A's House

 Dear all,

Today is one of those days when I contemplate, not without the occasional watery eye, the two chapters of our lives:  Before England and In England, the two very different childhoods the big kids and A will have had. R is off at cricket camp, S off with a friend swinging from the treetops in at an outdoor park in Cirencester.  M chose to spend the day walking the dog and cleaning up the kitchen (poorly) in order to avoid possibly having to exert energy and speak in complete sentences.  ‘Forget about it,’ I said to A as we jumped into the car, ‘you and I will have fun without him.’

We spent the day at Sudeley Castle (sudeleycastle.co.uk), which is in the ancient Saxon town of Winchcombe.  We spent the day wandering the gardens, looking into ponds for koi and avoiding goose poop.  There is a brand new, magnificent wooden climbing castle for the kids, which makes you long for the days before our country was litigation happy.  It has a big ‘ole metal slide that would have been outlawed in The States a generation ago.  As luck would have it a friend of A’s was there with her family, so A was quite happy to stay for hours.

I have this little boy who only ever swims in pools.  He has never placed one little toe into Forest Lake (the lake we lived on for more than ten years).  He was too young in Prairie Crossing to remember the magical world of the organic farm, prairie grass or bugs (I’m going to digress: M once saved an egg sack of praying mantis.  He put it into the green velvet hatbox, which houses all our family’s most precious treasures, tissue wrapped treasures, like dead butterflies, a raccoon skull, cicada shells, leaves too perfect to leave behind and the like.  Months later, I removed the lid of the hatbox to add the most perfect pebble someone had collected, when out exploded- I am NOT kidding- hundreds if not THOUSANDS of baby preying mantis all over me- yes, in my hair- like a Stephen King movie.  Go on.  Take a moment to imagine THAT scene.  M was safe at school, lucky him. The hatbox lived outside for quite some time after that.). 

A will never know a childhood with herds of children thundering in and out of neighborhood homes.  Or the security of knowing that someone, anyone will take care of you in a tight knit neighborhood if you are hurt or hungry or thirsty.  He’ll not have eaten corn dogs or pickles on sticks at the state fair. He will not own a pair of beaded moccasins purchased in the Wisconsin Dells, which is more disappointing to me than you might guess.

But this is what he WILL know:  travel and adventure, how to act in an airport and a cathedral.  He will have eaten squid, snails, rabbit, horse, octopus and black sausage. He will have spent long summer days at castles pretending he was a knight and the Tewkesbury Park Hotel, swimming.  He will have worn winter jammies all year long.  He will remember walking into town for almost every need we have and he'll remember handing the lady in the Post Office 10p for a sweet after school. 

While I was on the phone with my cousin, Claudia, the other day, A was doodling on a notepad nearby.  Later, I picked up the notepad to see his drawing and without even realizing why, my eyes filled with tears and my throat was grabbed in a way that was both sad and happy.  It was a drawing of a boy next to his house.  The boy’s head was balloon like from which unsteady arms and legs protruded. Next to the boy was a house.  This house wasn’t the inverted ‘v’ with two walls like American children draw.  It was a very tall, narrow house, with lots of windows and an impressive front door- a massive doorknob in the middle- and curly cues for the iron balcony.  It is a drawing of the only kind of house A really knows:  An English Regency townhouse.

With love from England,

T-Ann