The last time she saw them she was standing leaning against the metal railing of the ferry. Her face turned into a ferocious biting wind, white crested waves crashing against the boat. Unable to focus on her destination for fear of losing sight of the land. Gulls circling in the grey sky like white flakes. Rain squalls blowing in between the small blue gaps. Leaving because staying had become an impossibility.
If she looked hard enough she could picture in her mind’s eye when this water looked like a coastal road in England on a busy bank holiday Monday. Solid with shipping during the evacuation from Dunkirk. Eight hundred and fifty boats. How did the three hundred and thirty six thousand men and women feel seeing those rolling white chalk downs, bitten by the sea, she wondered?
Living away so long away she realised everywhere had almost become home. Yet there remained a yearning love for a homeland that had forsaken her. Without the luxury of a comfortable past to reminisce about she still maintained many profound heart thoughts. The ache of hindsight leaving her with a craving for a journey that would lead her back home.
Now she would go home as a visitor, so wanting people to beg her to stay, not treat her with indifference. Always an outsider to be merely tolerated.
What was it Kate Winslett sang in the epic film ‘Titanic’? “Every night in my dreams I see you. Far across the distance and space between us.”
Belonging there was never about blood and bones, it was being home on that island.
Ref: Mr. Google.