Today – 31 August – is the ‘anniversary’ of my father’s death. Is it really 13 years? And so every year at this time, I feel sad. I’m now able to remember Frank, my father, happily and recall memories fondly; but he was my first experience of deep grief. But today is also a Friday. And now, on Fridays, me and Ronnie go for a walk – somewhere. Ronnie writes a regular blog post of ‘The Friday Walks’. Sometimes it’s over on the shining shore on the Wirral, the Dee estuary with its beaches and marshes; and often we combine a visit to my favourite botanic garden at Ness; sometimes further afield like Anglesey; sometimes it’s here in Liverpool, an urban walk; and sometimes it’s somewhere new. And today is a new walk.
New walks are tricky. We don’t have the route fully mapped out, we might not like it… but we like to find new places to extend our walk repertoire. Ronnie has suggested Churchtown, north of Southport and the marsh beyond, about 30 miles north of Liverpool. I’m not sure, but when Ronnie tells me there is a botanical garden at Churchtown then I’m keen to go.
I won’t describe our walk in detail, after all I know Ronnie will sum it up perfectly. (In fact he has done here – and if you look at the photos on Ronnie’s blog you will see I am sporting a rather large rucksack for a day walk, but I am practising with a heavier pack for my pilgrimage walk for Rach in a few weeks). Anyway, we arrive at Churchtown – which is delightful – we walk round the village, the churchyard, the lovely thatched cottages and old brick buildings, and we arrive at the botanic gardens, which are quite simply a gem. We find a bench and, as usual on the Friday walk, settle down to have our packed lunch.
As we are sat there I say, ‘This is great, isn’t it?’ but not really a question. Ronnie looks up from his lunch and says, ‘Yes, we’re doing alright aren’t we, in our after,‘ and then pauses. We are both silent. We both know we weren’t guaranteed an after. By any means. We also don’t know how long this after will last. We only know we have it now. My eyes fill with tears.
‘This is our weekly holiday,’ says Ronnie. So matter-of-factly. Yes. It is. Every Friday, we do this. We just do it. Other people exclaim over our ritual, but all we do is decide to do it. It’s not special, it’s ordinary now. The Friday walk.
The gardens are lovely, sort of gardens mixed with municipal park, but green and lush with a lake and lots of other people using them.
After the botanic garden we drive up to the marsh and walk out along the salty, empty sandy road to nowhere, just the edge of a wide estuary. I love it. The open-ness, the green-ness, the birds and the space.
And so, in the ‘unknowingness of breast cancer‘ which I wrote about before on our walks, we find ‘ordinary’.
I’m having a tough time this summer, losing my dear friend Rach this year has been very, very hard. The grief is immense. I’m taking a lot of time for myself. But in a moment when I dip back into the blog world I see that Marie is ‘celebrating ordinary‘. And that’s something I’ve longed for, snatched at, selfishly wanting the plain and simple ‘ordinary’ of everyday life. I realise that I have so much ordinary now… but it’s taken five years to find it again. But it’s definitely back.
25 August 2012. Ordinary.
Yes, that’s Saturday morning in Liverpool. It’s sunny and I peg the washing out, our sheets, on the line in our back yard. An ordinary yard, an ordinary sky. But really, not ordinary at all. If you think about it.
And what today reminded us about, is that you can find all sorts of lovely (and ordinary) places just by deciding to do it. And I’ll take ‘ordinary’ any day of the week.
Being Sarah 