JOHN HENRY AND THE MALTESE BROAD

In 1979 Margaret Thatcher became Britain’s first woman prime minister; the newly elected Pope John Paul II visited Ireland, and I graduated with an honours degree in painting from the Belfast College of Art.

I also became aware of a far more important qualification I needed to study for, and one which would serve me better than any piece of paper. To acquire it I knew that I must travel beyond the accepted standard of what I had become, to apostatise the dogmas that had reinforced it. I knew in short that, in order to see the light beyond the shadows, I would have to piece together meaning from the fragmented truths and fictions I’d grown up with.

That year will also be remembered for less laudable events. On 27 August Earl Louis Mountbatten, the queen’s cousin, was killed by an IRA bomb at Mullaghmore, County Sligo. A few hours later the tranquillity of the beautiful seaside town where I once lived was torn apart; the bombers had struck again, slaughtering 18 British soldiers at Narrow Water, one of Warrenpoint’s most picturesque spots.

On 30 September the pope addressed an audience of 250,000 at Drogheda in the Irish Republic and made an appeal for an end to violence in Ireland.

To all of you who are listening, I say: Do not believe in violence; do not support violence. It is not the Christian way. It is not the way of the Catholic Church. Believe in peace and love, for they are of Christ. On my knees I beg of you to turn away from the paths of violence and to return to the ways of peace. You may claim to seek justice. I too believe in justice and seek justice. But violence only delays the day of justice. Violence destroys the work of justice. … Do not follow any leaders who train you in the ways of inflicting death.

Two days later the IRA responded to the Holy Father. ‘Force is by far the only means of removing the evil of the British presence in Ireland,’ they stated. ‘We know also that, upon victory, the Church would have no difficulty in recognising us.’

Such arrogance in the face of righteousness! Yet it is true to say that men who create war do not live by the laws of a higher power but by the selfish dictates of a lower one: their own ego.

My days in Belfast’s war zone were numbered however. My last summer holiday from art college ended with my graduation day. In many respects this day resembled my First Communion, but I’d swapped the white frock for a black robe and the artificial piety for real pride. My mother and brother John came to witness my big moment.

Father could not be trusted to behave himself among the academic elite; we were sure he’d go out of his way to embarrass us. I had visions of him challenging the strength of one of the tables at the post-reception buffet, sending the food to the floor and us into hiding.

Our fears were not entirely groundless. Just such an incident had loomed at Helen’s wedding when my parents were guests. Mother was alerted to danger by the sound of shivering cutlery, and saw the wedding cake leaning at an angle to rival the Tower of Pisa. She found father in the nick of time, crouched by the top table, examining a leg joint.

So my graduation was father-free and therefore risk-free. He couldn’t have cared less anyway. When asked if he’d like to attend, he responded with the evasive enthusiasm that characterised his whole life.

‘Naw,’ he said sourly, ‘I’ll not bother me head.’

That this occasion would be a one-off event did not seem to impact on him. He was not a man to mark the success of his family.

He was as predictable as the seasons that he never tired of commenting on. My landscape paintings would be held up for his approval, and rejected one by one. The skies were too blue, the mountains too flat, the houses too big, too small, too this, too that. Early on I realised that it was impossible to win his favour, and simply gave up trying.

Mother was forever the go-between, smoothing the way and trying to keep the peace. She ignored his criticisms and was so proud of my achievement. In the end that was all that really mattered to me.

This time around, thank heavens, she did not suggest Station Island, Lough Derg, as a reward for all my efforts. Instead I got something far beyond anything I could have imagined: a three-week holiday in California. We were off to visit my Uncle John, mother’s long-absent brother whom she had not seen in 33 years.

Her five brothers were the complete opposites of my father’s family. They were kindly, light-hearted men, who had gone out and engaged with the world at an early age, doing backbreaking work to sustain themselves while following whatever youthful dreams they had. Unlike the McKenna boys’ situation, there were no pots of money or acres of land to detain the Henrys at home, or stanch the course of their lives until death took the parents and delivered the goods.

The two youngest, John and Peter, had emigrated to the United States in their early twenties. Dan, Frank and Paddy had married, raised families and, like mother, chosen to remain close to their roots.

