Ellen Herrick

Author of The Sparrow Sisters

I Have No Elf on a Shelf

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My children are grown now so we missed the Elf on a Shelf extravaganza. And, no I am not sorry. Not that we didn’t have our own, certainly less KGB, elf tradition. It began with my father. But really, it began with his five sisters and three brothers on a tobacco farm in 1930s North Carolina. There wasn’t a lot of money in this big family but there was a lot of love. The older children looked out for the younger right down to making sure the magic and mystery of Christmas, elves and all, was never forgotten. They are all gone now; my father was the last. But, they left me with a lasting love of the season and an unshakeable belief in the power of family love.

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Almost Home

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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.

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Fin

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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.

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The End

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This begins the first of the lasts for us in London.  We will leave London next Tuesday, our 25th wedding anniversary–and what a festive way to spend it, cramming the last bits and bobs into our suitcases, struggling through security where all the metal bolts and pulleys in my back will necessitate yet a another officer-escorted visit to the “cubby of revelation,” another display of much scar-age and X-rays.  Why, I can’t think of a more fitting way to depart.  Yes, I can but apparently the Concorde has been retired and Prince Charles has not yet recovered from our last meeting so he’ll skip the send off.

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These Foolish Things

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When I first came to London there were things I believed the English did better than anyone else.  I still do, even the irritating customs.  Some of these habits are long-standing: driving on the left (that’s from reigns in the left hand, lance in the right), others are newer: the English proclivity for queuing left over from the war.  Most are almost holdovers from the days of Empire.  The English can make noblesse oblige look as natural as breathing.

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Through the Looking Glass

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Now that it is clear we’re moving back to America, I find myself reflecting on our sixteen years in London.  Really?  Yeah, well, you know.  So, in the next few posts I’ll probably wax lyrical (or not) about our years here: how my sons went from toddlers to men, how my daughter was born here (now that’s a typically English story–tea and biscuits in the delivery room), how I learned to drive–for the first time– here (I was only 37, you see), how I found out what a picnic should really look like (it does not involve tupperware), how to watch your sons play rugby without throwing up (modified face-palm posture).  The important stuff.  We have all become dual citizens in every way you can imagine.

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