Wee Blisses

My sister and I talked on the phone for nearly 2 hours yesterday. I now get a cheap rate to Ireland of 5c a minute on my mobile. Ridiculous really. I love talking with my sister. My only sister who is nearly 14 years younger than me.

I'd given up hoping for one when all those boys started to arrive in our house. So had my mother. So had my father. When she was born somewhere around midnight on March 1st 195*, my taciturn father, a man who showed very little emotion and only cried once in my presence, burst into my bedroom in the small hours of the morning and could not contain himself: "It's a girl, it's a girl!" I didn't believe him. I had to see her.

And she was beautiful. I couldn't get over her. My mother (who was ill for a long time afterwards) and I mothered her. And dressed her in gorgeous clothes. I would knit her little jackets and Mum would make her dresses and we would clap our hands and exclaim to each other how simply lovely she was, how clever, how her blonde curly hair went to her waist in such a way Shirley Temple should be worried. I would take her in to high school with me and show her off. And yes, everyone was envious. They still remember it.

To this day, my sister never has had self-esteem problems and is a fabulous mother to 4 herself. When I think happy homes I think: my sister's place. She and her husband live in a very old house in Cork, one with rambling halls and back kitchens and an old conservatory and a big kitchen where everyone helps to cook and dance to silly music when they're doing it. She never stands on ceremony and I've seen her huge old table in the kitchen have two circles of chairs around it, the more agile eating on their laps and everyone talking at once. She has that way about her.

The sweetest thing among very many sweet things she says to me: "Your room is always here, WWW. Your room here has your name on the door. Always."

And one of the best things? Grandgirl and her friend are staying with my sister for a while this summer as they backpack Europe.

I get such a ridiculous charge out of calling my young sister "Great-Aunt."

Coming Home

It's only when I've been away that I come back to the stalwart presence of my house. That I notice all it offers. The dog bounding like a teenager in the small hall at the back, the scent of old wood in the floors and walls and the tease of yesterdays'  fires, the feathery comfort of my bed, the haphazard way the orphan jars are lined up on my kitchen shelves, the stateliness of my office with its pots of pens and pencils and notebooks and its magnificent view of the constantly changing ocean.

The organized woodpile drying at the back of the meadow, the sturdy no-nonsense garage, the stately old barn with its offspring clinging to its skirt at the other side. The red chairs on the deck and the surprising nearly-November bursts of matching geraniums in their pots, the birds flapping and flipping,  squawking at me about the lack of regular feeding. The books and movies -  pristine on shelves, the unfinished knitting in a hamper, the expectant dining room table, the waiting cast iron pots and pans.

Home. Simple.

I fall into its embrace.