Gone but Still Here by Jennifer Dance

Author:Jennifer Dance [Dance, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION / Family Life / General
ISBN: 9781459748798
Publisher: Dundurn Press
Published: 2022-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

I feel a touch on my face as light as a butterfly’s wing — the blue morpho from Trinidad, as big as my outstretched hand. I wonder if it’s Keith stroking my cheek. I doubt it, but all the same, I melt into his touch, soaking up his tenderness like parched earth soaks up a gentle rain.

“Let’s go to our happy place,” he says, “to the cottage on Holmwood Common. Do you remember the first time we saw it? The muddy potholes in the lane? The stream where trees arched overhead and hid the sky?”

The line between the past and the present blurs until they are one. I type.

The lane is damp and gloomy, but then at the top of the hill, there’s a sunny clearing, with oaks and birches and bracken, and footpaths radiating out through hundreds of acres of National Trust Land. A solitary red-brick cottage sits in the clearing. Never in a million years did we think we’d be able to buy such a perfect place. A little part of heaven.

As with our first home, this cottage lacks modern amenities, but with nature on our doorstep, we consider ourselves the luckiest people alive. We put on rubber boots and tramp the footpaths, our feet feeling the springy turf of summer, the hard frost of winter and the soft mud of all seasons.

I take the seasons for granted, but Keith has lived his life in a land where there are no changes in the length of the day or the temperature. He sees the English seasons with fresh eyes, paralleling them with the seasons of life: the birth and freshness of spring, the growth of summer, the maturity of autumn, and the death of winter. We are in early summer. Winter is a long way off.

Alicia and Zach are both born when we live in that house. I see Keith dancing in the living room with newborn Alicia in his arms, singing along with Stevie Wonder: “Isn’t She Lovely?” His movements are fluid and there is so much love in his eyes, so much joy in his heart. In the back garden, I see Zach riding on his daddy’s shoulders, squealing with delight. And Alicia picking daisies from the lawn, the sun transforming her curls into a halo of gold.

I remember our last night in the cottage, sleeping on the floor, on a mattress that was going to be trashed the next morning, Alicia and Zach sandwiched between us. All four of us entwined. I wish I could have stopped time. I loved our life there, and I worried that we’d never be that happy again. But Keith was thinking of the future, of a safer place where our children would have the chance to reach their full potential. He didn’t want them living in fear. He didn’t want them to be held back by skin colour. He was so excited about Canada, so optimistic, that I couldn’t bring myself to tell him I was scared. I trusted him, though.

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