My youngest child does not like trains. The other two love them, so much so that on one occasion I was driving with an adult – no kids in the car – and helpfully pointed out a train going by. ‘Thanks, Ali,’ said my childfree friend, ‘I like trains too. But I’m getting quite good at spotting them by myself.’
My third daughter isn’t so keen. Trains are too big and too fast, the other passengers are too unpredictable, and she’s anxious that she’ll be left on a station platform. Given a choice, she’ll avoid the train, skipping outings and staying home if necessary. But sometimes, it's unavoidable; and last week, she needed to catch a train. She complained for a good twenty minutes, then suddenly yelled, ‘We’re going right now’ and marched out the door. I realised she had been steeling her nerve; once steeled, we left.
As we walked to the station, we chatted. ‘Remember,’ I said, ‘trains aren’t like cars. When you drive, you’re in your own little bubble. When you’re on a train, anything can happen.’
I tried not to think of the time on a train last year, when a man beat up his partner in front of their kids and mine; or the screaming woman we had encountered once; or all the other sad and scary things we have witnessed on public transport. Instead, I reminded her that twice recently, we’ve been on a train when friends have come aboard at subsequent stations; and how much fun it had been coming home from the city one night after a school concert, when the carriage had been full of school families. ‘You never know,’ I said, ‘something surprising might happen on this trip, too.’
We travelled into the city. Her hand stayed clasped in mine as we wove our way through the crowds and did our errands. Then we sniffed tea at the tea shop and tried a free sample, examined all the pens at the stationary store so trendy with the primary school set, discussed how she’d like to spend her pocket money, and shared sushi for afternoon tea. Finally, it was time to go. She sighed as we headed back to the station, back to the dreaded trains. I ushered her through the turnstile, and we rode the escalator down.
At the platform, her eyes widened. Three young women were standing there, chatting. They had suitcases at their feet, and one of them was holding a huge helium balloon emblazoned with the characters from the latest Disney movie. My daughter tugged my arm, and pointed at the balloon. The young woman noticed, and smiled at her.
The train arrived. We piled on board, and as it pulled out of the station, the young woman came over. ‘I’m going to the airport,’ she said, ‘and I don’t think they’ll let me take this on the plane. Would you like it?’
My daughter was almost speechless. She whispered her thanks, then took the balloon and held on tight. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ she said to me quietly. She carefully turned the balloon this way and that, showing me the characters and telling me all about them.
When we got home, she let it float above her bed. The next morning I found her lying there, a shaft of sunlight slanting across the blankets, her eyes gazing lovingly at the balloon. ‘So beautiful,’ she murmured again as we had a cuddle.
I’d like to think my prayer for a good journey was answered, even before I recognised that I had been praying. But there is too much violence in this world, and too many unanswered prayers, for me to rest comfortably in that. Instead I’ll say only that I am grateful for a small act of kindness that obliterated one little girl’s fear –
And you never know what might happen on a train.
The other night, kids in bed, I went to visit a new acquaintance. We had things to talk about over a pot of tea. At 8 o’clock it was becoming dark, and I wondered about driving. But for reasons neighbourly, political and environmental, I try to minimise my use of the car. I’ve given up waiting for everyone else to drive less. Instead, as much as possible in a city built for car travel, I ride or catch public transport to get about.
But when it’s dark out, I often find myself wavering. Too many of my friends have been hit by cars for me to ever feel entirely safe on a bicycle; yet the pot of tea awaiting me was a bit too far away for me to walk.
I thought of the car with longing: so quick, so comfortable, so safe. But with a sigh I recalled my commitment. I affixed my lights, strapped on my helmet, and headed out.
The night was cool. As I rode down the street, pedalling steadily, my limbs began to loosen up. The heat of the day was dissipating in a slight evening breeze coming in from the south. I rode along in a perfect state of warm body – cool air: utterly comfortable.
The night was quiet. Once or twice a car cruised by; once, I overtook a man on a squeaky bike. A couple of pedestrians were out walking their dogs. I passed a jogger and heard him puff. A fruit bat erupted out of a tree and flew away heavily. But mostly, it was just me. Me and the night and my thoughts.
The night was fragrant. Every block I rode into a new wall of scent, inhaled deeply once or twice then left it behind. Jasmine, fig, eucalyptus, and many I could not identify. I had ridden the same streets earlier the same day, and had smelled nothing; now, the air was redolent.
