Immortale Amor

The man and I have been married for forty years and he asks me to buy him a precision edged blade. Should I be worried? We are in Switzerland so we purchase a Hercules Swiss army knife with all the accoutrements he will ever need.

We are on a second honeymoon. In July 1979 we drove our little yellow mini from Comber through France and into Switzerland. We stayed in the beautiful medieval cité of Gruyères (where the cheese comes from), a château town with a castle (now a museum) and magnificent views of the lower Alps, some peaks with splashes of snow.  Our room now, as then, overlooks a cradle between the mountains. Little has changed in the landscape and we can still hear the cowbells clinking against the silence of the early morning.

Château de Gruyères

As I sit on the balcony and breathe in the clear air emitted by the pine forest below, it reassures and somehow humbles me that these mountains have stood here immutable for forty years while everything in my life has changed. I am a mother and grandmother; I have worked and retired; I have travelled and stayed put; I have loved and lost; I have been foolish and grown wiser. With the poet of old I lift my eyes to the hills and acknowledge that my help comes from the Lord, who like the mountains is eternal, unchanging and foundationally faithful.

The man and I have been counting our blessings and naming our loves. On the anniversary, we stood face to face at the altar in L'église Saint-Théodule. Through tears we thanked each other for forty years of faithfulness, kindness and trust and vowed again to keep loving to the end. Sadly, this is a more daunting prospect than it seemed in our youth when we said 'for better for poorer, in sickness and in health'.  Although in good spirits we have seen enough of death and suffering to know what loving to the end may mean, and we are as up for it as anyone basking in the Swiss sunshine can be.

The vagaries of love has been a theme of this grand tour in Italy and Switzerland. On the streets of Verona I followed a travelling production of Romeo e Giulietta as they ran to and from the terrible consequences of loving across a divide. In the ancient amphitheatre we also watched the desperate Aida sacrificing herself for love of Radames, sharing his fate in a sealed crypt as they sang of 'immortale amor'. Two pairs of lovers who choose to die together rather than renounce their love. We truly hope that our end will not be a tragic as theirs, but desperate love tears at the heartstrings and leaves us enchanted and deeply moved.

Italy's landscape is dotted with the magnificent Tuscan cypress with its pencil straight back reaching into the blue. I am reminded of Khalil Gibran's musings on marriage:

'Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.'  (The Prophet)

Speaking of Hercules, further south we visited Pompeii and Herculaneum and considered the fate of thousands who fled or failed to flee the magma and ash of Vesuvius, still brooding over the Bay of Naples. I have been reading Elena Ferrante's Neopolitan novels which focus on lives and loves over a lifetime of friendship.  In her fourth and final book of the series she writes:

'Each of us organises memory as it suits him.'

Of course we all want to erase the bad and focus on the good. Together, the man and I have reminisced and remembered and there have been difficult conversations as we address our fragility and failures, but our abiding sense is that we are enveloped in the outstretched arms of the mountain maker. For the briefest of moments we get to join in the worship that emanates from all the majestic beauty declaring his glory. That is ours to do, whatever comes our way in the next forty years.

Thank you, husband, for loving me so well.

'If I say I love you...then I love you.' (Mumford & Sons)

Verona

I Bless the Day

The attic room at the top of the tall Belfast town house was chilly, even in summer.  I shared the slanting space with my little sister, Pauline Mary. She is just sixteen months younger, but littler than me, nonetheless. The house faced the busy Oldpark Road, a wide thoroughfare which led up to Cliftonville Circus and onwards towards Ballysillan. The bus stop was right outside the house, a fact that irritated English visitors, but never us. We were used to the slither and smack of doors and the regular expiration of air, like a sigh from a large animal. A garden the size of a picnic rug protected us from the road, the narrow space bordered by a low wall sprouting a dusty hedge. There was also a fuchsia bush, a splash of colour against the grey, and I showed my sister how to suck honey from the base of the waxy flower.

It matters where you come in a family. I am the bossy big sister. On Sundays we were taken to church at least four times: morning Sunday School, morning service, afternoon Sunday School and evening service, at our own church or in one of the mission halls where our father worked. In between (was there any in between?) we were allowed to engage in Sunday activities only: no ball games, riding bikes or reading comics. We did not own a television.

