Winchester Words

Warmth is a strong emotion. The layers of belonging, the physical, emotional and basic sensory heat enfolding me. The joyful sense of completeness and achievement stretching out with a long finish, a note held by an orchestra where the strings take up that haunting long finishing note, gently rising, one from another, or perhaps a visceral shudder produced by a treasured smell that one inhales greedily wanting to fill ones lungs so as to keep that scent of happiness passing through ones consciousness for the longest possible time; sufficient time to name the smell, describe and catalogue it so as never to lose it. To possess that perfume and be able to draw its sweet evocative memory into ones very core and hear those stringed instruments holding that note into the air, pulsing with the vivid memory of that time. 

And what time was it that I recalled? It was an amalgam of occasions, all real, all keenly treasured, even in the rush of the moment. It was a period when the boys were young but beyond being babies. They were little people. Very reliant on their mother & I. Their sense of trusting vulnerability was, and is, an important part strengthening the memory. Most often the images are of laughing faces … or sleeping ones. The two little heads, one dark, the other blonde, looking at each other, or me, blue eyed and care-free. Soft fluff on their tautly delicate bronzed necks catches the light like the fur on perfectly ripened peaches. They are, after all, sweet enough to eat.

Bundling into the back of the car, or climbing onto the bike, clipping seat belts or cycle helmets. Behind them are often fields. Open spaces, invariably bronzed with sunlight. Barley, heavily ripe, drooping in the mellow evening sunshine. Grassy meadows with the long shadow. Or perhaps the sea, turning silver, with orange-yellow flashes of melting gold reflecting low across our bending bodies as the evening tips into twilight. 

I feel the immense privilege of being part of this, of shaping the experience of these two innocents. Providing for them, the intense memory of timeless carefree summer days spent doing whatever seemed right at the time. It’s a kind of inheritance moment. 

Then the rather delayed realisation, that much of my joy, its intensity, was in the hope of imprinting an experience, that went well beyond my understanding at the time, to the heart of my being. It was about being for them the father I’d sort of had for two weeks of each year and otherwise just nurtured within the buried recesses of my soul. Building an incomplete, intuitive, imagined persona, from my guilty awestruck observation of his twin, some photographs and anecdotes.

I wanted to be the embodiment of fatherhood and my memories of my two sons at that indeterminate age is rich with fulfilment. The most complete and satisfied I’ve ever felt… at least in my nostalgia gilded memories of that time. 

But did they feel it too? They seemed to. Their clear blue eyes sparkled, their happy chuckling drifts into the warmth of the sun-soaked memory …a muffled echo. Little white teeth on show as their heads are thrown back in laughter, before they succumb to that contented sleep that follows a day of fresh sea air, the body satiated with the warmth of the day seeping back from the bones through the flesh like little storage heaters. A light flush of the sun’s kiss lies gentle on their rosy cheeks as their heads stir under the motion of travelling home. Hints of a smile twitching at the corners of their downy lips. I loved the drive whilst they slept. The fact that I was their protector. Their mother slept too. I had sole charge of them. They were become their grandfather and his brother, reborn, together and reunited to live again that mythical life of which I’d heard so many Technicolor fragmented scraps.  

The sense of responsibility was intoxicating and filled me with pride and achievement. We were heading home. My home, the home I’ve made for them. The place of security and togetherness. It is not a place, it’s where I am.