I arrived at a softly lit house pregnant with the hush of sleeping children. I parked the bike and locked it up – no engine noise, no big headlights, no electronic beep; then I softly knocked and tiptoed in. The mother made an evening tea. We sat and allowed the conversation to unfurl from the shadows. Small tendrils of talk floated into the lamplight then gently dispersed. It was good.
The night deepened and I left. I rode home a different way, zigzagging past the streets and homes of friends and acquaintances and nodding a blessing towards each one. A sense of exhilaration filled me as bone, muscle and sinew worked together to whisk me along. I revelled in the quiet and the dark, and my olfactory nerves delighted in every rich fragrance.
This, surely, is prayer embodied: gratitude and joy and delight; attentiveness to my body, this bike, and the world all linked in perfect union; and the sure and certain knowledge that I was in the right place at the right time, as I cycled through the night.
Insulated in the ton of metal that is my car, I would have travelled quicker. And the headlights would have seared into the darkness; the intake would have filtered out the scent of jasmine; the comfortable seat would have given me no sense of strength or embodiment; the speed and need to concentrate would have prevented me nodding blessings on my way.
They say life is a journey. I say the journey, done well, gives life.
I have lived in the city my whole life, and it has made me defensive. I avoid people’s eyes when I’m walking down the street; I avert my face from the stranger on the train. You never know when you will be asked if you have been saved (correct answer: yes, thank you, and hallelujah! This is my stop...); asked if you have a dollar; or told at great length about tedious grandchildren. Perhaps this is why so many of us drive – it’s a great way to stay in one’s bubble.
This regular practice of avoidance takes its toll, however. I’ve done it for so long that it has become a habit of mind; and I realise that, rather than it being a deliberate strategy I adopt when necessary, it has become my starting point. I now find myself avoiding people when I have no need to: in the playground, on the footpath, sometimes even at home without really meaning to. It’s not that I don’t want to talk. It’s just that somehow it’s all a bit hard, and the sense of risk outweighs the possible benefit.
Not long ago, I climbed onto a bus. There was a vacant seat next to a crinkly old man. His crumpled face was dotted with liver spots and skin tags. He had grown too small for his clothes and they hung from his skinny little frame. One glance, and my alarm bells began to ring. Would he insist on telling me about his long life? Would he be smelly, perhaps even incontinent? Would he be very strange?
I didn’t know, but I am sick of that constant companion, trepidation. So I sat next to him – coward that I am, however, I armed myself with a book.
But buses and books don’t agree with me, so I soon shut it again. And the man, whom I had felt reading over my shoulder, asked me what I thought of it. ‘I knew the author,’ he said, ‘when he was at Melbourne University. His wife and mine were great friends. But I haven’t read that one.’
‘Oh?’ I asked, ‘and what did you study?’
‘I was a teacher,’ he said. ‘I taught a lot of new migrants. Had a terrific time. They called me il Professore!’
I read with refugee kids each week, so I mentioned that. And we suddenly launched into one of those great big life-giving conversations, ranging from refugee kids, ghetto schools and educational practices, to the process of writing and action research. ‘Life,’ I suggested, ‘is one big action research project’ and he nodded emphatically, and laughed.
He told me about volunteering with older boys at the youth remand centre. He encouraged them to write stories about their life ‘behind the roller door’, and arranged to have their work published. ‘You’re authors now,’ he’d say to them, ‘so write more! Write more!’
‘What a man!’ I thought. It was the best conversation I’d had in weeks, the sort of I’d hope for at a good party.
The burden of living in a city is also its great gift: the daily interactions with strangers. It takes time and energy, and the bypassing of caution, to engage in these friendly encounters. But when I do, there is one thing I’ve learned: I am surprised and delighted time and again, even on the local bus.
should have been each time I gave birth to a child, but oh! the first birth was so fraught and difficult, days of labour and a contemptuous obstetrician and a supervising midwife who talked about me as if I wasn't in the room and I wasn't really sure I wanted a baby anyway let alone like this being ripped to shreds and when the baby was born she didn't sleep for hours just lay there looking at me with her big eyes and sucking out the ragged remains of my soul and I've been picking up the pieces of my shattered self ever since.
Perhaps it was the second birth, or the third – but then again, each time the hospital wouldn't let me go as soon as the baby was born so I paced the room like a caged animal and did crosswords to distract myself while my husband held the baby and adored her; and each time I was filled with guilt that my husband was more affectionate than me, even as I was frantic to whisk my daughter home.
