These last pages

On endings, red tractors, and hand-drawn maps

We got some very big news as a family a handful of days ago. The date we are moving out of our house has come sooner than we thought. It’s been a tricky process, as I’ve learned all house selling seems to be. We put the house on the market in August. It was a bright, yellow day. The garden was full of peach, pink and red poppies; love-in-a-mist; fennel taller than my lover; calendula of three different colours; enamel wear—faded from tears of (ab)use—scattered all around, beside buckets of the water we had saved from the heavy rains that came before the sun. The people who are due to buy our wee stone home bid on it a few weeks later, in September. I remember taking the call with their offer so clearly.

I was at a new friend’s beautiful home, for the first time without my son or partner, who were having a nap drive through the mountain roads surrounding the house. It sounded like, all being well, this particular set of circumstances meant the process of us moving out would be smooth and swift. Above me, in my friend’s apple tree, a jay rested in the gap between late summer and early autumn. We could be out of our home, apparently, by as early as autumn’s close. Of course that was ok, I answered without really being asked. It would be—as everything in life must be—exactly what it would be. It would follow its own course; flow in its own way, naturally.

Before I went back into my friend’s gorgeous, welcoming home, I wondered when I would get to show her our new home. I hoped it would find its way to us soon, this new place in which we hope to finally put down roots. A (as yet unknown) place of community and belonging (and hopefully the sea.)

Before I want back in to share the news with my friend I looked all around of me, at this smallholding on which I feel so immeasurably calm and safe; trying to take enough stock that I might replicate it myself, somewhere, somehow.

What exactly is it that makes a person, a mother, feel able and ready to put down roots somewhere?

We didn’t move out by the close of Autumn and Winter marched towards us all with a fierce, unstoppable force. Some birds left the immediate world around and some came back. Sunflowers were harvested at the Children’s community garden where my friend and other mamas have created such magic, and given to the mamas and one papa who was there that day. Trees were stripped bare and hung with frost. The stream beside my friend’s home filled once more with glacial waters from the mountain and she placed her body into it almost daily. The sea grew grey and cantankerous and called to me until I answered back in the way it wanted me to. I returned to my van shivering and less anxious than when I’d got in; more full of hope that soon things with our situation might fall into place.

We viewed almost derelict houses in places that we feel drawn to settle in, and visited schools to which we might like to send our wildling when the time arrives. We watched as those houses, and others, sold to people who more readily able to buy them. We began to understand that it might be the end of winter, if not early spring , before we might be able to make the next move towards finding a community to which we might belong; people, places and things into which we might place our care. I began to struggle, once more, to sleep at night; struggle to loosen myself from the worries that gnawed at my increasingly thin skin. I found myself doing less of the things that help me in such situations. I’ve moved house enough times to know the deeply unsettling impact it has on my mood, my ability to function, my relationship with hope—yet (much like elements of childbirth)—I find that the tiny details of it all have vanished.

I had forgotten the way that my body goes into fight or flight the instant I know I am going to relocate, no matter what the circumstances. I forgot that I experience this in very particular ways. I begin doubting almost everything I hold as true in my life; surely if something as vast as one’s home is about to be shaken up at its roots, everything else is as insubstantial; as uncertain; unworthy of all trust…

I stop making space in my days for reading, journaling, breathing, moving and dancing. Those things that remind me I am exactly where I need to be in that exact moment. As soon as I start to loosen myself from a place, especially one I love, I begin to loosen myself from my own story. The story of the small moments of each day. Place and self are delicately interwoven and when I forget this I forget me.

I continued like this as the old calendar year gave itself over to the new, finally slowing myself down enough to realise what it was that was leaving me so threadbare; that fear that — through the process of moving— I will leave parts of me behind that I can’t claim back. The fear of not being safe, having no place that will hold me close and, now —as a mother — the worry that I am now putting my wee one in this situation too. As Lulah Ellender writes in GROUNDING, ‘What good am I if I can’t provide a stable home for my children? That feeling knows it’s way around my body…’

We have so little time to pack, clean and finalise details for a new place from which to continue the search for our home. It all felt heavy and overwhelming, and I decided I knew what I needed to do. I got back on my yoga mat for the first time in donkey’s years… I breathed, I moved, I remembered.

