Still Here – Magic of My Childhood Dreams

Still Here – Magic of My Childhood Dreams

Walking between the tall overgrown hedges, the spring sun smiling through the leaves on the trees, I realised this narrow back road that, in my childhood days was ‘my safe place to go’ when the atmosphere in our house became a loaded silence where ‘a war of words’ could break over my heads between my parents or my siblings at any minute

“It still feels like a safe place,” I said out loud as I started up the narrow road that was  Anothing more than a dirt track relieved after a lifetime away  I hadn’t outgrown it  In the quietness the bird song was sweetly muted ;the scuttling sound of the countryside creatures still there in the thicket of the hedges – still brought me a sense of peace. A horse and its foal made their way leisurely  over  to on  the barred iron gate  to the   a field  they were in, twitched their  ears and looked at me  curiously  over a ditch festooned with wild grasses and bluebells.

The road, a short cut to the townlands of Tober and the Backlands on the road to Castlefin town in the Finn Valley Co Donegal, looked even less used now than it had in my childhood. Tufts of yellowing grass sprouted in the middle of it sticking up like a spiky hair cut but   it still felt like the heavenly place I remembered, it to be.

I crested what I remembered as a steep hill. (It was more of an incline.)I stopped, inhaled the smell of the wild fora and breathed in the quiet stillness of the soft air to soothe away the tension I carried on my shoulders and in my heart.

I closed my eyes and remembered how as children we‘d wade knee deep into the overgrown weeds, fern and tall thistles that grew in abundance along the roadside grabbing  at our clothes with jaggy fingers. Careful not to slip into the shuck that lay hidden beneath, the older sisters, would straddle the drain and pulling the sleeves of their jumper over their bare hands, brave the thorns and nettles and clamoured over the barbwire (the farmer, Paddy Mc Corry hoped in vain would keep us out) and into the field beyond; then, in turn, she’d give the younger ones a hand up – until we were all in the daisy field.

Sitting on the grass carpeted with daisies, we’d bite into the stems and string them together into a daisy necklace or daisy crown.

The youngest of five sisters, I’d forget about the tell-tale mark of the let-down or taken up hem of the dresses I hated to wear. Daisy chain in place, arms outstretched – eyes closed – I’d twirled (sometimes barely missing the cow pat)- imagining I was a princesses – a princess that didn’t wear glasses. And, like in the films we saw in the pictures in the RITZ cinema in Lifford on a Sunday, a handsome prince would gallop over the hill on a white horse and whisk me away to his castle where I would live happily ever after.

I felt a smile touch my lips and realised the memories of the back road of my childhood, still possessed its magic.

The tension slid off my shoulders.  And childlike, I spread out my arms wide and twirled…I retraced my steps knowing this place, my childhood sanctuary, would be here, waiting for me, when I needed it.

Gemma Hill March ©