It might have been the day that I married, but my mother had exacted a death-bed promise that we not postpone it. A week later we held her funeral; and a week after that, the wedding.
I wore my favourite dress, a red cheongsam slit up the side. Instead of pants, I thought I should wear stockings. I hate stockings. In my grief-stricken muddle, at the last minute I stripped them off and went bare legged. As I stood on the steps up front, I realised my white thighs were on display to the congregation, and my new sandals hurt. I beamed anyway at my pale and grumpy groom, who was standing at a lean; he had an ear infection.
Undeterred by sadness or dresses or illness or shoes, I bowled through the vows until 'in sickness and in health'. I had hoped to gallop through unthinking. Instead I stood there on the brink of eternity with my mouth gaping open and no sound coming out; although I loved my husband I didn't want to nurse him as my father nursed my mother – bathing, dressing, feeding, toileting, propping up with pillows and turning in the night – and I sure as hell didn't want him to nurse me. The congregation waited out the minutes, grieving with me, and out of the silence I felt them lift me up and find the voice to make that hardest vow.
Perhaps it was a day in Italy, where we had a long holiday with friends. I sat on a hillside and for the first time put pen to paper and knew I could write something that wasn't academic. I wrote about visiting the Sistine Chapel where the guards bellowed at the crowd to be quiet; I wrote about God, and Michelangelo, and the sanctity of chickens. And later it was published. A good day, but I was a tourist there; to be deeply happy, I need to feel at home.
Perhaps it was the day I first had dinner with my husband and stayed for hours? The day in Washington when it snowed at Christmas and our grandfather took us sledding at midnight? Or was it one of many days we picnicked on a hillside; or the cold night we built up the fire, stayed late and, as the thermometer dipped to zero, watched for an eclipse?
Or was it a rainy day, uncomplicated by anything much? I was a child, I don't know how young. My parents were gardening and, in the joyful lunacy of being outside in the rain, were at peace; my mother didn't even criticise. For the time being, we were safe.
My sister and I wore raincoats and plastic pants and gumboots. A shallow concrete gutter ran down the side of the house, keeping the water which ran down the driveway at bay. We floated leaves and sticks down the gutter and ran races, leaf against stick against leaf. We watched our little boats churn into the drain, then scooped up the water and drank it, clear and cool like a mountain spring, flinty, earthy, tinged with eucalyptus from the trees which hung over the drive.
We jumped in puddles and sent them splashing; we kicked up water and threw it around as rain sheeted down and the drive shimmered silver. The world was awash.
At the end of my sleeves, my shrivelled hands were pink with cold. Damp tendrils of hair curled around my face; my lashes were beaded with droplets. Rain ran down my runny nose and dripped onto the ground. I was sodden, yet I burned with delight; I felt ablaze and alive and wholly me.
And, as simple as that, and for all the adult joys and delights, that's probably it. On that well-remembered day in a year long gone and otherwise unremarked, I was, however briefly, the happiest.
Darkness. I wake with a jolt, completely disoriented. In front of me, a looming shadow. I have no idea where I am. Heart pounding, I concentrate, try to remember through the jetlag.
Slowly, it comes to me.
I'm home.
I've been away for nine weeks. We've stayed in ten locations, ten different hotels or bedrooms or basement floors, and I have not woken once without knowing exactly where I am. Now, only now, am I completely disoriented.
When we arrived, I headed straight for the kitchen. And was staggered by the floor. "Is this our floor?" I asked. "Is this really it?" I didn't recognise it, couldn't reconcile it with my memory of the place. Later, preparing food, I found myself staring at the bench top. "Has it always been this colour?" I wondered. Everything, but everything, feels unfamiliar. I have to stop and think; I can't remember where I keep the tea towels, and I'm wandering around the kitchen with my hands dripping wet, searching like a stranger.
I'm shocked by the decor. As my girls shriek in play, the sound drills into my skull. The floors are bare, the walls empty, the windows in the public rooms naked. Noise bounces around. Our house is cool, spare to the point of being dismal. "Am I just camping here?" I think. "Where are the rugs?"
They say home is where the heart is. I thought that meant we longed for our houses, but as I walk around my own house, a house that my friends love, a house that I've written about, I wonder what I'm doing here – and I realise I had it all back-to-front. It's not that our hearts are linked to our houses; it's that our home is where our hearts yearn to be. And this is what made our trip so wonderful: my heart delighted in every rural location, every little town, every river bank, every muddy puddle and glistening stone and gnarled oak tree . After a lifetime of living in big cities, negotiating traffic and broken glass, ambition and consumption, appointments to see friends and rush hurry bustle, my whole self was exhausted. Away, my heart expanded. I felt at home almost every place we went.
