I find the girl I used to be in the long grass of the field at the bottom of the garden. She has passed through the gate in the fence, leaving a flattened trail as she crossed the meadow, heading for the old pond at the far end. The girl is at home here in the field, she knows it better even than the rooms of her house. Grasses and daisies are like friends to her, so too are the butterflies that flit between them. She knows which brambles will produce the ripest blackberries and she ducks without thinking under the low branch that leads to the shaded copse with the hidden pond. If the cows aren’t out, she will climb over the gate to the next field in a smooth, practiced leap. I always find her here, pushing hay bales together in late summer to make a den, flying a kite carefully away from the trees, folding down poppy petals to make scarlet-skirted dollies with seed-case heads. The girl I used to be is happier outside—she lives, in my memories, only in the field.
This year, on the summer solstice, I walk through the valley in shimmering heat. Sheep call from the pasture across the stream, and raggedy heads of umbellifer spread down the banks into the water. Wild geraniums glow lilac in the light and I think of a solstice evening several years ago when I took my sons up to the meadow on the hill. We sat on a blanket in the field and ate a picnic, looking down over the town. The light of the longest day illuminated fine-veined wild geraniums and pom-poms of purple scabious. It gleamed on my boy’s bare shoulders—my son, my sun. The girl I used to be remembers what it was to be young and of the sun, to burn bright and beautiful. I listen for her voice in the sighing of the grass. I half-close my eyes and see her there, laughing. She calls me back to her, the girl I used to be.
{I wrote the bones of this short piece during
’s gorgeous Summer Solstice online gathering, inspired by a phrase from a Fiona Benson poem: ‘the raw green girl / who lives in me still’.}Here’s what I’ve been reading and loving this month: