Born in 1950, from my first awakening to the concept of age, I have known:” In 2,000 I will be fifty!”How distant, impossible to summons, in those far-off days as a ten-year old, how such an advanced age, in a new millennium would be! And here I am, twenty-two years beyond, waving to the child inside, smiling.
“It’s OK. Yes, hold the dream, it’s coming. “
My Aunty Mary was matriarch of my then-family. I am pictured here, a babe on her knee. The years took their toll, and I guess I am she, now. The depository of wisdom. The teller of stories, the bearer of the sacred flame of family, that will be acknowledged and passed on, or buried, like treasure.
The anscestors that I re-imagine for my grandchildren: the Pitts were gypsies originating in Italy, refugees perhaps from a long ago pogrom. The Cooks, Somerset men: immigrants from Ireland via Wales. . Swansea, I believe.
Great-great -grandma cursed a rose, Aunty was a witch … story after story, growing in the telling. A distant uncle emigrated to America and vanished. Leonard Cook died of TB in ‘46 after fighting in the war, and reappeared as a ghost long after.
Update. Yesterday I took the ferry from St Maws to Falmouth with daughter Kate, Darren, and their sons Frank, 6, and Alfie, 4. It was a wild ride, but now, just hours later the October sea is calm and blue, the rain gone.
That, I think, is just how it is.
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