Dear
Elsie,
Is it sunny where you are? Are you young again? Did you find your sisters and
do you sit in corners giggling, whispering secrets, hands over mouths about Cottingley Fairies? Did Bert come home from the sea?
Are
you glamorous and athletic, do you play tennis and dance? Have you found
Arthur, is he handsome? Are you the quiet, unsung heroine outside the dancehall
looking at the attic window?
Do you cover your spaces in tapestry; do you make do and mend? Are your evenings
laced with melody and concerto; with discoveries and discussions of stellar
matters, with concerns of constellations? By day do you hear the tap tap zing
of the typewriter? Do you practice your shorthand and fly through Esperanto?
Have you taken in sad, grumpy stray cats looking for homes? Are your gardens
tended, blooming with roses, flushed with raspberries?
On Sundays do you drive to the countryside and listen to birdsong, hunt for bee-orchids? Do you look down to your Sunday best, your leather gloves, gold trefoil pinned in the corner of a collar?
Do you scold small children who won't eat their greens, who are shy and tired,
who are just being children? Are your shelves piled high with cakes, biscuits,
tarts? Is Monday your washing day? Do you cut sandwiches into triangles, and
cut off the crust? Does tea always come in a pot, with a gold edged cup and
saucer where you are Elsie? Is your soap made up of forgotten flakes of old
bars ?
Do you watch us tenderly pick over the treasures and trinkets of your life, unconvering stories, piecing together the jigsaws of your history? Do you laugh with us as our boys grow, tumble, stumble, trip, talk and learn about the world? ....
.... or are these just memories, stories, fantasies, to be packed up in an old
biscuit tin and put back on the shelf in a small dark pantry in my mind? Have
you gone? Are you there?
