Family narratives

When I sheltered under this larch I noticed these side branches that have emerged from the main stem. In the cold, strong winds the were knocking and wearing away at one another so that each was shaped by its ‘siblings’.

I had been on the phone to my brother for about an hour beforehand - something that has rarely happened. He’s not keen on being bullied into selling. I can see both sides. As I listened to him speaking I realised how much we create our own narratives and, as we speak them they become the reality and not only that, those narratives that get most aired become the ones that are those that can become the accepted truth.
I realised how, for so long and so far back, I had felt unheard and somewhere along the line I stopped bothering. I was never really sure, and struggled to express, what my narrative was, and is, and gave up and withdrew and the other narratives always seemed to be more valid and have more power. The one I particularly noticed today was the one about the last years of my parents and I felt the narrative had become very distorted. We all have these views on the world from our own distorted perspectives. And so the whole fascination of the concept of The Truth, family narratives, group narratives, National and cultural narratives, biblical narratives. All the narratives of who we are shaping how we live in the world.

As we talked he reminded me of an occasion when he was about 13 or 14. I was 8 or 9. Strangely I had been thinking and wondering about it too recently. It was such a silly little thing.
My father had decided to build a garage on the bit of rough ground by the little holiday bungalow place he had bought when I was 7. Different to the place they retired to much later but in the next village. We had holidayed there for years and so when the lady came to sell it she was keen for dad to buy it for a very reasonable price at the time, I think, and after that we were there at every opportunity.

My brother said I had a meltdown at the suggestion of this garage, and he’s right, I remember it too. I remember him saying at the time and subsequently that I couldn’t cope with change. At the time i remember feeling it was said in a very sarcastic and pejorative sense, although I wouldn’t have known the word then. No doubt it’s true, but I do remember loving to root around in the rough ground there like a mini archaeologist and dig up pottery and old glass bottles from the demolished very old cottages that were there before. I would spend hours on my own rooting around there and delighting in finding some connection to these lost people and worlds.
Weird kid.