I picture myself uncurling my toes ever so slowly out of the heavy biker boots I have been wearing since leaving England's shore. The thick, grey clouds of home are long behind me and in their stead are light wisps of white cotton spiralling across an expanse of blueness. Silence and peace and calm wrap themselves around me dampening any surge of anxiety; my mind stirs into being having slumbered for days previously.
On dry land, sand cushioning my steps momentarily soothing until the burn of the heat prickles my soles, I would search for shade and look out to the retreating vessel that has left me here to sink into my past. I find...
a bumpy journey in the back of my parent's car, lying down stretched out on the back seat with my eyes tightly shut. Remember lying in the back seat without seat-belts? Tracing each turned corner memorising the journey home. Knowing that if I kept really still on that final turn, that the engine would stop, two car doors would slam and whilst my mum would carry my baby sister, hopefully my dad would carry me up the stairs to bed; leaving me to slump in his arms before he placed me under cold bed-sheets and then I would jiggle myself warm once my bedroom door had closed, so he wouldn't know I'd really been awake.
I find...
a rainy London day, not unusual, walking beside a cousin who, in my childhood, held an older sister role. We had lost touch as family's do, drifting through their own lives before the invent of facebook. But somehow we have re-connected, filled in the years once the surprise of our adult faces has passed, shared the highs and lows that has made us who we are. Not much time passes in our re-discovery before we make the choice to walk together, as survivors, on a march through the middle of London. Through the healing laughter and plentiful tears we make vows that the pain will stop with our voices being heard and our role is to now protect us and our future us.
I find...
me dancing. Not one day in particular. Although I see my student union; a smoky, sweaty Convent Garden nightclub; a high street in West London; an ancestral cellar on my Northumberland wedding day; in my kitchen to the bemused faces of my children. I am dancing with abandon, in bliss, to any tune that can be turned up loud.
I find...
a classroom covered in poems, stories, reflections, advice, notices, cartoons, posters. And there's me talking, writing, pointing, laughing, telling someone off, asking for quiet. Always asking for quiet. To listen to me. Because I know what I'm talking about. In most cases I wouldn't always say this was true but in a classroom, yes I did, I do know what I'm talking about and they... all of those children that have sat in seats in my classrooms, should have been listening. My classrooms were a haven of learning for them and me.
I find...
three moments in one. Summed up as a weariness that saw me shuffling for weeks, then a shared panic that saw me being lovingly bundled in a car and deposited into emergency entrances, then the most terrifying moments where I locked frightened eyes with excited, calm ones being suddenly replaced by the most beautiful moments I will ever have in my entire life. The moment of motherhood.
Like the end of an old cinema reel that flickers and fades to blank, these are my memory images that I would wish to replay to my heart's content.
This post was inspired by #post40bloggers #writingprompt93 : being shipped to an island with only 5 memories
