Love List: June

the meandering path to love | memoir in fragments | bad writing days

It was the summer solstice and I was hot, cross and tired. I had spent the morning happily writing, lost in musing as a patch of midsummer light danced across my office floor, but all afternoon I was forced to dash around in the heat. School pickup, supermarket run, swimming lesson, piano lesson—most precious day of the year being lost to a spiral of overwhelm. My eldest son gave me a hug when we walked the hilltop path after supper, as we do each summer. ‘Are you okay, Mum?’ he asked. I was trying to be.

Along the edges, purple wild geranium flowers glowed almost transparent, petals lacy. It had just gone seven and the midsummer light was caressing all it touched. We followed the path along the hill’s crest. Below us, in the valley, patches of sunshine dappled our town: the football pitch, the church, the familiar rooftops. In the long grass of the hillside, purple scabious and orchids grew, and butterflies danced around ox-eye daisies. The meadow thrummed with the sound of grasshoppers. ‘Grandad can't hear grasshoppers, can he?' said my smallest. It’s true—he can’t. He has somehow lost the frequency.

The hedges on either side of the path curved into each other, a dog-rose tunnel—a portal. I picked a few sprigs of white hedge bedstraw as I passed under. Behind me, above the hilltop, skylarks soared. There was birdsong in the dark tunnel too, an unseen carolling in the bushes. I thought, then, of Four Quartets:

And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.

These unseen birds were a song thrush, a blue tit, a blackbird and a goldcrest—I caught their songs in my phone and used Merlin to identify them—an appropriately-named app that feels like a modern kind of magic. As I stood, I noticed a spiderweb beside me, suspended in the air—its occupant poised and waiting. Around us insects darted, wings shining like fireflies in a shaft of leaf-filtered light.

I felt it, then—solstice magic—the light had brought it like a blessing. I stepped out of the shady tunnel and back into the sunshine of the meadow. No longer cross, but grateful now, to be there with my boys glowing golden in the low sun; another year passed and another summer beginning. Behind me, at the edge of the tunnel, was there an unseen eye regarding the dog-roses? Perhaps. On the solstice, the veil is thin. It could be that the birdsong was laced with strains of strange midsummer music, music I have lost the frequency to hear.

The sun disappeared again behind silver-edged clouds. On the horizon, a hot air balloon rose, drifting slowly towards us. My tall son put his arm around my shoulders as we turned for home.

Here’s what I’ve been reading & loving this month: