The hedgerows are rich in memories at this time of year; memories I can touch and memories I can taste. I can watch my daughter run to me with a sycamore seed clutched in her hand. I can show her how it spins in the golden autumn light, nature's helicopter, inducing the dizzy, giddy joy of watching them fall from the sycamore tree outside the crumbling Victorian school I attended as young child. I can see her excitement too and I recreate the memory in the current time.
Purple stained lips, purple stained hands, we seek out blackberries together and I am her as she crams them into her mouth. And I am me, scratched and battered, reaching for the biggest, ripest berry beyond the highest thorns in the thickets of brambles that filled the field at the end of the housing estate where I grew up. The field is gone, more houses stand in their place, but the memories live in the here and now, in my daughter and in hedgerows.
No comments:
Post a Comment