One great-auntie resides in my memory for several reasons, but there is
one special reason I give her lodging there. It is not so much that she
always kept my birthday in her own memory, and always retrieved that
date so punctually and generously. It is not her fine cardigans, over
matching box-pleated woollen skirts, over hardy stockings and
adamantine shoes. It is not that she seemed to have only one
formidable measurement around her person, whether tape would be taken
around shoulders or skirt hem, or anywhere betwixt (not that I ever
tried of course). It is not that she pretended not to understand, or even hear me, if my grammar was slovenly.
It is that she (seemingly) brought God to me.
Nobody ever talked about God; it was just an unwritten rule in my
family - almost a matter of courtesy - not to bring Him into anything.
Yes, I believed in Him, right from as early as I can remember, and it
is comforting to know that the affinity came of its own volition - not
through coercion, or even prompting. This conscious skirting around the
seemingly nebulous Progenitor of All was certainly due to the nobility
of my parents, as they did not want to influence me in such a personal
aspect of life. Certainly it may also have owed to their own mixed
certainty about the Matter. So I restricted “when”s and “where”s to
fairly routine areas, such as the predicted date of my being big enough
to wear the jaunty yellow macintosh that Natalie’s sister had just outgrown, or the precise location of a sparrow’s ears.
Then God (seemingly) came, outwardly and boldly, courtesy of Auntie,
in a miniature box set of Biblical quotations. He was (symbolically
perhaps) in three parts, each with a pale satiny sheen. Nothing was
said about them, or Him of course. I am not sure whether Auntie even
believed in God, or whether she simply thought it proper for a young
lady to keep such publications in her library. I remember choosing one
prayer and reciting it about the house with jubilant abandon, driving
my poor mother fraught and ragged.
The sacred books were in danger of confiscation, and with them God,
or so it seemed, and that did serve as temperance to some extent. Their
endangerment was not due to their content, but due to their roles as
accomplices in my misuse of liberty. It was simply my style of
repetition that oftentimes became unbearable. The books were heading
the same way as the one particular Bach Two-Part Invention (or the one
particular Joplin Rag if I was feeling roguish), played until the piano
itself seemed vexed with boredom. As with the Invention though (and the
Rag), the contents of the pages were greedily devoured by memory and
could be recalled at will. It was not intentional obstinance on my
part, but gleeous exuberance, although obstinance was admittedly the
product most apparent to adults.
I read them quietly and covertly thereafter. The pages formed a sort
of tryst, for a while at least. I could not help thinking, however,
that while Auntie might be delighted with the three-part God in satin
jackets, and so might proper young ladies who kept seemly libraries, I
just honestly did not have eyes for Him there, not yet anyway. I sadly
considered it my own failing, but accepted it nonetheless. The box set
decorated a shelf, untouched, until it reached the table of a school
fete or some such, and finally left my charge.
* * *
It was at a craft fair that He came again, unexpectedly but more
convincingly to my simple eye. My mother had taken me exploring. Such
exploratory was some means of establishing a friendship with an
American city, newly crowned as our home. I acquired a splendid
miniature wooden horse there. It was only a two-dimensional cutout,
painted in glossy primary colours, with bright wool for a mane, but it
was perfection to me and absorbed me almost completely. Almost, because
I saw my mother crouch to collect a brighter prize from others
scattered on the ground.
It was a leaf.
The horse was history. A new perfection glanced at me from a truer
source than paint and wood and wool. It was yet more audaciously
painted than the horse though, or so it seemed. The colours were
ludicrous, and not even neatly finished. In my childly eye the blots
and brush strokes were more real, carousing in crimson on lavish daubs
of heavenly green and gold - not stooping to vermillion, or ochre, or
anything so rude or bland. I held it to the light aghast; I was sure a
human hand had tampered with it, but each drop and line bore Nature’s
sterling hallmark. What’s more, the ground was strewn with myriad
miniature canvases.
“There You are,” I thought to myself in my fond recognition. It was as
if I had received some remote sly wink from the Divine - fleeting, yet
wholly confirmatory.
* * *
Autumn is splendid.
It’s as if the leaves say, “Alright then, if we have to go, we’ll go
about it magnificently. Don’t mourn; we’ll sing our own lament. In fact
let us make it a thousand-part requiem, and while singing smother
ourselves in all the most expensive paints. Or no! We’ll cast us all in
purest bronze!”
My mother once suggested we grow some gourds. It was one of many
scientifically creative things we would do together. “What are they
for?” I asked, “Can we eat them?” I must confess to my deepening
respect for the things when I was told that they served no discernible
purpose other than being gourds. “There You are!” I would think to
myself as I looked at their outrageous autumnal brightness and curious
lack of purpose (except just to be wild and gnarled and puckered and
pimpled). They seemed themselves to constitute one more sly wink from
the Divine.
Nature must realise autumn has to be magnificent. I always found it
a bother putting on a school tie again after lounging and frolicking
all summer. Autumn could only mean ever-darker evenings and ever-colder
feet for months to come. It’s also a fine excuse for a new scarf and
more honeyed crumpets than usual, but if it weren’t for the coloured
magnificence it may be a little dull and daunting. How welcome then
such beauteous distractions as leaves and conkers!
* * *
I love everything about the Horse-Chestnut tree, or Aesculus
Hippocastanum to use its grandest and most proper name. It is always
straight and strong. The scent of buds is like the freshest nectar in
spring. The leaves are like ample hands spread open in gladdest
offering. The nut itself though is the most glorious component,
dropping in a most hostile yet beguiling transport. Its green and spiny
capsule with leathery skin over fleshy white may seem to the untrained
and unintrepid hand to garner nothing at all. The trophy is well worth
the tricks and travail though, as a bright new conker greets the light.
If the skin is left to crack naturally, it looks to form the slit of an
eye with spines for lashes, the conker resting in that socket and
peering ever wider.
“There You are!”
The nut is damp and cold, shiny and richly grained like oiled walnut
wood, but the colour more like an opulent mahogany. It is weighty in
the hand when new, but dries to a prizefighter more adamantine than
Auntie’s shoes. Its fate may have it soaked in vinegar, baked in a
mother’s oven, burnished, varnished and nurtured into a near-invincible
player in playground tournaments.
Conkering was never my first choice of break-time pastimes - the
pierced and strung conker would too often reach a knuckle before
clashing with the opposing nut, and too often with terrible belligerent
force or even malice. No, I would stick to sourcing the largest and
most handsome of them for my brother’s sporting. Though they were
doomed to a warrior’s end if I came upon them, they were assured a
generous admiration first.
* * *
I always buy the same brand of chocolate - I know it will always be
exquisite. I never tire of it because I am different every time I
sample it. The Bach Invention never twice sounded the same to me, as I
felt different every time I played it. No two conkers are alike, but
equally marvellous finds are enveloped in each inhospitable
Horse-Chestnut shell. Through my simple eye, still childly for all
these years, I fancy God still goes on and on making conkers and
painting leaves because He knows no two will be the same: He Himself is
new and different each time He creates. Maybe one day on meeting a
creation with this simple eye, I will be able to say, “There You are,”
with yet more certainty, and that fleeting glance will stretch to an
eternal wondering gaze...
Sumangali Morhall
October 2005