So now where is my heart? Is it with me in Melbourne? Perhaps, given time, it will come back to me here as we devour ripe figs and eat sweet grapes from the vine. The pears are ready to be picked; the almonds are dropping from the tree. Eating food from the garden always helps me feel grounded. Perhaps, too, as we share wine and stories with people we love, I will remember who I am and with whom I belong.
But at times I think I left it in Cornwall. A month ago, I sat in Glasgow Cathedral and prayed for home. Thinking of my own city, I was instead flooded with yearning for a grey town of stone and water, threaded through with lanes like crooked fingers. In the hazy light of the cathedral, blurred further by my unexpected tears, I saw before me sea and sky merged into one. Above me, I heard gulls.
My youngest daughter is 18 months old. She walks around the house tapping on a coaster, pretending it's an iPhone. She holds a shell, a cup, a shoe to her ear. 'Hi!' she says, 'yes, yes, yes, bye!'. My not-quite-four year old places a book face down on the table. 'This is my laptop,' she says, and taps away on the cover. She draws little circles on sheets of paper, and types on those too.
My six year old watched my husband closely, figured out his passwords, and now uses the iPhone whenever she can find it. She has, on occasion, quietly shut the study door, booted the computer and found her favourite website, hoping I won't notice her absence for a little while.
I worry about my children growing up in a world of bells and whistles and zippy little gadgets. I worry that they won't play and instead will rely on electronic toys for entertainment. I worry that they will forget how to be quiet, and how to drop into that perfect space where they are unaware of anything in the world except the story they are telling themselves as they move small twigs around. I worry that they will be infected by acquisitiveness, always wanting the latest this or that, always wanting more. We're already fielding requests for video games and Wii and all the other things owned by kids at school.
Perhaps one of the attractions of travelling is that it gets us out of the house, out of the city, and well away from most gadgets. Last week, we were visiting friends in rural Maine. Our house overlooked the vast Passagassawakeag River; the yard sloped down to the river bank. On a typical morning, we'd watch the tide ebb. As the shore became exposed, the gulls drifted in. They floated down, carried mussels up into the sky, dropped them onto the rocks, then swooped back to pick out the flesh. As more land appeared, my girls climbed down the wooden steps at the end of the garden and collected pretty stones and shells. They arranged them in patterns on the damp driftwood for us to admire; choice specimens were brought inside.
Around the river bend we found a lobster pot, washed up in a tangle of ropes and netting; we found a faded oar. We clambered on rocks, and in an act of glorious giggling destruction, smashed up slabs of ice the size of coffee tables beached by the receding tide. My girls sucked on the shards. The shore was covered with loose shale, and the flakes of stone were perfect for skipping across the water – and the more rounded rocks made a satisfying splash.
All very simple, all utterly glorious. There's something about wind and water and rocks and seaweed and the infinitely changing landscape that keeps us endlessly entertained. Life feels so simple when travelling. We have five people and three bags, and want for nothing. Our entertainment is the world outside; or, when it's wet, a few pens, a bit of paper, a book. But next week we go home, back to the phone and the telly and the desktop, back to work, school, kinder, volunteer jobs, back to crazy traffic and crowded lives. I feel exhausted just thinking about it.
But last week, I saw a loon glide past, surprisingly low in the water. A seagull bathed, arching as it splashed. As I watched, I congratulated myself that my kids are still absorbed by the simple things: rivers and rocks, waves, seaweed and gulls. Snow to throw, ice to slide on, puddles to jump, rocks to climb – such joy! Here, I think, we don't need the iPod, the laptop, the telly, the DVD player. Here, the world is enough.
Smugly satisfied, I wandered inside. Framed by the picture windows, the mighty river flowed, the snow lay in drifts in the yard, the shore beckoned. I found my not-quite-four year old curled into a corner of the couch. She started, looking guilty. 'I have a screen,' she said with a big embarrassed smile, 'I stole it from dad when he wasn't looking.' I glanced down. She was playing on the iPhone.