Dan was the uncle I came to know best; mother and he were very close. His calm, endearing personality showed me how mother could have been had she not come under father’s baleful influence. Being in Dan’s company was like being near a warming fire; he melted any reserve you might have, and brightened your spirits with compliments and praise you felt you didn’t deserve. What I never heard from father I heard from him; Dan’s generosity of spirit made up for the shortfall. I was always told I looked well, even when I didn’t, and given smiles to lift me when I was down. Truly spiritual people are a rarity. Uncle Dan had achieved his serenity through an effortless acceptance of himself. There were no masks or barriers, no rigid viewpoints to be strenuously defended, no need to be always right. He had managed to subdue the ego so that his spirit was fully alive. The memory of his humility has left a lasting impression on me. He was living proof of Emerson’s belief that ‘the best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.’

So I was looking forward to meeting Uncle John. Mother had a fund of stories about the devilish young prankster. He had been the joker of the family, the life and soul. His CV was impressive: he’d left home at 17 to work in a factory in England. From there he travelled to Australia where he stayed for a year. On his return home he discovered he couldn’t settle and set sail for America with little money in his pocket but big ideas in his head. He worked his way across the Land of the Free and finally settled in Sacramento, California, where he married a Maltese-Canadian by whom he had three children. John had always promised mother that he’d visit Ireland, yet she knew he never would. If she were to see him again she’d simply have to bridge the distance herself.

Quite naturally mother wanted to look well for her brother, and that meant dieting. She had a month to lose a stone and knew from experience that willpower was not always enough.

She therefore enlisted the help of her GP, who prescribed for her a course of slimming pills. In reality they were amphetamines, and were very successful. She lost the weight – but she lost sleep as well. She soon developed a non-stop urge to continue talking and working into the small hours. I used to hear her at four in the morning, washing and hoovering and singing to herself, a tornado in a housecoat, capable of amazing feats, sweeping all before her. She might have been going crazy but the pounds were falling off and her self-esteem was rising. John Henry would see a svelte Mary after all.

The pills worked, that is certain. Just how effective they were was shown to me at a rock concert at Slane, County Meath, later in the year. I observed the ageing lead singer of a headlining band leaping round the stage for a full two hours with the energy of a ten-year-old. I suspected where that lean energy might have come from: mother had it in a bottle under her bed.

The countdown to our departure began, and she still wasn’t losing the weight fast enough. A sweat suit seemed the answer. As long as there are overweight people wobbling about this planet of ours there will be no end to the gimmickry that is peddled with the empty promise of a quick-fix, minimal-effort solution. Mother’s sweat suit was one of them.

She bought it by mail order from the back page of a Sunday supplement, believing the dubious claims of the snake-oil merchants that you could lose ten pounds while you slept. Each night she retired to her bedroom looking like a Soviet cosmonaut, ponderously moving down the hallway before climbing into bed to sweat. In fairness, the pounds did disappear but I fear this was due entirely to water loss. After several cups of coffee she’d have regained it all. I didn’t dare tell her this of course. She was very pleased with the result, convincing herself that the ‘needless’ expenditure was worth it, and I willingly colluded in the fraud to keep her happy.

We were unused to air travel, mother and I, and the journey to Uncle John’s home was a gruelling one for us: ten hours in total with a night transfer in New York. We finally arrived exhausted, legs and feet swollen like figures in a Beryl Cook painting. At Los Angeles we changed in the airport toilets, re-applied our make-up yet again, trying vainly to cover the cracks of that sleepless journey. Mother donned her yellow dress for this very special moment; we walked out into the hazy Californian sun and waited to be claimed.

John Henry ran from nowhere with arms outstretched. Even after all those years he’d no difficulty in recognising his sister. They embraced for what seemed a long time, shedding tears of joy in the full realisation of that landmark moment. It was a moment they never believed would come. I looked at this tableau of reunited siblings and knew I was witnessing the acme of my mother’s life. It was the happiest she had ever been – and would ever become. There was nothing left for me to do but aim my Pentax and shoot that amazing moment.

John was 55 when we met and mother six years older. He was a jaunty, agile little man, fully alive to the moment, a coruscating presence who ‘dressed smart’ and ‘talked quick’. And boy, just like those Yankees, he could talk!

With his thin moustache and glinting specs he could easily have passed as an understudy for Sir John Mills. He’d prepared for this occasion with care. He was dressed in a dapper, nautical outfit: navy-blue, brass-buttoned blazer, white slacks with matching shirt and loafers, the ensemble finished off with a red silk cravat, and a crimson handkerchief that spilled out of his breast pocket to add a rakish note.