I put my phone away. I started to pack books, leaving the ones I knew my son and I could not be without for a fortnight. I picked one of mine up, then another, and another; another and another and another. I’ve read more this week than I did in October, November and December combined. And it reminded me why I read, and why words— why stories—matter so much.

As well as three fiction and three non fiction books so far this month I have, of course, read my fair share of tractor books. Some of these books have been taped back together more times than I can even count. My son’s favourite book at the moment — aside from Richard Scarry’s truck book — is one called ‘The Day Patch stood Guard’. Last night I read this to my son and my friend’s daughter before bed.

A little red tractor rolls down a hill on Gosling Farm and Farmer Stan has to leave him at the garage overnight to be repaired. Just before the farmer left the handbrake off and Duncan tractor crashed into the tree, Patch the sheepdog had been instructed to watch over Duncan, his dear friend. And so when night falls, Patch refuses to leave the cold, dark garage. Eventually the mechanic has to fetch water and food for the loyal dog. We are told that Patch was lonely and scared but he decided to get himself up onto the garage lift and into the cabin of the little red tractor, and all of a sudden he knew he was safe again. The next day Stan takes them both back home to Gosling Farm. The sun lights up the river and reflects the blue of a kingfisher. The three spy an otter on the banks, and a mother goose with the farm’s namesake goslings in tow.

My friend’s daughter turned to me, with the book now in her hands, and said: “All of these pages (she signalled to the ones with the accident, the garage, Patch’s fear) are just bringing us to these last pages (Patch feeling safe, the journey home, the beauty of the natural world.) This is the important bit of the story; these last pages.”…

Yes, wee one, yes, yes, yes.

And so here we find ourselves, hurtling on through the uncertainty, the anxiety, the chaos; patiently waiting for the last pages. For the light on feather; the river and her goslings; the otter… For the stillness that I know will settle on us at some stage in the future. For a place to feel safe. A place that is actually not really about place at all but about connection, friendship, memories and belonging. Patch need never have set paw in Walter’s garage: down the lane below Stan’s house, over Whistling Bridge crossing the River Rib, up Bottom Lane, right just below Beech Farm, then right again. He didn’t need the light on, or for anyone else to be there because he was safe in the promise he had made to care for the little red tractor; safe in their friendship. He trusted that— by remembering all of what they had got through together already — the morning would bring exactly what they needed it to bring.

The last pages come quickly, always they do, but when they come they carry so much more than words can really get across. They are the pages that ask the most from us, that leave us desperate to speed on by; to plough on through, but they are the ones that hold the deepest, most healing, most light filled messages in their core.

And so tonight, instead of packing the rest of the books, I danced to a brand new song by one of my favourite musicians with my son. I shared the video on Instagram and of almost a hundred responses so far, the word most used is JOY.

And so in these next weeks, as we make ready to leave the house that kept us safe through a global pandemic, that inspired my next book, that taught me to sow and to grow and to heal; the place where we decided to try for our baby and then brought him home to; I’m loosening myself from worry best I can. These are the last few pages for the home that changed my whole life, that made my world brighter; brighter; more bright by far. Here are our last few pages together, all being well, wee stone house.

There is only one word that will do for you, beautiful wee home; these last days are the days of our JOY.

Moved by : my son’s dance moves.

Grateful for : my lover’s Toastie making skills.

Reading: Kirsteen McNish‘s Shadows and Reflections for Caught By The River.

Listening: Rozie Plain’s new album, Prize.

Thankyou as ever for reading. If you would like to support my work and are in a position to become a paid subscriber I would so much appreciate it.

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With deepest gratitude, always x