Valentine's Day. It's the sort of day I don't usually notice. If I do, I might snort at the advertising in the shops and make some curt comment about the greeting card holiday. But this week I'm in the US, Boston to be precise, and Valentine's Day is BIG. There are hearts everywhere; women are walking around with flowers and balloons; romantic music is drifting through the square opposite our hotel. People are lining up to have their photograph taken in front of an eight foot high Perspex heart. Horse drawn carriages circulate, couples snuggled inside sipping champagne. They are visible from our hotel room; my girls are glued to the window. The youngest is neighing.
As usual, my partner and I did our best to ignore the day. But the square has free WiFi and I'm wandering far from home, so I went down in the cold to check my emails. I was sitting on a concrete bench, hunched over my laptop while my tail froze solid, when a young man slid into my peripheral vision brandishing a single long-stemmed red rose. I looked up.
'I saw you; this is for you,' he said, smiling. I stared, flabbergasted. Then, because I am an unromantic cynic, I asked him what it was for. 'It's Valentine's Day!' he said, looking at me like I was an idiot. Then he smiled again, handed over the rose, and wandered off.
I was so startled, I laid it down beside me and kept on with the emails. Perhaps I thought I imagined it. After all, I've been married almost ten years now. I'm in my mid thirties, I've borne three children, and I'm always tired. Nice crinkles are developing around my eyes, but stronger, more obstinate lines mark my mouth. I'm getting a little grey. My hair is cropped unfashionably short and I don't even own any makeup, let alone use it. Since we've been travelling I've put on weight, my skin has dried out and I need a haircut. Also, I have a pimple on my bottom.
Other than this totally random pimple, I'm not ugly, but I don't use the usual feminine markers of attractiveness: long hair, pretty clothes, delicate jewellery. The world treats me accordingly. Much of the time I am invisible, particularly when I'm with the kids. No one checks me out, and I'm quite fine with that. There's not an ounce of flirt in me. Whenever I hear that some shockingly high proportion of people have extramarital affairs, I'm amazed. I'm so far off the market that I just don't get it. My husband maintains I'm the least romantic person he's ever met and I'm the last person you'd give a single red rose to – although he delights me with tiger lilies from time to time.
So I couldn't quite believe what had happened. But the rose still lay there on the bench and, whenever I glanced at it, seemed real enough. I finished my emails, picked it up, and sniffed. It smelled of nothing. Those Valentine's roses have no scent, and it's a crying shame.
But its petals were blood red, and soft as velvet. I stroked it against my cheek, remembering how delightful it is to be noticed. And a little voice cried out exultantly, See! You're not past it! Maybe you're more attractive than you realise!
– and then I was horrified. I asked the rose, Am I insufferably vain? And what on earth am I going to tell my husband?
I felt slightly guilty about this odd encounter: had I sent off an improper signal, staring into my computer in the freezing cold? And what did it mean and why didn't the guy stay and talk and what is this American culture anyway?
The rose was silent, silent and beautiful.
My frozen tush demanded I cut short my musings, and the surprising young man was long gone. So I gathered my things, picked up the rose again, and wandered back through the Valentine's throng to the one who loves me best, the one who knows about the self-doubt and the frown lines and the plain clothes and the pimple, the one who still wants to grab my butt anyway.
PS - Monday morning, I happened to walk past the giant Perspex heart again. In the absence of crowds I realised it was, in fact, an ice sculpture - heart, velvet-cushioned throne, balustrades, urns, vases and giant cupids. Wow!
UP>> I'm cold where are my gloves what can I eat why do we have to do this it's too muddy dada carry me mama hold my hand slow down my feet hurt isn't there anything else to eat I have a runny nose my hood came off you're too fast my legs are tired sore aching when are we going to be there why can't we go hoooooome???
DOWN>> running laughing leaping flying skipping jumping tumbling falling giggling yelling: There's a dog! It licked my face! There's a waterfall! And another one! A kissing gate! Two ponies! One sniffed my hand! The river! The waterfall! The village! Chocolate!!!
Please can we do it again?
My six year old grumbles most days on the way to school. It's about a mile, longer when we take the quiet way. She's tired, she's bored, why can't we drive? And I can't blame her. The traffic is deafening, the footpaths are hard on her feet, and the quiet way is loooooong. So we look around us, trying to notice the small good things: the Borzois running at twilight, the setting sun illuminating their flowing fur and transforming them into fiery angels; a fallen nest lined with down; a pole with a neck warmer (guerrilla urban landscaping at its best). But often it feels like slim pickings.
