening to the storm pass through Cambridge and (after the obligatory dead of night stumble to the bathroom) thought about what I’d do the next day if the rain continued.
Almost Home
I am slowly coming home. Every time my toes curl into the hot sand at the beach, my fingers pull at a weed in the garden or pluck the clothes pegs from the clean laundry snapping on the line I feel another little root take hold. We have a whole summer to find our way back, a soft landing a friend called it, a place that already feels safe and beautiful and right to us all. We are very lucky.
Still, September is only a month away and already, the sun rises later, the moon looks more golden, dahlias unfurling faster and faster, hydrangeas fading. It is time to think beyond the Cape.
Fin
It is right and proper that our last days in London are straight out of some 19th century novel of manners (and summertime). The sky is high and blue, the privet blossoms so fragrant the roses are fighting for attention. Every flower is blooming, the boxwood is such a deep green it is nearly blue and the hollyhocks (hollyhocks, in a city!) are waving like fly fishing poles in the breeze.