I’m acutely aware of being in a place of new beginning and black uncertainty; as though I’m walking into the night. Never have I seen so clearly my past life. It is though it has been unfurled before me like a huge map. I can mark every decade, check progress, count them like rings on a tree. All being well, I’ve still got two good ones left. The clock is ticking.
It’s strange how our pasts revisit us. I got sent a birthday present from my late godmother’s daughter, of some tennis trophies my late mother won in Basrah, Iraq before Caroline, my late twin, and I were born, and in Kaduna, Nigeria, when we were.
I got out the part-transcribed diaries she wrote covering the time or our birth in Trinidad; fine fountain pen writing in red leather bound, five-year form. They were different times. No Internet or tv and hardly any phone connection. She read and wrote letters constantly, busily made clothes for herself and us, cooked from scratch. She only got news she was carrying twins about three weeks before we appeared; there were no scans then. I read how I was sent to another hospital for a blood transfusion because the technology didn’t exist locally. I’ve still got the scar.
Wonder what she’d make of my life? Hers was short – she died at 34. Caroline’s was even shorter – she died at 27. I suppose I’ve always carried their lives in mine, if only in an unspoken acknowledgement.
Walking
The act of walking is very special. It gets more so as I get older and it becomes more difficult. I have discovered walking slowly and breathing deeply is very beneficial. It is one of the many things my Buddhist friends have taught me.
Unlike the Western approach, you should not do it swiftly, or think actively. It is not for cardiovascular fitness, but for general wellbeing. Not for your head or heart really, but for your soul.
The instructions I have been given is to touch the earth tenderly with your feet, as if you are kissing it. As you do, breathe in time with your walking, as slowly and deeply as you can. Try to be aware only of your feet touching the ground. The earth transforms everything and it can take anything you give it.
For some reason, the trees haven’t been cut down where I live and margins of woodland co-exist with patches of fields. The fields haven’t been enlarged, either. Indeed, in some places hedges have been re-introduced.
In a nearby field a tree copse stands, with a footpath running through it. This is where I like to walk sometimes, to immerse and emerge renewed. This fading time of the year the leaves are falling and the light penetrates further, making the colours both bolder and softer.
I make my way to the entrance across the slug-like trail made by other walkers over the clay soil, through the green stubble of winter wheat.
An oak tree, now with orange leaves, marks the way in. Apart from the path, there has been little attempt to make it tidy, so I imagine it’s like an ancient forest would be. There are brambles and nettles, nearly dead, lining the way, a mat of dried grasses and leaves lining the floor, from another season, I’m guessing. It’s very overgrown. In summer it can seem is if I’m walking in a green tunnel. Now, dead limbs of trees hang suspended, held by those around them.
There are some smaller trees; hawthorn, beech and some hazel. I work my way in and come to a magnificent ash, which I identify from the leaves and fruits or keys, which haven’t fallen yet. There are number of them and they are by far the tallest trees in this copse, as yet not blighted by the disease which has killed off their relatives. The oaks are not as tall, but maybe as old.
It is here I like to stand and shut my eyes and listen. To the birdsong, the leaves rustling and the trees creak with the wind among them. I can stop thinking and become transparent. I can smell the seasons turn.
New Directions 