Matlock - Tansley

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Home last weekend to see my parents, a friend and to purposely walk through the bluebell woods in my memory.

In the morning, my mother and I picked the flowers from her garden, chose the route and set off for the grave of my grandparents, across the fields, through the wood gathering past and present.

On the way, I stopped at the old house of my granddad and looked over the fence knowing that the uncle I had not seen for 30 years now lived in it. My uncle came out and shouted to me whilst my mother was picking grape hyacinths on the bank, just out of his view.

“ hello love, can I help you? Are you looking at the garden?”

and I said, “no, I’m just looking”. (at the smallness of it all)

Then he asked if I knew the place

“yes, I used to play here every weekend for years”.

And then he recognized me. His face worn deep in furrows from smoking cigarettes and working outside - a fantastical face that I looked right by to take in the place of my childhood weekends spent on a council estate in Matlock.

My mother and I walked on through stiles by walls covered in teddy moss, over streams, by ponds and through the wood to the tiny village of Tansley where my she filled the grave pot with water and murdered the flowers into the holes and I sat and watched.

My memory is that my granddad had been the most loving person in my life during my childhood. I remember him being kind and honest. I bent down to the grave to tell him that I had traveled to Asia and back and taken Patti and now I was back traveling through the woods that he used to walk me in and that I was warmed by the past kindness and teachings he’d given me.

Often
he comes back to me,
in the shape of a robin on the wall, in the form of a Chinese granddad crossing the road with me, in a pet name, in a saying, in the form of being polite, being grumpy in the form of just being a part of me.

Here's to my grandad who just loved polaroids

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Photos

mother
Lomo Diane with a fisheye

a wing on my favourite place
accidental double exposure. i wish it wasn't there.

flying home
fisheye

Comments

[Keep Smiling]

Picture perfect
Tracey. I enjoyed your emotional and reflective writing style. The photos too were an essay in themselves.

[TraceyDoxey]

tansley and my mother
thank you, that's made my day