Time for another writing exercise - and this one ocurred to me, at the time, as being a nice and natural follow up to 'Greywalls', my last posting.


The Leaving

I should have been mentally prepared for it. I should have seen it coming but when Hannah announced that she was going to finish her studies in Edinburgh and move into a flat with a friend, it shook me. Sort of jolted me out of my complacency, if that’s the word. The news made me stop - take stock of my life - and wonder where everything goes from here.
We moved in to Greywalls some twenty years ago and after a year of hard renovation work and another year settling in, Hannah was born. Life was perfect. Perfect, that is, until that appalling night three years ago, when my wife – Hannah’s mum – was taken away from us. We don’t talk about it much now but I know Hannah had these thoughts in her mind as I saw her onto the train. She leaned out of the window and asked me if I was going to be OK. Me! Here was the love of my life making a break for independence and she was asking me if I’d be all right! Yes, of course I’d be fine!
I kissed her and watched the train pull out of sight. I felt oddly empty and stood there on the platform for a while, long after the train had gone, until I guessed I must have looked pretty stupid and made my way to the car.
Back at Greywalls I sat in the car for a while and leaned my head back on the seat. I felt flat and unmotivated. This was like an ending – or a beginning – I wasn’t sure which but it seemed to have no real
direction. It? Life? The rest of my life?
I walked around the house and my thoughts went back to the first time I ever came to look at Greywalls. I had gone into the garden to sense what my feelings were for the house. Twenty years ago I had sat on this same step. I leaned back and closed my eyes.
Nothing had changed. The sun was still warm on my face. The sounds were the same – the smells now somewhat more infused and cultivated. Twenty years! Happiness had been born here, grown here – and part of it lost here. I felt tears running down my cheeks and let them flow – perhaps it was time they were shed. I had lost part of me here but had also gained so much and some of those tears were happy ones as I thought of Hannah heading off to her new life.
Perhaps this is how new lives start. With inevitability. I was sad for what had passed but happy for what had been built and remained. Hannah had moved on to another stage in her life. I had to do the same.
The tears weren’t ready to stop so I sat there for a while longer, closed my eyes and listened to the song thrush that had established its nest in our hedge.

END