England On My Mind

From the air, England is a patchwork quilt.  My heart always leaps in excitement as the scraps of green fields first appear through the clouds.  Sewn together by hedgerows and hemmed by motorways, there\’s an unrivaled beauty in the haphazard patches that reach away into the horizon.

We arrived back in Seattle this morning after two weeks of cream teas, Indian curries, fish \’n chips, and logging an unfathomable number of miles on our rental car as we zigzagged across the country, cramming friends and relatives into our days the way children cram Halloween candy into their mouths.  Too much of a good thing can leave one quite ill, or – in our case – exhausted, but I have no regrets whatsoever about the time we spent making the most of every moment we had.  Driving home today, I realized that Dan and I have created a different kind of patchwork quilt: one of memories.

As evergreens and I-5 once again became my reality, snippets of England kept floating to the surface.  In my mind\’s eye, I caught a glimpse of my 89 year old Nanna and Granny, holding their newest great-grandson for the first time.  I saw Dan\’s dad making a sandcastle for Keats.  I saw the happy wistfulness on Dan\’s mum\’s face as she relived history upon seeing Keats in his daddy\’s old dressing gown.  I saw myself with my in-laws in their living room, recalling my first visit to their home almost seven years ago.  And I watched Dan and I take the boys to the Tate Modern, the site of our first date.

When we met there on November 11, 2007, an installation entitled Shibboleth stretched the length of the Turbine Hall.  A literal crack in the cement floor, it was long since filled in as other installations rotated through.  Unlike the others, however, the scar of the crack still remains.  I smiled when I saw this.  Evidence of our first date is carved into the floor of the Tate, something tangible to show Keats and Wren through the haze of memories.

The memories Dan and I created in the past fortnight are part of a patchwork quilt of memories that stretch seven years into the past, a quilt we\’ll keep adding to as the years go by.  Tonight, as I lie in bed in the dark, my senses will reacquaint themselves with Seattle, but I\’ll wrap myself in that patchwork quilt of memories, holding onto England for a little while longer.