Author of The Sparrow Sisters
I suppose that title should read, “Past Life in Boxes”. Yesterday David and I went to the warehouse in Canton, Mass. in which over sixteen years of our lives repose–and not in splendor. In 1994, with sons five and two in tow, we moved to London. I won’t say anymore about that because, after these months of writing, if the subject of being a stranger in a strange land were a dead horse, it would be glue by now.
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.
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.