He drove us to his home in a gigantic Oldsmobile saloon, he and mother sitting way up front. I travelled in the rear, dwarfed by that vast interior, rolling from side to side like a pea in an empty suitcase. I thought of John Mallon’s bubblecar and mused idly that if Mr Mallon were put behind the Oldsmobile wheel he might well believe he was at the controls of a Boeing 747.

John’s driving encouraged me to think that he had probably attended the Mrs Potter school of motoring. The car bounced and floated over the road as he regaled mother with rapid-fire commentary on the sights that unfolded, casually negligent of adherence to the Highway Code. He’d brake suddenly following yet another near miss, stick his head out of the window to holler ‘I pay my road tax too, you gaddamn bastard!’ while mother crossed herself and I curled up into an even tighter ball. I never fully appreciated the usefulness of seat belts until I travelled with John Henry.

We finally arrived at the house, exhausted, distraught and extremely hungry – we hadn’t eaten for hours – and concealed our discomfort lest we cause offence.

We were introduced to the ‘Maltese Broad’, John’s moniker for his wife Carol. She was waiting for us on the lawn together with the children. They had two sons and a daughter, who grinned and gushed the requisite words of welcome before scampering off to do more exciting things. I was not much older than them yet felt like a pale old dud beside all that tanned, handsome vigour. I wanted to join them but there was no invitation so I reluctantly retired with the adults to the air-conditioned coolness of the house.

The Maltese Broad was a large, sweet lady who spent most of her time in the kitchen ‘fixing’ food. Unfortunately she bore the evidence of this obsession all too clearly, and mother was thrilled to discover that by comparison with Carol Henry she was a mere Twiggy. The irony was that both John and his wife were so excited with our arrival that they forgot to offer us food. This was an occasion for celebration and we felt obliged to accept the whiskey and Budweiser on offer; we ended up merry as well as famished. Eventually, about six hours later, with John getting more animated and voluble with the help of Jack Daniels, we repaired to a Chinese restaurant for that longed-for meal.

The couple made up for it, however, in the course of the holiday. Each day was a re-run of that introductory day, but with more food than our bellies could handle. Our consumption was gross and unseemly; this was every Christmas and birthday multiplied by 21 and squared to the nth degree. During those three weeks we were never again allowed to feel the hunger pangs of that first day.

Every morning we’d rise to find the Maltese Broad in the kitchen, flipping and tossing onto plates the raging contents of a skillet. We picked up the jargon pretty quickly because Carol talked of little else: eggs over-easy, hash browns, gammon rashers, crêpes suzettes with maple syrup, cornbread, potato cakes. I’m sure there was an endangered species or two in there as well. This was coronary thrombosis on a plate.

And all the while we were shovelling and glugging, John Henry fizzled about – I was certain that carbonated blood coursed in those veins – making more noise than the frying pan. He was recalling the old days while cutting his coffee with copious sloshes of whiskey, halting sometimes with an empathic, ‘Jesus, Mary!’ or ‘Gaddammit, Mary!’ He’d lament the decline in morals in the USA: ‘Those gaddammed Beatles ruined this country, Mary!’ He’d get down on his knees and thump the floor to hammer home a point while mother and I sat looking on in wordless astonishment and Carol kept the food coming.

The food! It seemed that no sooner had we finished eating, gone to the loo to freshen up than we’d come back to find another charge-laden table waiting. There was no such thing as humble elevenses of tea and a biscuit here, I’m afraid. The table would groan under the weight of bagels and cream cheese, Oreos, muffins, cookies and buckets of chocolate-chip ice cream with toffee sauce. In retrospect, mother’s speed-induced, sweat-suited diet was a fortuitous preparation.

In the evenings we dined out. John would don his nautical outfit and Carol would waddle in his wake, wearing spandex leggings and a dayglo smock which only just concealed her burgeoning hips. She was not a rare sight; most of Sacramento seemed to be populated with enormous people who resembled bouncy castles, and wobbled and undulated under tent-like structures that passed for clothing. Mother and I kept staring in amazement, but no one else seemed to pay them a second glance.

John drove us in that mighty saloon car of his, swearing and swerving over the highway, making eye contact with us instead of the road. Miraculously we arrived at each destination with our limbs intact.

If I didn’t know better I’d swear that John had had assertiveness training at the School for the Insecure Irish-American Male Approaching a Mid-Life Crisis. No sooner were we in the door of a restaurant than he’d start to vandalise the silence and complain about the ‘gaddamn service’. These exchanges followed a pattern I began to recognise.

Waiter: ‘Hello, how are you, sir … ladies.’

John: ‘We’re pretty damned good, as a matter of fact, but this table ain’t.’

Waiter: ‘Pardon me, sir. I’m real sorry, sir, I’ll see what I can do.’

John: ‘You sure as hell better. This is my sister Mary and her daughter, who I ain’t seen in thirty-three years. You got that? Thirty-three gaddamn years! And they’ve just flown six thousand miles from Ireland to see me. And we ain’t gonna sit with our backs to the view in the middle of this restaurant like some gaddamn monkeys in a cage. We want that table by the window, you hear, and we want it now.’

And he’d point to a table already occupied by a couple tucking into their steaks and fries.

Mother and I would sit red-faced, curling our toes in the silence that followed. We were not ones for causing a fuss in public. The waiter would stand there glaring at us and we knew what he was thinking; it was all our fault. Sometimes mother would feel moved to intervene.

Mother [whispering timidly]: ‘The table’s all right, John.’

But John was having none of it.

John: ‘Mary, we ain’t sittin’ at this second-rate table and if things don’t start to improve round here pretty gaddamn soon I’m callin’ the gaddamn manager.’

A hint of urgency would enter the waiter’s voice.

Waiter: ‘Yes sir, I understand, sir. We’ll see what we can do.’

We’d be ushered into the lounge for complimentary cocktails and the waiter would approach the couple by the window. They’d invariably move to another table without question. We were to learn that the Americans are uncommonly obliging to their Irish cousins. I could not imagine the same scenario in an Ulster restaurant.

Those meals out were generally served on ‘platters’ as opposed to plates. The steaks were so thick that it seemed only an acetylene torch could cut them. There were mountains of fries and vegetables. I may be exaggerating but I seem to remember washing everything down with gallon beakers of cola and litre glasses of wine. Dessert was considered compulsory rather than optional, so we helped ourselves from the trolley. Again the American idea of pudding was not what we were used to. We could choose from belly-heaving portions of pecan pie, chocolate flan, apple strudel, cheesecakes, trifles, gâteaux with melting heaps of ice cream in every conceivable consistency and combination. There was creamy thick, double creamy thick, double creamy, creamy thick, and the unimaginable, extra-double-creamy-thick, in blueberry, chocolate chip, toffee, strawberry, and on and on and on. It appeared that everyone in the restaurant – ourselves included – was engaged in some kind of eating marathon, heads down, elbows working like pistons.

I consumed so much I could even feel my head getting fat. There was no end to these bacchanals. When we finally got home and struggled into the house the Maltese Broad would stagger off to the kitchen and re-emerge bearing platters of bedtime snacks: pretzels, peanuts, corn chips, potato chips and a host of dips and relishes. I’d collapse into bed and remain comatose until morning – when my senses were assaulted by the aromas and sounds of Carol doing what she loved best: fixing breakfast.

Halfway through our vacation John took us to his place of work: the offices of the Sacramento Bee newspaper, where he was employed as a printer. The Bee, I learned, had quite a colourful, proud and impressive history. Perhaps no one exemplified that more than its founder, James McClatchy, an Irishman and great-grandfather of the present publisher.

After emigrating from Ireland in 1840, McClatchy became a writer for the New York Tribune. But the lure of the California gold rush drew him west in 1849. He boarded a ship to a Rio Grande port, crossed Mexico on foot (that’s right, on foot), was ferried up the coast, walked 300 miles to San Diego, then made his way overland to Sacramento.

After disappointing results in his quest for gold, he returned to journalism. McClatchy was clearly a man of great resource and enterprise; the McKenna brothers could have learned a thing or two from him.

He died in 1883, leaving behind a newspaper that today serves an area of approximately 12,000 square miles, covering most of Northern California.

All these facts and more besides were related to us by a public relations officer for the company, Errol T Johnson, an impressive Denzel Washington look-alike whose duties included guiding visitors around the Bee’s offices. John felt we needed to be fully briefed before we met his co-workers. He was also very proud – and rightly so – of his employer’s history and achievements.

Mother and I, hung over and bloated from the night before, followed Denzel around like a pair of sheep, nodding and feigning interest.

Denzel: ‘The Bee’s combined average circulation totals one point four million daily and one point nine million Sunday editions.’

Mother: ‘God save us!’

