Memories

It was the smell that drew me back.  The wet damp smell of hay that lined the birds cages. I'd been wandering around a market in the French countryside, on task of my writing teacher to go and be inspired by my surroundings, and to let it invoke memories.  

At first glance the market could be a market anywhere, filled with plastic, and the the sounds of rhythmically clashing traditional music intersecting in your ear. But I quickly found myself drawn to the one thing that struck me as unusual. It seems a common good to buy at a French country market are live fouls. Stacked high in wooden crates with barely enough room to move are little furry bundles of various sizes and mottles, their feathers sticking out here and there through the rough wooden crates.  One woman orders three. The store owner opens the crate grips them by their powerful legs and they are plunged head first in a furious flurry of flapping into a smaller crate, where their defeated cries become quiet chirps. The crate is tied in blue string and the new owner carries them off balanced on 2 fingers, their tiny heads peaking out at freedom as they go. 

Suddenly though I breathed in and found myself in my grandparents barn in New Zealand, or more specifically behind it.  We would often play in there.  It was the height of a two story building and, from my memory, never completely full.  You could climb up the prickly rectangular bails and lie at a great height.  For some reason this day my brother had decided to venture out back.  I’m not sure what he did to disturb the bees, nor am I sure how we knew to find him there.  But I do remember all of us standing there, all my little cousins and I, at a safe distance, watching as the swarm attacked. The strange thing was my brother just stood there, not moving, not screaming, just standing as one after the other the bees left their stings in his body.

The thing was this frozen boy was very unlike my brother.  He was always the loud one, the one you would hear when he was two houses from home. The  first and only one of the grandchildren to give a speech at my grandmothers 70th birthday.  He baffled me with his ability to speak with confidence about topics he knew nothing about, and how he would often contradict himself in his beliefs.  Swinging widely between strict vegetarianism, lecturing us about the health benefits and ethical high ground of not consuming to meat, to revelling in eating the thickest, reddest, juiciest steak on offer.   Still despite his contradictions, I admire my brother.  I admire him for being able to leap into whatever comes his way. It’s a beneficial quality and it’s this boldness I believe has enable him to deserve the highest praise I have heard for him, “He has a mind”

Back in the market I can just about see him conversing with store owners without any French. Buying the large black charcoal disc on offer to find out what it was, turns out it was a cheesecake. Buret atop his head to simultaneously blend in and charm the locals. I hope that one day he can join me here in person, and we'll grab one of those horrid to a New Zealanders taste, French coffees to try with the charcoal covered cheesecake, and chat excitedly about what obscure traditional CDs we have purchased and are eager to get home and listen to while swilling a glass of the local French wine.

See you soon, love sis xx