Dear Mum (4)

Dear Mum,


This Easter I took Husband up to Aberdeenshire to see our family home. To visit my old primary school and walk around the village we lived just outside of. 


I cried. 


I didn't expect to but I did. 


I remember Dad telling us on a Monday night after Gymnastics that we would be leaving to go to Edinburgh. I remember you crying a lot. You were very upset at leaving, seeing our home all packed up and empty and bare. You seemed inconsolable. I think you told Dad to tell us alone - you were not going to be there when he broke the news. I am pretty sure now that was a deliberate move on your part. He didn't have your support.


I can only guess the reasons why. 


I know my reasons for crying. It was the last place we were a family. Properly. We were happy. All of us. 


I cried for that family. 


I cried for the waste of a life.


I cried for the loss of potential.


I cried for you.


And I cried for us- your Wee Angels.


I didn't need to knock on the door to know what the smells and sounds of the house would be like. We sat in the car, parked in a lay-by on a road across the river from the house. And looked on. The tears quietly and unexpectedly rolled down my face. 


Husband told me not to apologise and held my hand as the tears fell and the explanation and memories came.


Our old tyre swing still hangs opposite the house. Where it has hung since Dad and Uncle spent an afternoon hanging it and testing it thoroughly before 3 hyper-excited bouncing little girls clambered on it.


The games we invented in the garden, the woods and fields around the house all came flooding back. The feel of the ice cold water on our skin from the paddling pool in the summer. 


My childhood.


I was to grow up quickly when we moved to Edinburgh. You saw to that.


Love


Cass
xx