I see my indoor plants. They missed me, obviously. There’s a yellowing in their leaves. A falter, a down thing. I watch them, the three of them and we talk. You are fine, I tell them. You don’t need me. You are yourself. Even, in my experience, mismanagement is not a finite thing. Even children bounce forward after such. I’m being polite here. There is an orange tree, the one Himself ordered when I was far away and which has produced succulent fruit, albeit randomly. There’s an inherited Ficus Ordinarious, not her name, and the very last geranium from Granny. She worshipped that mother plant. She was very protective of her geranium. I, to my shame, wanted, and often, to set fire to the whole damn plant. I never did. When she died in 2002, and I moved back here on my own, back to the island,an island which had scooped up my heart and thrown me into a confounding, a conjoining, I now know, of my matriarchal ancestry, and of my gypsy soul, I just had to come home. Best choice ever. It seems to me, that where mum is, is home.

In these days of all that history, all that survival, all that I have learned from my own ferocious forbears, I can see that the rebels appear voicy. It seems to me that survival in whatever conditions, is a challenge. Only the brave. that’s a quote from someone. And it is true. The lives we live now, the rising costs, the affect that has on families, the darkening of light in an, heretofore, ordinary life, means a lot of cold and a lot more of the more of cold.

Rebel here. I cannot accept the gloom. There are. always fairies, stories, magic, always.

Always.