Denzel [looking puzzled]: ‘Yes, ma’am. We’re a newspaper that has a rich history of standing up for human rights and engaging with environmental issues. In the eighteen-sixties we took a strong stand against slavery and voiced adamant opposition to the Ku Klux Klan.’

John: ‘Remember those gaddamn bastards, Mary? Wore those pointy pixies with the eyes cut out. As bad as those sons-a-Protestant-bitches back home. Them Protestants ruined dear old Ireland and those goddamned Beatles ruined this country.’

Mother: ‘God, that’s terrible, John.’

John: ‘Tell you something for nothin’, Mary: there’ll never be peace in good old Ireland till the Provos whip those gaddamn British asses the hell outta there.’

And he was off like the clappers of hell. Denzel patiently checked his gold watch and adjusted his tie while he waited for John to finish his rant on ‘gaddamn British imperialism’.

Denzel: ‘The courageous voice of the Bee was heard again in nineteen twenty-two when it published the names of Sacramento’s Klan members – including prominent citizens – in a front-page exposé. Such fearless reporting has earned the Bee twelve Pulitzer prizes, three of which were coveted gold medals for public service.’

John: ‘You hear that, Mary? Twelve Pulitzer prizes and three gold medals.’

Mother: ‘Heaven’s above, John, that’s a terrible lotta prizes. He was a great man that McCracken. Where’d you say he was from?’

Denzel: ‘McClatchy, ma’am. From Lisburn, County Antrim, ma’am.’

We were then shown the rusted typewriter which James McClatchy carried all the way from County Antrim in pursuit of the American dream.

So that was John’s impressive place of work: a vast skyscraper full of 1,800 busy bees, all living up to the title of their product. And he was determined to introduce mother and me to each and every one of them.

We started in the basement with the raw grease and inked-up rollers of those gigantic printing presses, and ended 50 floors later at the advertising department, marvelling at the suavity of the designers and copywriters.

Virtually every employee knew John and addressed him by his full name, John Henry. When I come to think about it, it seemed more fitting than plain, dull, monosyllabic ‘John’. He was so full of life that only his full name would do. I can’t remember the many people he introduced us to but the routine went something like this:

‘Hi, John Henry, how are you? You’re lookin’ pretty sharp/neat/swell/good today.’

‘Why, thank you, Vern/Bubba/Marylou/Clarisse. I’m pretty good, as a matter of fact. May I introduce my sister Mary from Ireland, who I ain’t seen for thirty-three years?’

‘Gee, John Henry, that’s awesome.’

‘And this is her daughter, the poet and artist Christina McKenna.’ (I was really chuffed to be described in such terms.)

‘Well, I’m mighty pleased ta meet ya all. You have a nice day, y’hear.’

We grinned and gripped more hands in one day than the Queen of England. I now know how she feels at the close of yet another state occasion. All evening the echo of that introductory mantra went round and round in my head. John Henry made sure we missed no one.

He was so proud, tugging those cufflinks into view, smoothing down the silk cravat and hankie, the two high notes of that nautical ensemble. He was reminding himself that he was no longer the humble employee but a jazzy showman and we his guest soloists.

Appearances and impressions were important to John Henry. He paraded us as exotic extensions of himself, one Derry lady on each arm; we danced to his tune, being reasonably pretty and decorous, and he made sure everyone in that building saw us.

We went to Reno, Nevada, to try our luck at the tables, and visited casinos that were thumping insults to modesty and good taste. Waitresses paraded in the skimpiest costumes and most of the men looked like small, medium and large versions of Sly Stallone, replete with the chest rug and medallion.

There were ladies of all ages and sizes, and others who looked suspiciously like the Sunday variant of Norrie of Ballinascreen. There were good-time gals with improbable bosoms who’d been stitched and tucked in all the right places. They lusted for the attention that had once been effortless, clinging on to the last vestiges of sex appeal by their fiberglass fingertips. But it was the elderly dames who intrigued me most: vigorous old bats with wind-tunnel face-lifts, their withered throats and wrists shackled with jewellery; juicing the last drops out of life before the inevitable fall. They attacked slot machines with a cold anger, thumping them when they failed to cooperate and cursing like navvies. John swore they could hog a machine for the entire day, feeding it dimes and dollars in the mad hope of scoring that elusive million; those face-lifts had to be maintained.

Such places gave insanity a whole new meaning. This was Dante’s fourth circle of hell with tassels and beads – the antechamber to hell’s last bawdy-house. I could sense mother’s lips move in sibilant prayer and knew the sign of the cross was certain to follow. Sure enough, I caught her in that very act more than once.

