Now
the whole family has flu, and none of us can go anywhere. We meet at
the kettle or in the sunroom enquiring with hushed tones and blank
expressions about how the other slept, or how sore the throat is. The
only healthy ones are the dogs, who do their best to comfort us with
all that a dog would find comforting. Soft brown eyes frown in offer of
concern; drooling jowls proffer a favourite threadbare leopard or duck,
without demanding that its foot be tugged, or that it is made to squeak
for amusement.
Shakespeare made my eyes ache, so he is on the side. The others, with the dogs, are snoring peacefully. There is just
me with my thoughts, in the house where I grew up.
I stay in
the tiny room that was my brother's; it does not offer him enough space
now that he is starting a family of his own. I will be an aunt soon, so
what does that mean? I laugh out loud at the adult roles we play when I
still think of us as children. Laughter
has never been in short supply, even when there was really nothing to
laugh about. There is something so easy about the company of someone
with whom one has grown up.
I can still hear us giggling
breathlessly and uncontrollably yesterday over old photographs – the
hairstyles, outfits, expressions. Silence came suddenly when we reached
one of us holding hands, watching a deer: he knock-kneed in little
shorts and a head of curls, I much taller in a yellow pinafore. Perhaps
it struck us both that families are not born randomly; that maybe they
have a depth of significance only the heart can understand. 
This
room where I write is the coldest room, with the warmest memories: the
annex that was once a corner shop. I'd sit over there with my homework
while my mother served a constant stream of gossiping neighbours. I
thought it funny that gangs of kids who'd never dream of speaking to me
were coming into part of my house, or hanging around outside in
battered cars showing off to other gangs of kids. I'd spend
joyful Sundays helping to cut blocks of cheese with wire, wrapping
fresh loaves in crisp tissue, measuring drinks into pints from barrels,
or weighing scoops of sweets into paper bags from a wall of enormous
jars. I loved the colours and smells from those jars: liquorice,
sherbet, toffee, bubble gum, chocolate, fruit, mint, in long strands,
little pips, glossy balls, or twisted into foil. A child's paradise.
I
peep into the sunroom to look on the sleeping faces of those who call
me "daughter." Tears come from nowhere. There sits sacrifice in two
human forms in two adjacent armchairs. One bore me, one claimed me;
both gave their lives to my springing unfettered and unspoiled into my
own life.
Sumangali Morhall
December 2004
