The sky was blue. She walked quickly, savouring the fresh, clean, brisk air slightly tainted by the distant smell of manure across the fields. She could feel the stress and anxiety of her old life ebbing away, making room for the love and light of her home country easing back into her soul. She never grew up here. Was neither born nor raised here but her ancestral memory was strong, linking her to the land of her father, her grandfather and those before him. This feels like home … a feeling so strong that for a moment her eyes are pricked with tears, imagining a life that could once have been hers but was now lost in past decisions and sliding doors.
She took a moment to stop and to soak it in. On this quintessential street in a quintessential English town. Nothing particularly special – an ordinary town in the middle of England. That house there might have been hers. There might have been children there, born from a strong love between her and her husband. There most definitely would have been dogs. She tried to imagine that life, comparing it to the one she now had, in a land across the other side of the world, so different that it was hard for her to fully understand how it came to be.
The morning air settled around her, caressing her skin, slightly flushed from the attempt at jogging she had (foolishly) undertaken. The distant rumble from the A road snaking its way to Oxford was becoming louder, even at this early hour people were busy carrying on with their lives, rushing who knows where for who knows what. She wondered if they were happy. Did the choices and decision they’d made cement them here or was it an absence of such.
Even with the strong pull of this land, the very particular smells, the oak trees and squirrels – ever entertaining – the oh-so-English countryside, somehow never quite replicated anywhere else in the world, she knew she was happy where she was. She knew for a fact she could be happy anywhere really …. different places over time had been part of her life and pulled her in, but one element was constant – one person in fact who tied her to where she was, wherever in the world that could be.
Ironically, he was English and perhaps belonged to this life measurably more than she did. Home is where the heart is though and he certainly was the keeper of her heart, the soother of her soul.
She turned her face once more to the sky, a slight smile curving the corners of her mouth, counting the vapour trails … so many planes … so many destinations but she knew her destination would always be with him. That decision had been difficult back then, that sliding door had been incredibly hard to open – it opened for her to reveal his love many years ago but was the hardest one to walk through even with that promise and reward.
She smiled to herself …. knowing she could have it all. It didn’t matter where she was. As long as he was by her side, she belonged anywhere.
The She Diaries 
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