Lisa-Jo sings out all the way from South Africa a prompt for us five minuters! Won't you join us, as we toss words in the air like balloons? This week it's about welcome. Here we go!
The grass crunches under my feet as I walk, hair tossing gently from side to side, boots muddied with the rain from this morning, or last night, and I hear it: welcome home. I've danced down this path in purple printed skirts and tights and I've slumped down this path at age 13 when I couldn't, and wouldn't understand that awful word funeral and the finality it breathed over the house, the garden, the pipe lying lonely on the sideboard, and now I walk down this path, up and out, into the promise I'm about to make.
I find the swingset, the one I played on when I was too small to remember anything but Mom's hand pressed firm against the small of my back and the feeling of being alive in the clean English air and the desperate desire even then to belong here, to be homesick for here, to own Greystones and keep chickens and yes, Mum, I'd whisper, can this be my house?
I sit there, praying love over the land, and I'm alone in the wonder of being 19 and planting my heart in England like a tiny seed that I keep praying grows a great miracle. Welcome home, I hear the land whisper back to me, and I look at the splashes of green and the trumpets of daffodils bobbing in the afternoon breeze and the gentle rustle of leaves tickling each other, and I find it: the promise of place.
Love,
Hilary
I love your writing Hilary...it's beautiful. I think we are kindred spirits somehow...the loving of Calculus and sketching Physics in your bio caught my eye and you have that heart of a writer too...I have also lived in MA, though now I'm headed overseas to Budapest (with my hubby and two little ones). So nice to 'meet' you:)
ReplyDeleteJust. so. beautiful. As always.
ReplyDeleteSo good; I read it twice! Perfectly captured a moment that could be so easily overlooked and tossed aside. Wonderful, vivid verbs. Thank you
ReplyDeleteBeautifully written-- the land and place speaks to our heart.
ReplyDeleteI love the beautiful pictures your words paint. I could just see if all in my mind ad I read:-)
ReplyDeletei absolutly enjoyed reading your writing.
ReplyDeletewe all remember our first swingset and how it was yesterday.
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I love this, friend. It's stunning. This post is so strongly you.
ReplyDeleteAre you in England?!
ReplyDeleteI could smell the rain on the breeze! Beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThank you.
Alas, Betsy, I'm not in England... but planning a March trip there for next year! Perhaps I could meet you and your lovely family in Oxford??
ReplyDeleteBeautiful post. I love the image of the hand in the small of your back pushing you. Of course, I remember the stone in my forehead and stitches when I fell off our first swing set, but hey, memories are memories! Thanks!
ReplyDeletei love this...your words are perfect. especially love, "Welcome home, I hear the land whisper back to me, and I look at the splashes of green and the trumpets of daffodils bobbing in the afternoon breeze and the gentle rustle of leaves tickling each other, and I find it: the promise of place."
ReplyDeleteI was right there with you on the sidewalk, in the yard... Beautiful,Hilary. Just breathtaking.
ReplyDeletebeautiful beautiful =)
ReplyDelete