My mobile phone, entirely of its own volition, seems to have formed the habit of taking me back into the past. I’m not entirely sure as to why it’s started doing this, but it seems apt seeing as we’re here at the start of autumn, as the present blurs with the past and summer slides comfortably into memory once again under what Maurice Wiggin observed as “…that benign influence of the equinox which brings out the philosopher in us all”. I do sometimes wonder whether there’s some sinister cyber-surveillance going on – my browsing habits, predominantly filled with poems long since written, accounts of fish caught countless tides ago and the beautiful senectitude captured so often in the very greatest work of my favourite nature writers, suggest a leaning toward fond hindsight, and I often imagine some computerised spider tucked away in the darkest corners of the web, tweaking the strands of my life past and present.
There I go, digressing again, my thoughts as muddled as the temperatures and weather fronts sweeping through my days. To return to my original point, I’ve noticed that every so often, my mobile phone chimes up with the hanging half-statement ‘On This Day’, before guiding me through a photographic record of what was happening in my life two, four, and even seven and eight years ago. I’ll click on the notification and suddenly there I am, with less grey in the beard, fewer laughter lines, engaged in something about which I had completely forgotten, whether it be a walk up a hill, a paddle on a west Wales beach or simply enjoying a quiet beer in a shady nook of some pub or other.
The most recent of these hit me like a sudden squall only a few days ago. Time, I thought to myself, is the ultimate trickster, a flim-flam artist of the very highest order. Over here he’ll have you focusing on the present as it happens so that, little-by-little, our lives, the people and things around us change imperceptibly but consistently, while over there the temporal smoke-and-mirrors act separates us neatly from what’s been with such sudden skill that we later look back on things once familiar with unexpected thoughts of How, and when, in God’s name did that happen?! When I opened up the most recent link there wasn’t a picture of me this time, but a picture of my daughter seven years ago. More than a foot shorter., cheeks chubbier, hair in ponytails, there she stood in gardening gloves far too big for her little hands, cupping a palmful of blackberries. Love always hits us harder than any other emotion, and so it did now. Surely that had been only a year or two ago, I thought, before thinking again of Time’s tricks. How dare he steal my little girl away. This would never do. I decided there and then to grasp a few handfuls of my life back before Time snatched them all from under my nose.
“Elle!”
“Yep?”
“Do you want to come blackberry picking?”
“What, now?”
“Yes, now. No time like the present!”
“Why?”
“It’s been ages since we’ve done it, mum’s in work and we’re both at a loose end so I thought it would be nice.”
“Um…okay.”
I was delighted. For a few years, any requests to spend time together had been met with a wave of teenaged cynicism and a “Nah, you’re okay”, but now that she’s far closer to adulthood than her early teens, being seen in your father’s company isn’t quite the horrifying thought it once was.
A short while later we were climbing the hill’s slopes together. As I plodded along behind her, I marvelled at Elle’s long, elegant strides, even though in some corner of my memory I could still hear the pitter-patter of short steps and feel her hand in mine as we chattered up the path the last time we had passed this way together. This was one of those moments by which we measure the passage of time, the still points we pass by in life as the years grow and blossom, wither and fade around us. Here, only just starting to approach her full bloom of life was the apple of my eye, a tall, beautiful young woman of whom I couldn’t have been prouder at that moment in time. I felt my heart swell to bursting.
I took a short second to gather myself. “Right, let’s get cracking”, I announced as we reached our old picking spot and settled quickly into the rhythms that are not easily forgotten once embedded. Greedily we picked, reaching for the biggest, ripest, juiciest fruits, each one a bright bauble encouraging us to reach, overreach, and even take those extra steps out onto uncertain ground in an effort to stretch ever so slightly beyond ourselves. All the while, our banter coloured the afternoon, the shoulder nudges and stolen handfuls of fruit from pots when each was looking the other way, causing us to giggle again just like a replay of seven years ago.
“I’m going to look further up”, Elle said, carrying on up the slope without a backward look and toward a corner, searching for virgin ground. “No…” I started, quickly strangling the word as it rose and reining myself in. It has to happen sometime, I mumbled to myself. I stood back and watched her go.
Thank you, Time, I muttered, finally understanding now. She hadn’t been stolen from me at all. All this time, through all these years, she had been there right in front of me, the girl, the young lady, the woman-in-waiting. Time hadn’t stolen Elle from me at all, but had simply accompanied her where she must go, and where I could never follow – on her own journey toward maturity, whether that be to a blackberry bush around the corner or a life halfway across the world. No matter.
If this is what Keats meant by “mellow fruitfulness”, I was happy to indulge in it, knowing that wherever Elle went, whenever she went there, even if it were without me, all I needed to do was what I had always done, and will always continue to do – be there to greet her with a smile, a hug and, possibly, a handful of blackberries when she returns.
