Roots

Dark Lane
By Eve Stedman (my Grandmother), September, 1997

The lane is shadowed, walled
by Devon sandstone cliffs.
On the left side
my father, then aged seven,
carved his initials
with his first penknife.
I can imagine
his shining sandy head
tongue between gleaming teeth
and knife blade glinting
as it dug deep and clean.

Dug deep enough, so that
thirty years on
still his initials showed
now shoulder level to his six-foot height.
“Lane must’ve sunk,” he said
holding our hands – my brother’s, mine.
We gazed in awe
at this, our talisman
on the road to school.

Later we walked each day
through the small wood
pine needles slithering underfoot
then, across a stream
a plank for footbridge
and up Dark Lane.
Every day we looked for those initials –
token of love and safety
our good luck charm
against imagined terrors.
Today I looked again
to show my grandson;
but they were gone
eroded by the weather.
The lane was even darker, even deeper.
The roots of trees
crooked and curved showed like gaunt ribs
in a red sandstone of cavern.
Overhead
branches entwined, shut out the sun.
My grandson climbed among the roots
dauntless, in search of dragons.

The lane is full of echoes:
my father’s whistled call
my brother’s laughter
grandson’s defiant shout.

The lane is dark — and long
a hundred years
but starred with brightness
by these young sparks.

~

I found this poem, like a prize, tucked away in one of my grandmother’s books. I remember the day she remembered. I remember walking down Dark Lane by her side. I was old enough to understand history, but too young to care about any but my own. I didn’t hear the past echoing.

My brother and I climbed up into the roots as my grandmother and great uncle had done decades before. My grandmother stood beside my mother, watching us nestle ourselves into her history. She searched for my great grandfather’s initials. They were gone. He was too, and her brother, and now her. There are only three of us left who can feel the depths of Dark Lane.

If that sounds sad or lonely, you’ve misunderstood. Because before the day my grandmother took us to see these roots, there was only one who knew how far they reached. It was like a secret that she didn’t want to keep. So she gave to us, not as an offering, but as an asking. Please don’t forget.

I am old enough now to see what lies beneath. I am constantly reaching further down into the past. I can hear the echoes of shouting and laughter. They are plentiful. They belong to me, and I am belong to them. This is what it means to have a family.

When I found this poem, I remembered the Devon sandstone cliffs, the shadows on the lane, the feel of the roots against my young hands, my grandmother’s voice. But I also recalled memories that were not my own – My great grandfather as a young boy, carving his initials. The day, years later, he showed it to his children. Eve and Johnny, making their way over the footbridge to school. Their fear and their happiness. Their innocence and their loss. I could feel all of this. I could trace it all back over a hundred years, down the deep, dark lane of history. I could climb into these roots and remember not to forget.

This is one way I have grown.

The Other Side

Photo by Joel Leoj, fellow adventurer

Once, on the other side of the world, I sat in an internet café and stared at a screen filled with bad news. I was surrounded by the unfamiliar. I had never felt so alone.

I wanted to cry, but couldn’t. I wanted to speak, but no words came. There wasn’t anyone around to hear them, anyway. So I just sat there, frozen, reading the words over and over as though they would change. I wanted to be somewhere else, or someone else, anyone who was anywhere else. But, as always, I could only be me.

I walked home, or at least, the place I was currently calling home, shaking. I walked in the door. Something was wrong. My new friends could tell. Still, I couldn’t form the words.

So I searched for them with my journal and pen. I sat on the living room floor and wrote and wrote and wrote.

Then the power went out.

And so my friends found a candle and matches, and placed the small light beside me. And when my pen ran out of ink, they found me a pencil. And when the point of the pencil broke, they found a knife to sharpen it. And so I continued to write with my jagged pencil in the dimness of the room, and in that darkness, I found love.

Because as sad and lost as I felt that day, as much as each broken item left me feeling as though nothing would ever be easy again, friendships were formed, easily. They offered me light.

I don’t need much in this world. A pen, a journal, a light to write by, people who care – sometimes that’s enough. Sometimes that’s everything.

Once, on the other side of the world, I lived with a group of strangers. We went on adventures together. Sometimes we laughed. Sometimes we cried. Sometimes we got lost. Sometimes we made discoveries. Some of us took photographs. Some of us wrote, constantly, everywhere. Quickly, easily, we fell in love.

The day I returned home sad, wanting to be someone else, they understood I could only be me. They understood I needed to write. They understood that a candle and a pencil were the best they could offer me. So they offered me everything.

I remember that day clearly, the day I received some bad news. It makes me smile. It fills me with familiar gratitude. It reminds me that I’m never alone in the world, no matter which side of it I’m on. The world is big, but in terms of friendship, it’s really quite small. There is no distance between me and love.

Friendship is a constant offering. It is a sharing of stories and feelings and affection. It is patience and forgiveness. It is seeing others as who they are, and accepting that is all they can be. It is loving them because of this. It is understanding. It is adventure. It is not noticing the room is dim until someone turns on an extra light. “Oh,” you think to yourself, “why was I sitting in the dark?”

Once, on the other side of the world, I was in the dark, so my friends offered me a candle. All my life I’ll remember that light. I carry it with me now.

The Stone (For My Mother)

I know this place. Through the back door, over the small wooden bump in the ground of the doorway, onto the cool, smooth surface of our kitchen floor. I can feel the gloss of our table beneath my soft, warm hands and the sharp corners where I so often bumped my head as a child. I sit in my favorite of our five white chairs. The back leg wiggles a little as I sit, just as it has always done.