I can recall assembling my siblings in the parlour where the two bar heater took pride of place. I arranged them on the settee and the meeting began. I led the service, chose the hymns and preached the sermon. I think I put my sister in charge of giving out the hymnbooks.  She was compliant, as ever.

Our mother made our clothes. One year our Sunday-go-to-meeting outfits consisted of blue grey tweed skirts and bolero jackets with matching hairbands. I vividly remember suffering agonies of shame in case the fabric bands did not properly constitute a head covering. Would God be happy with the hairbands? My sister was not worried. I was older, so if there was any divine retribution, it would fall on me.

I always got the blame. She discovered early on that if she kept quiet and stayed under the radar, I would fight the battles for her. And battles there were aplenty:  wearing trousers to church, reading non-Sunday books, begging to go to the cinema, refusing to go to the Girls' Brigade/Christian Endeavour/Sunday School.

Our father was a preacher and as we grew older, he took us with him to the meetings. Too young to play the organ or give our testimonies, we trundled up to the front to recite Bible verses or perform. We cannot have been more than seven or eight when we sang acapella:

Clean hands or dirty hands,

Brown eyes or blue,

Pale cheeks or rosy cheeks,

Jesus loves you.

I was dark-haired with wan skin, so I dirtied my hands for dramatic effect and splayed my fingers on cue. My eyes are blue so I twinkled them in harmony with the notes.  My little sister has brown eyes so the song worked, but as I recall the experience I am amazed that our parents allowed her to point cheerfully to her rosy cheeks.  She was, in fact, born with a birthmark on her face which may have added weight to the spiritual message, but now feels like exploitation. Pauline bore it all without complaint.

 

Pauline and me

Back in the attic, the room glowing orange from the streetlights, we sang the Everly Brothers in two-part harmony: 'I bless the day I found you/I want to stay around you/ Now and forever/ let it be me.' At Christmas we lay together listening for Santa's sleighbells and squealing with delight at the discovery of an orange in the toe of one of our father's old socks.

When we moved to Newtownards, our lives went in different directions: different schools; different friendship groups; different careers.  At one point, however, we did date brothers: John and Sandy and wasted innocent sunny days together among the yellow broom in the Easter Field. My quiet sister worked in Cafolla's after school and on Saturdays - always earning her own money, always independent.  She became a nurse, riding a scooter to work in the Ulster Hospital and going on to qualify as a midwife. She married the naughty boy she always complained about in school and is the mother of four lovely young adults and grandmother to her precious Evie.

Now she is sixty and I am blessed to know her. She has shown great resilience and love in supporting her husband through unimaginably sad family loss; she leads the local community midwifery team with justice and fortitude; she has helped all of the women in the family through the traumas of pregnancy, childbirth and breast-feeding; she meets crises with inner calm and she demonstrates a spiritual strength borne of a faith that has survived a plethora of meetings and a big sister who would only let her hand round the songbooks.

Congratulations, Pauline, on your sixtieth birthday! I love you and am glad God gave you to us - born in our parents' bed and beloved by all.

Thank you for being my sister.

 

Pauline

Pushback

The airport at Port Elizabeth is blurry.  The man on the security desk asks me why I am crying and I tell him that I am leaving my baby behind. I can see her waving through the greasy glass.

We left her babies on the stoop. They were crying too - the four-year-old because granny was going and the one-year-old because his brother was upset. Right next to us a Cape Turtle Dove hunkered down on her nest observing the farewells with a wary eye. Frangipani flowers were crushed into sickly perfume beneath our wheels as the huge iron gate clunked behind us.

Maria and Willem with Teddy

I am alone for the first time in two weeks. My sighs subside and I am intrigued by the intricacies of human interaction in an airport lounge.  Everyone in an airport wants to be somewhere else so eyes are alert, glancing at screens and elbows are used as weapons to secure a seat against the probability of delays. Most nationalities speak in stage whispers, conscious that they are sharing a tense and sacred space. The English and the Americans do not.

