Category: Rites of Passage
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The value of symbols
I can’t think of anything conveying much more symbolism than a suspension bridge over the Ken Water to the graveyard on the bank beyond. We are, each of us, suspended on a kind of bridge between the life that went on before us, and the life that will go on after we are gone. Of…
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When the entire garden is open to explore . . .
I could never feel right by embarrassing her, except by relating the tale, but we have never seen a cat in such excited ecstasy before, and when she’s happy, well, she drools. Three months on, and since we’re finally settled in our permanent home, it was time to introduce Kali cat to the garden. As…
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Five Days to Completion
We put in a bit of practice, this morning, shifting things out of the New Galloway Town Hall and into Kitty’s Tea Room across the road, preparing for lunch service commencing again on Tuesday. We’d felt so sad to hear, when we returned to this village after our big move away from Sparty Lea, that…
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Halfway to happiness
Moves and transitions are rarely easy, and when you don’t understand what’s going on, and why you’ve been displaced, it must be even more disorientating. We’re now about halfway through the adjustment phase, when Kali cat is allowed to ponder the great outdoors, but not to explore beyond what her eyes can see. It’s fair…
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Making the best . . .
It’s taken us some time to re-equilibrate to our new circumstances. Like a death in the family, I guess, a big move away from a lifestyle of decades standing is quite an emotional shock. You can prepare for it all you like, and in our case it’s been a year of thoughtful planning, but when…
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Roads from confusion?
The last ‘joy’ I could develop was in the middle of fraught tensions before Christmas, and life has been a frenzy of strenuous physical effort since to pack up all our stuff and vacate our home. Now that we can sit still, in our tiny bolthole within a pleasant village, and sigh in some relief,…
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Resilience: the gift that keeps giving . . .
I don’t know how a parent teaches resilience to their children, except by some sort of example. We’re pretty sure that ours have seen enough situations where we’re down, struggling, and have somehow managed to get back up on our feet and try again. Let’s say rather that we’ve certainly felt we’ve had our share…
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Those cusps . . .
Sometimes it feels like our lives have been struck by a bolt of lightning: everything changes, and you can clearly identify the before and the after. The birth of a child can be one such cusp, for example. Or a much hoped-for job offer. Lightning bolts can feel desperately negative too. Cancer diagnosis is one…
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The joy of clearing
Today I shall extract the remaining bits and pieces from the loft room that you enter as you climb the steps. Our hedgerow wine bottles will be slowly consumed, or divested, thereafter. Although I don’t really have any idea where the last of this first stuff will go, when it all comes down, I can…
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Marshland colour
For a Canadian expatriate, the more brilliant the red leaf is, the more homesickness intrudes. But yesterday afternoon you didn’t have to be a reminiscing Canadian to experience the delight of the blackberry leaves turning crimson, branch by branch. I remember when the new Canadian flag was first mooted. Schoolchildren were urged to create their…
Roads to Joy 