The weather has cooled off sufficiently and I ventured out for a walk yesterday evening.
I asked daughts if she would like to come with me, she declined.
I asked hubs, he also declined spurring daughts to say,
“You should go Dad, I don’t think you should let Mum go alone.”
Have you read my blog about childish influences?
“I went alone in England,” I reminded them.
“This isn’t England, I wouldn’t let Mum go alone here,” she said to her father.
“You are letting me go alone,” I observed!
Hubs came with me.
We took a lovely walk through the nearby woods close to a tollway, a supermarket and several new neighbourhoods.
Really, twenty some odd years ago when we first moved in the countryside stretched for miles, now we have to cross a main road to get to what is left of it and suffer the din of traffic on the adjacent tollroad.
I had my iPod with me in case I saw anything to photograph. I noticed I was sceptical about this. My English eyes had departed from me, I was home. Who takes photos of their surroundings when they are commonplace and not needed for reminders?
I had fears while in England that I may never return and my camera was ever at the ready. The most insignificant became a Kodak moment
The first impression I had on my return to America was the concrete, acres of it, vast and uninviting. A culture of parking lots, highways and too many cars.
As we crossed the very ugly bridge that spans the creek I noticed the water below and its surrounding trees. I got out my iPod and started taking photos as I would have through my ancient woodlands in Beckenham.
Who knows, we may be moving and our family home, with its rapidly decreasing surrounding parklands, may become a distant memory.
We took walking sticks that we had made years go from cedar saplings cut within the woods we were about to enter.
The cicadas were out in force and although I knew I could record them, as I had the bird song of London, I took one step at a time…I was concentrating on looking at my Garland walk through my Beckenham eyes.
This fungal growth on the fallen tree looked soft but it was brittle,
and on this upright cedar a crowd of them reminded me of steps leading to a tree house high in the branches.
There were a lot of fallen trees and those that spanned the creek,
also suffered the deposit of rubbish, carried by the swiftly flowing waters,
that race at breakneck speeds during a torrential rainfall responsible for the flash flooding of our field behind the house that protects the wildlife from human activity, for which I should be more grateful!
We walked the length of the trail from the playing fields and came out a few feet below our entry point; not wanting to completely retrace our steps we walked along the edge of the woods and entered another pathway that wound its way back to where we’d been. Here a tree hung precariously over the creek, a candidate for the next fall,
On leaving the woods after just 45 minutes, I saw another image for what hubs and I are slowly achieving,
an empty nest!
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
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