Linked by old happenings and mistakes, families wax and wane. Like the flowering year, they are doomed to repeat the cycle – the omissions, the shortfalls, the lack of love and forgiveness.
I know because it happened in my family – and the wounds inflicted by one member are repeated in the next generation, until a chain is linked together.
Mine is a very English story which could only have happened at a particular time, and yet, I think, has universal application. I have written it to show you where it went wrong and where it went right, how the seeds set by one generation flower again and again. How, despite our quirks (Thomas) and disappointments (the loss of the house), in the end love can grant us a future, and serenity. The grace of a long, contented life, like mine.
Above all, there is the garden. An Eden of stone and brick, of brown and green, of forks and spades, of seed trays and compost heaps, conjured by rain and sun into beauty from which we draw nourishment. Life-giving, ever changing, always there, an indestructible source for the spirit. The garden triumphant, in which are found the lily and the rose locked into their spiral of fecundity, death – and resurrection. So, you see, it came right.