ONE TO REMEMBER FOREVER

This is a slightly different addition to my blog as it isn't craft related but having just read the most amazing book of all time (in my opinion) I feel I want to mention it here. The book was called Without A Map and is a memoir by Meredith Hall.
It is the story of her teenage pregnancy and subsequent adoption of her child all of which trauma was follwed by her parents disowning of her. It was the most moving and seemingly searingly honest book I have ever read. So touched by the book was I, that I am writing to it's author to say so and I've never done anything like that before.

This excerpt comes late in the book and is describing the cabin that Meredith and her children built together. Many excerpts were so beautiful and evocative that they made me gasp out loud. This one is my favourite.

'The world outside feels cahotic to me. Here, in short respites, I find myself. I remember a slow-motion calm. There is a perfect system here of evolution, the universe silently revolving, expanding. Rhythyms of light and dark, warmth and cold, abundance and need, growth and decay. I enter and feelt he reasurance that I am part of that perfect order. here I particpate in the fecundity and beneficence of earth and water. I come back to myself. I am beautiful, strong, bursting with life.

I catch my reflection int he window as I paint: the middle-aged face. Mine, stretching back to that gazing child. My mother's - fading blue eyes, squint lines, jowls fomring. My sons', the carrying forward. My hands as I paint are my father's , the extra skin and thickened knuckles. Signs of arthritis, I'm sure, an old woman's condition. But here, my small life is measured against such an immensity of time I don't panic. I will die. Mystery and no mystery. the pond will reflect sunlight and ice over and melt and rush the two hundred miles to sea. The moss will crumble in drought summers and glow like jewels in wet seasons. The bear who leaves muddy paw prints on my outhouse will be another bear. Venus will continue to dominate the evening and predawn skies. No need to panic'.