Happily, though, we've ditched school for a while and are roaming around the UK instead. This week: the Lake District. Our house is in a tiny village, surrounded by fields and woods and rivers and mountains. So I dragged my reluctant daughter out for a walk. She grizzled as we put on her waterproof pants and snow boots, and stomped out the front door. 'Think of it as a treasure hunt,' I suggested. 'We have a map, we'll follow the clues, and we'll look for treasure: views, rocks, leaves – whatever is interesting.' She rolled her eyes and sighed.
So we headed down our street, over a river (saying hello to the ducks), past the pub, under the railway bridge, through a kissing gate (mwah, mwah), down a path between two dry stone walls, through another kissing gate, across a field, over a steep stone stile, down a driveway, and along the street home.
When we saw the ducks, she cheered up immensely. And from thereon she was exuberantly happy. She waded through the deepest puddles and sloshed in the mud, made kissing sounds at each of the gates, and clambered up the stile even though its height gave her pause. A train went by, and she waved. We saw sheep and a tractor and heard water everywhere – a tiny stream running beside the road and tumbling over a ledge; the drip of a misty rain; and of course the river. Mosses and ferns grew out of the stone walls. We inspected the fallen leaves (mostly oak); we looked at algae and the colours of the stone; we saw footprints in the mud and counted how many different shoes we could find. I read out the directions bit by bit, so she could locate the stile, the gates, the yellow arrows showing the way. The distance – longer than the school run – felt completely insubstantial. She raced home, described every step of the way to her father, and asked to do it again.
The next day, she begged to go for a longer walk. So while my husband and our middle child caught the train to Liverpool, home of Anfield football ground (motto for LFC and all families with young children: 'You'll never walk alone'), I strapped our toddler onto my back, took my six year old's hand, and headed out. Nothing heroic, just three miles. Our path took us past the cemetery (hello Elizabeth, there's always an Elizabeth), along the river (with a view to the weir and its endlessly fascinating falling water), across some farm land (investigating molehills and sheep poo, as one does), then straight up a hill into the twelfth century woods. After climbing for 45 minutes, we reached the ridge. We hung our jackets on a tree, sat on a damp bench, ate a chocolate digestive and admired the view: miles of rolling fields and hills, patterned by walls and hedges; sheep on a slab of rock, looking startled; patches of snow in the folds of the nearby mountains; and everywhere moss, fallen leaves, and trees. We saw and heard no one. It was just us, and the world at our feet.
Rest done, we rambled on. To my delight, I found Yggdrasil. Then, in a clearing, Yggdrasil again, but from this tree's massive branches hung rope swings. My daughter shouted and ran, leapt on and flew through the air; the ground sloped away. The trees were ancient; the view was glorious; the ground was covered with soft leaves. We had climbed a small mountain, and were so pleased with ourselves. And then this, an unexpected gift, treasure indeed. Heaven on earth in a rope swing.
After a while, we followed the path out of the woods and into the clouds which had rolled in below us while we were on the ridge. We walked through mist across the fields: up six foot high ladder stiles with slippery rungs, through kissing gates so narrow I could barely fit with the baby backpack, and over a stone stile which landed us in a stream. We learned more about how to read directions on a map, and how to find those little yellow arrows in the landscape which show where to go. (Rule One: It's always more obvious than I think.) All the way, we were engaged, talking, energised, relaxed.
As we trotted down the final hill, negotiating our way over a cattle grid (bypass gates are for wusses), I reflected again on the walk to school. It's a big issue for us, a long and often exhausting part of our day. How can a mile at home be a gruelling slog, when three miles here are pure joy? What makes walking in our suburb so hard?
If only our daily walk went over a stream, into the woods, or through a kissing gate; if only it had a slightly dangerous rope swing or a stile too high for comfort; if only it were quiet enough I could hear my children speak; if only there were no traffic and they could run ahead at will; if only...
If only our path led us into the clouds.
***
PS – We do plan to buy a courier bike, which will carry all three girls to school and back, but even so I will still need to negotiate traffic in a big way – and the girls will get no exercise.
PPS – The walk was such a hit, the whole family did it again the next day. My not-quite-four-year-old, who demands to be carried for any distance longer than a block, ran, leaped and climbed the entire ramble. Every time she began to lag, I'd point out the next stile and she'd shout with glee and sprint across the field. Joy.
