Sunday. Sun and wind.
And all I can think of is the fact that this day marks the start of my last week of self-inflicted hermit's pilgrimage.
This makes me a bit sad.
Yes, I still have a week on my own, to finish the artwork I need to finish. And it's really not unmanageable or overwhelming, (in spite of my panic of yesterday). I just feel a bit sad that this time, a time of my own rhythm, is coming to an end.
My rhythm.
So like the tides, I move toward my work, and step back. Toward and back. Toward and back.
Leaving Chester at home, I hike over to the Ocracoke United Methodist Church for some spiritual nourishment.
First I hear, rather than see, the activity around the church. There is an abundance of children, some running around outside, others standing on the steps handing out bulletins. I enter and settle into a pew, happy to be anonymous. There is plenty to watch as families, singles, friends, young and old, make their way in. I sit behind (what I imagine to be) a mother and daughter, one in her 70's, the other 40-ish.
It seems somehow so familiar, this mother and daughter. One speaks quietly, the other leans towards her, smiling. Both comfortable and content in each other's company. So lovely.
The mother reaches into her purse, fishes around for something, and hands it to the daughter. The daughter stares at the 'something' in her lap. Their eyes meet and hold for a moment. Then both are consumed by silent giggles.
Yes, somehow so familiar.
I feel a stab of wistful memory, seated behind this mother and daughter in the Ocracoke United Methodist Church. My mother and I spent Sunday mornings in a similar fashion the last years of her life. The last years of her life, and our closest.
I loved my mother dearly, and counted on her for so much, but we both shared argumentative natures, natures which led us up a sometimes rocky path, (though always ending in peace.)
"You and mum are SO alike." My sister's pronouncement to me as a teenager.
And true.
We, at times, rubbed against each other, each knowing the other's argument inside out and backwards (because we'd heard it all before).
But my sister also confided in me her prediction that I'd probably end up closest to our mother.
True? Perhaps.
In her last years, all was loving friendship, and peace.
Peace.
The name my mother is very nearly given, being born two days before the end of the first World War, a name, by her own admission, totally inappropriate. Born on the island of Jersey, Esme, the youngest, much loved and cherished child. Here they live until 1940 when their lives are turned upside down. They leave Jersey on the last boat to England the day before the German occupation of the Channel Islands begins. Her mother, frail, her father, vacillating about leaving, her sister with two small children, and my mother. Each with one small bag, leaving everything else behind.
My mother, a wonderful story teller and writer, takes it from here:
"When we arrived in Weymouth, (on the south coast of England), we had no idea where we were going to go. My father announced that he was just going to slip away to do a bit of shopping. Leaving the rest of us puzzled and tired, we couldn't imagine what this man, who rarely shopped for himself, needed. He returned an hour later, looking sheepish. In a brown paper parcel was a pair of men's pyjamas. The reason given, that he's forgotten to pack any. As in his one small case (allowed for each person), he had packed the following:
his dinner jacket,
a bottle of scotch,
and a glass."
My mother's parents, my grandparents, never return to their beloved island. Both die in wartime in Shrewsbury, England. My mother marries my father, and when the war is over, and life slowly, imperceptibly begins to return to normal, they, along with my two eldest brothers, immigrate to Canada.
My mother. Bright, sociable, deeply spiritual, funny, argumentative, comforting, loving. A voracious reader, a writer whose craft never really gets the recognition I wish it had. Is this due to her choices, her family, her charitable work? Was this a loss for her?
The service at the Ocracoke United Methodist Church, is lengthy. Each person there for their own reasons. My mother, on my mind throughout. So thankful am I that her life didn't end when I was a selfish child, a belligerent teenager, a needy young adult.
That would be loss for me on a massive scale.
So thankful am I that she lived to an age when we could sit in loving friendship, comfortable and content in each other's company, like the mother and daughter in the pew in front of me, on this windy sunny Sunday morning, in the Ocracoke United Methodist Church.
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