In front of me a couple of Londoners plonk themselves down. She produces an encyclopaedic size hardback which she scratches open with her talon-like nails painted in holiday cerise.  She does not get the chance to read her tome, however, because he has just purchased the latest copy of Hello! magazine. She is a listener, which is just as well. In that irritatingly loud rasp used by people who enjoy the sound of their own voice, he begins to regale her, the woman in the sari sitting beside them, an elderly Afrikaans couple and me with the latest in celebrity and royal gossip.

I have chosen NOT to buy the magazine precisely because I do not care that John Torode is engaged and what will they eat at the reception or whether Kate Windsor is broody again and how many nannies it might take to manage her growing family but I'm going to hear it all anyway: Doesn't that Charlotte look just like the Queen and what kind of a name is Louis, isn't that French, oh yes Mountbatten, came to a nasty end, those Irish!

I shift my attention to the next aisle. A mother moves purposefully towards her young teenage daughter who is clinging on to summer in her jersey shorts, her feet on the seat under her, legs splayed. Her mum feigns interest in a phone while gently nudging the girl's knees together. A protective gesture. The girl complies but does not know why.

Confusion reigns as passengers begin to surge away from Gate 6 to Gate 5.  Which one? The flight is already late. There is no announcement but an African albino employee with burnt blotches on his face holds his phone close to his eyes and gestures vaguely. It appears that both gates are open to speed up boarding. I am all for that.

In Johannesburg I am lost. The airport is huge and famous for misdirecting luggage. I get my case and finally manage to find the drop off.  Heathrow here I come! When we arrive at Terminal 5 in the wee hours, I walk cautiously along the jetty. This is the exact spot where I suffered pulmonary embolisms four years ago but this time the tight socks, the midnight meanders and the dreaded Clexane have done the trick.

I am in BA's North Lounge for eight hours! I decide to have a shower. I remove my watch and then discover that my bracelet is missing. I rush back to security where I know I have left it in the tray because it always sets off the beeper. I wish I'd just beeped, because now I am bereft.  The manager looks but finds nothing. Report to missingx.com.  I lose perspective and weep my way along the concourse. It's not the financial loss, it's the sentimental value of the little charms which remind me of my grandchildren -  a kind of rosary: a bow tie for the sartorial Finlay; a flower for green-fingered Edith; a jewel the colour of God for Jasper; a red rose for Eleanor Rose; a bee for Bea; a South African flag for Sebastian and a teddy-bear for...Teddy!

I see a gangly man dancing towards a cluster of people and I actually hear him announce excitedly 'OMG, I love y'all, I am American!'

Back in the lounge I lunge towards a young mother battling with a crying toddler, a buggy and a mound of bags. I ask her if she is travelling alone.  She gestures in contempt at a good-looking but useless man tapping on his phone, oblivious to his wife's struggles. I melt into my seat as he lifts the screaming infant and tries to walk manfully down the aisle pretending to be a father.
Young men in suits sit at a glass shelf with computers connecting them to a better world while the colourless morning presses against the window. Above the drinks stand are suspended plastic curved train tracks, glittery pink like something in a pre pubescent girl’s bedroom. A woman tries to pour a glass of wine but struggles to extricate the bottle from its metal holder and so lifts bottle, holder and all. Making a meal of it.

Beside me there is a family reunion: a loud curly-haired little boy is the centre of attention. Can I have a hug, an aunt gushes. No. Pushed back.  She remembers and is embarrassed. The boy is not. He is clutching an oversized iPad, housed in a bright blue soft-edged plastic cover, supplied no doubt by the education authority. He is listening to something through red headphones. He should be wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with Please Do Not Touch Me. It would save a lot of trouble.

We sit on the tarmac and wait. The man who operates the pushback tug has broken his headphones. The pilot cannot hear him.  We cannot move.  I gaze out at the grey mizzle. Who rubbed out all the colour? Africa is big and scary but bright and beautiful and I yearn to go back to its wonder. Nature's Valley on the east coast is a paradise of amber lagoon, raging seas and fynbos that kisses the tide. Port Elizabeth is a bustling port with towering cranes like huge giraffes astride the beach. Lots of wet but no water for a bath. They live there; I do not.

Belfast is the same as ever - familiar and smelling of mouldy earth. Home.  

Sebastian