PPPS – Incidentally, this walk is a simple loop around a town that barely features on a map. It isn't one of the Great Walks of the Lake District, just one of thousands of rambles in the area. Yet it was so beautiful and satisfying that I'd happily do it every day for the rest of my life – and I haven't even begun to explore the other walks in the local photocopied guidebook.
Creamy potatoes freshly dug, so sweet, so sweet. This morning's mackerel look surprised, still shocked at being caught. Onion soup, unctuous, fragrant with beef stock. Apples crisp as frost explode with juice; my chin is sticky. Fat crumbs of cheddar fall from doorstop-thick bread. Clotted cream, heavily crusted, weighs down a scone. Baby chard, lamb's lettuce, watercress clean my palate. Hand cut chips are crisply golden; inside, clouds. Pale ale, bronze ale, winter ale, stout –
I think my jeans have shrunk.
One of my friends defines travelling with small children as doing washing in strange places. When we visited Berlin a few years ago, this was certainly the case. The washing facilities were Im Kellar, a floor unmarked on the elevator panel. It was accessible only in the company of Margaret – a six-foot-six hairy-legged deep-voiced twin-set-and-pearled transvestite – who held the key which, at a turn, sent the elevator deep underground. Margaret was reluctant to take us there, yet refused to lend the key. She also refused to sell more drying tokens than washing tokens, although every load of washing required two cycles through the dryer.
Twice, my husband sat locked down Im Kellar, a dark labyrinth of storage cages for the apartment buildings above, out of phone range, lit by a single bulb over the machines, for the two hours it took to launder a single load. The first time, I thought he had been kidnapped. The second time, he took a book. The third time, he refused, and we found a public Laundromat instead.
When we visited Hong Kong recently, Im Kellar came flooding back.
Day One. Baby eats everything in sight: bamboo shoots in black vinegar; steamed dumplings stuffed with pumpkin; bowls of noodles. Baby gnaws happily on salt and pepper squid, long dangly legs hanging out her mouth and swinging gently against her chest. Baby smiles at everyone, waves and shouts bye-bye to the ladies on the bus, the touts on the street and the dozens of people who take her photo.
Day Two. Baby throws up on everything in sight. Daddy, the shoe of a Filipino maid, Daddy, the footpath, the backpack, stairs, Daddy again. She waited until we were well and truly out, then was spectacular. Hours after we took refuge in our hotel, she threw up on Mama, Mama's new slippers, the bedspread, the carpet and the bathroom floor in one little spree.
We were in a hotel, so I called housekeeping. I had mopped up the worst with towels, but the maid insisted I stop cleaning. She flapped her hands at me, shooing me away before getting down on her hands and knees to polish the floor. I sat wrapped in a towel, sitting on the edge of the tub next to my sodden clothes, watching her back and waiting so I could take a shower.
Thankfully, our hotel had a laundry room. They sold us all the tokens we needed, we did two loads, and all returned to normal. But my friend was right. Travelling with small children means washing in strange places, some more strange than others.
It would have vexed me except, as another friend said: So what if your kids are grumpy - you're eating croissants in Paris! Or, in my case, dim sum in Hong Kong! Vomit and all, I was thrilled to do my washing where I could watch eagles circling the hotel, or see the tackiest light show in the world before putting the kids to bed. What a privilege!
But I do think of the maid, on her hands and knees cleaning up the last of the mess; and the Filipino maid on the street, so cheerfully dismissive of the splash on her shoe. Baby threw up on a Sunday, the day of rest. The Filipino maids left the apartments where they work and live to be with their friends in the streets of Central. In their thousands, they spread over several city blocks.
With nowhere else to sit, they laid out blankets and flattened cardboard boxes on the ground. Some arranged open umbrellas around their group, handles pointing inwards, carving out a small private space to nap while others chatted or read or played cards. Some passed small netbooks around, so friends could check emails. Some swapped photos, or dozed, or gossiped. And so many smiled and waved at my kids that my heart constricted.
Many were my age. Many have degrees, but can earn much more as maids in Hong Kong than in professions at home. And many have left their own children to earn the money their families need. It brought home how wealthy we are, I am. I went to look around. They were there to do other people's washing and look after other people's children, leaving their own children and washing behind them.
Every Sunday, they go out to see friends, rest, and prepare for the week ahead. And on that Sunday, as woman after woman greeted my daughters, who perhaps for a moment reminded them of their own little ones, my eyes filled with tears. How I long for a world in which they could do their own laundry, and where the only people doing washing in strange places were those mad enough to travel with young children.