Flowers adorn the table, a myriad of colors and sizes, a reflection of our family, bold and bright. I glance at the coal stove piled with breads and ripening fruits in the colorful bowls my mother has collected over the years. I think of my mother, standing beside the sink, eating a ripe nectarine. The juices slowly pour over her slender, boney fingers. Another bite, and the sweet, cold liquid moves further down her hand, covering her ring–a bright gold band with a large black stone in the center.

I remember looking at the ring as a child, wondering why all the other mothers had diamonds on their fingers, while my mother chose to settle for this plain, black stone. It didn’t sparkle in the light. It wasn’t worth any money. It didn’t make rainbows when the sun moved through it in just the right way. It was so ordinary.

I knew she deserved more. My mother, who had kept the monsters away in the middle of the night, who had made every birthday special, and every wound heal. My mother, who I knew understood everything about the world and who I loved more than anything in it. My mother, who was my hero and my confidant and my best friend, had only this black, commonplace ring. It made me so sad for her.

As a young girl sitting in her lap, I wrapped my fingers around the stone. It felt so round and smooth beneath my small fingertips, like hardened silk. It was cold in the warmth of my hand, but inviting, like the relief of soft rain on hot summer days. I wanted to dance in her ring the way I danced in the rain, fearless and free. I looked up into her eyes, into her infinitely dark pupils. My face reflected back at me in their darkness. I smiled, and returned my gaze to the stone.

Years later, I found myself on a pebble beach in England, in the small town of Budleigh Salterton. I wandered down over the pebbles, making my way to the quietly breaking waves. I picked up a dark stone from beneath my naked, aching feet. Passing it from hand to hand, I rubbed it against my soft skin, feeling the weight of it move between my fingers like the tide; back and forth, back and forth. It held secrets I would never know and answers I could never find. I stared at it for a while, delighting in the depths of its wisdom, and then I smiled, and threw it back into the waters that had made it shine.

As a teenager, on a cliff overlooking the lake, I unfolded my sleeping bag to prepare for a much needed rest. I stared up at the night sky in silence, admiring its beauty and intensity. It was so dark, so deep, so endless. I wondered if it felt as round and smooth as the stone in my mother’s ring. I looked at my friends beside me, wondering if they felt the comfort that I did in that moment. I wondered if their mothers had rings that shined like the ebony sky. I wondered if they too, felt home. I sat there staring upward, breathing deeply, wondering, as I drifted off to sleep beneath a blanket of burning stars.

When my mother came to visit me for the first time at college, I looked down at her ring as we ate lunch together. It was different than I had remembered. It didn’t seem so plain, so ordinary. I looked up into her eyes. I thought about how beautiful she looked at that moment, how beautiful she had always looked.

I looked back at the stone. It was beautiful, like my mother. It was as dark and vast as the pupils of her eyes, as the night sky in the wilderness, as the depths of the endless ocean, as the pit of the nectarine she devoured with such tenderness between her sticky fingers. The black stone was simple and graceful and dignified. The black stone shined.

My mother isn’t like a diamond. She isn’t sharply cut with limitations and borders. She isn’t transparent, relying on light to fill her. My mother is full. She is round and smooth, solid and endless, whole and complex. She is filled with wisdom and love. She is strong. She is a stone.

Sometimes I wander barefoot outside, feeling the soft ground beneath my feet, the give and take of the soil as I make imprints of my toes. I pick up stones as I go, passing them back and forth between my hands, matching their smooth curves to the slant of my fingers. I look at them in the palm of my hand. I see my mother’s ring. I see the depths of her eyes. I smell her scent in the soft wind. I feel the comfort of her love as we embrace.

I know this place, I think to myself, and I smile, knowing that I can always find my way back home.

Contradictions

 

I had a bad day. It happens to the best of us, often without provocation or reason, as was the case today. Nothing particularly bad happened. I just wasn’t myself. I just wasn’t happy. Some days are like that, even in Australia.

It is easy to be consumed by sadness. That’s what makes it so dangerous and feared. Little pieces can grow exponentially large more quickly than we can often control. And then suddenly, we’re deep in it, wallowing. It can be difficult to find the strength and energy to pull yourself out. It can feel impossible.

I understand that this is just part of the process, that sadness is a necessary part of life, that it is in fact essential to knowing happiness. I understand that bliss is not a guaranteed constant. I understand that to expect as much is the quickest way to feel disappointed. I understand that life is a balancing act between delight and doubt, the light and the dark, the joyful and the painful. I understand that. I do.

But knowing and feeling are often, sadly, incongruous. It can be difficult to make your heart match your head, no matter how hard you will it to. It can be difficult to ignore the places that feel empty inside and equally those that feel so heavy that moving forward with them feels implausible. It can be difficult to concentrate on the places already fundamentally full of life when there is also this insatiable ache of the unknown.

It’s easy to allow the negative to overcome the positive. It’s easier to fall down than to get back up. It’s easier to wallow than to take action. That’s just the way of things. And I understand that too. There will always be days like this, days that feel dark and heavy and unwanted. There will always be a part of me that will be tempted to just give up.

But there will also, fortunately, always be chances to turn it all around. There will always be the joy – oh such joy – of life’s delicately beautiful details that diminish the large pieces of sadness back to their slightness. It can be as simple as a text from a friend, a loving email, a hug from a child. It can be the way the sunlight was pouring through my window with such elegant poignancy that even the most cynical of souls couldn’t deny its beauty. It can be talking with someone who knows me well enough to see when something is wrong. It can be the gentle grace of spring weather in the middle of winter. It can be all of this, and more. It can make that which once felt so heavy feel insignificant and light.

It can be that I came home tonight to put all of this into words. It can be that while doing so I decided to add some color to this blog, and to my life. It can be that more than once in my life I have tried to write my way out of sadness, and it can be that sometimes, like now, it has worked.