There was a message here for all Irish pensioners. Don’t spend your final years clocking in old people’s homes, gaddamn it! Get out of there and buy a one-way ticket to Reno or Vegas and live dangerously at the tawdry gaming machines, in crackpot paradise. I could picture John Henry doing just that a few years down the line.

Our visit to the States was intoxicating. Indeed, it was more intoxicating than we’d imagined. Halfway through our stay we wondered why we were still suffering from jet lag. The explanation was bizarre. Mother and I had made initial forays to the supermarket, when we managed to escape from John. On one such expedition we discovered a wonderful, sweet-tasting milk with which we liberally doused our cereal and coffee each morning. We’d even finish off with a generous glass or two of the stuff, just to keep us going. We thought there must be something in the air because often after breakfast we’d stagger to the bedroom with barely the energy to get ready, never mind go out for the day’s excursion.

I cleared up the mystery on the tenth day of our stay. Idly scanning the label of the ‘milk’ carton one morning, I discovered we’d been drinking piña colada at 37º proof! It came as an almighty shock to realise that we’d met John Henry’s colleagues and his many friends, and experienced everything through a drunken haze. We’d blamed the plane journey, the weather – we’d even suspected Carol’s cooking – before learning the ‘staggering’ truth.

Thereafter we reverted to sober old milk and the days didn’t seem to be half as much fun. At the same time those days in California were the best of my mother’s life. The fleeting joy she had experienced on those shopping trips to Belfast had been stretched across three luxurious weeks. She walked taller, her laughter was louder and her smiles wider. With her brother John around, the sun never set and the darkness didn’t have the nerve to fall.

I will always remember John as a quick, restless little man who shot words like bullets, ran at life like a prize sprinter, jumping over the days, kicking all those ‘gaddamn’ obstacles out of sight. America had made him bold, eager for tomorrow, hungry for change; the bigger picture always beckoned, the never-ending possibilities of a wide, unlimited future.

Only my mother could make him stop and take a breather. I’d hear them well into the night, John reclaiming the past from a shuffle of memories that only the drink and nostalgia could call forth. He had never returned ‘home’, preferring to remember Ireland through the eyes of the young man who had left all those years ago – the picture-postcard Ireland, all misty and green – which he’d coloured and added to as the years flew past.

We left California as changed people. Brother and sister, knowing that a continent and an ocean would soon separate them again, cried and hugged each other with the awful sense of finality that only such partings can bring. Those three short weeks were a flash of pure joy in their beleaguered lives, like the joining together of a precious vase that had been broken, its shards scattered in separate rooms. They had at last met, had managed to match the motifs and fit together the pieces of their lives, making the patterns merge again into a design of familial love.

When together for that brief time they had lived and laughed and loved every precious minute of every precious day; they were living life as it should be lived, because they feared that there were only so many tomorrows left to them.

That adventure affected me too, adding to the slim sheaf of experiences I carried in my head. When I stepped outside the boundaries of my homeland I became aware of the boundlessness of my own possibilities. There was a wider world out there, surging with life, where people ran and jumped into the gush and swell of things with arms open wide and faces turned towards the sun. There were people of all ages who cried ‘yes!’ to the universe and took chances, who accepted me for who I was and didn’t look for failings. There was a zingy spirituality in California I’d experienced through John Henry; its citizens had locked fear and inhibitions firmly away and replaced them with unconditional acts of kindness, gaiety and love. In California I came close to seeing how wonderful life could be. The experience took away a chunk of fear and replaced it with hope. My abiding memory of America is of a fearless, generous and open people.

I hoped that one day I could live sequestered from the mundane in a foreign land, just as John had done, reinventing myself as I went along, free from the verdicts and reproofs of others, and finding my own way. For the first time I was made aware of the sheer freedom that goes with anonymity. I knew, however, that living abroad for me was nothing more than a hopeless dream. Every time I imagined it the image of my mother came rushing in to quell it, proving that my love for her was stronger than any need I had for independence. Conversely that love she had for me was keeping me bound. So I held my dreams in check and put the exotic picture to one side for one day in the future.

But my spirit, ever mindful of my plight, dealt with my dilemma in the only way it could. One year later, suddenly and without warning, my mother was taken from me. I stumbled, grief-stricken and helpless, to face the enormous void she left behind, the void that only a mother can fill and which from that day forward would for ever remain empty.

I got up; the chilly sun

Saw me walk away alone.