Crowning Mom
A journey towards Elderhood #2
So we took our mom to England on a surprise trip, like we set out to do. Me and my sister wanted to make the celebration of her seventieth birthday the celebration of her coming into Elderhood.
Our mom is a beautiful, wise and funny woman with a heart big enough to mother the entire planet and everybody on it. And at times in her life, that was exactly what she did. Our house was always home to people staying over, for supper, for the night, for a few years. Her rainbow children, we called them. Some were our age, a few were older, most were younger. She loved them and took care of them and helped them get back on their feet if that’s what they needed.
Her caring days are over now, in a way. Too much artritis and other (thankfully benign) ailments that come with growing older have put a stop to her endless running around, catering for everybody — although sometimes she will slip back into that mode, regardless of the consequences.
But at the same time, she has grown wiser. We have shared training programs and experiences over the years, and she’ll be the first to tell anyone what strong women her daughters have grown to be, but we know that’s only half the story. Mom will look at you, feel her way into your soul and come up with information that will leave you very quiet because it’s so true. I don’t have anything to do with it, she says, I’m just passing it on from ‘up there’. There’s no false modesty here. But being humble sometimes also means you don’t value yourself for what you are truly worth. So we wanted to celebrate mom’s wisdom, her experience, and simply the fact that she’s our mom.
Mom is an easy person to surprise. She goes along for the ride and doesn’t ask too many questions. She’s delighted when it turns out she didn’t see something coming, and embraces all that comes her way — except perhaps the traffic in a country where people drive on the left. As we came with our own car from the continent, the front passenger is the one facing all the oncoming traffic. After two hours on English roads, mom glady switched to the back seat.
Our first stop was Beachy Head, where we had a lookout over the Seven Sisters, the stunning chalk cliffs of the English south coast. The weather was stormy and sublime:
It was the perfect place to feel connected to the elements. The three of us sat on a bench, undisturbed, and tuned into what the wind and the sea wanted to tell us. We listened to what was said: for ourselves, and each other. We shared the messages. Then we let go the old that wanted to be released, to be blown or washed away.
We continued our drive into West-Sussex and to the Hamblin Trust, the domain where we would be staying for two nights in one of their cosy little chalets. I wandered through the garden in the evening twilight and again in the early morning.
After breakfast, we drove all of ten minutes to the place that had been the true destination of this trip all along: Kingley Vale, home to The Watchers, a grove of the oldest yew trees in the world. Some of these gnarled giants are 2,000 years old. What better place to celebrate mom’s Crowning?
It turned out to be a bit of a challenge, though. When mom caught sight of the first old yew we crossed on our way to the grove deeper into the forest, she nearly turned and ran. She found it had a threatening look, and a dark, old, dangerous feel.
Funny enough, it was a tree that really appealed to me. I went over to touch it, and instantly felt a deep warmth reach up from my groin all the way into my belly. Mom was watching from a distance, shuddering.
Granted, at first sight yew trees don’t much look like something you’d want to cuddle. In their youth they are elegant at best, but with their sombre trunks and needles of a green so dark it can be mistaken for black, they make for a sombre lot. Their bright red berries bring some of a visual relief, but since almost every part of yews is mortally poisonous to man, this is little solace. Like any very old tree, an old yew becomes bulky, gnarled and twisted, with branches going everywhere and dead stumps sticking out. So we didn’t exactly find ourselves facing a big sweet grandma tree, but rather something like a cross-breed of a grumpy old elephant and a multi-tentacled monster from some Halloween movie.
Until you touch it.
Yews are soft to the touch, and if you have any sensitivity for trees, giant old trees such as these make for an extraordinary encounter.
It took some persuading for mom to touch one, but eventually she did.
Things got easier from there on, although it still took a while for mom to find a tree she could really bond with. Once she did, it was easier to perceive how the deep, powerful beauty of old age shone through the dark, sombre appearance. The sun came out in patches — that helped, too. (The English weather did all it could to prove its capriciousness: we switched from grey clouds to downpours to blue sunny sky about three times in the course of two hours. The saying ‘if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes’ turned out to be solid truth.)
After an hour of walking around, sitting, touching and feeling, we went back to the entrance of the wood. There we once again met ‘my’ tree.
Mom was surprised she had found it frightening before. I, on the other hand, understood exactly why it worked so well for me: old enough to be impressive, with a massive trunk and crown, but not yet as worn down as his ancient kin. And his position: at the outskirts, like a guardian at the threshold between worlds.
That will do for me.
In the afternoon following the walk, we had booked mom an aromatherapy massage with a sweet lady she later referred to as her ‘fairy godmother’.
We had delicious Indian curry for supper in a nearby restaurant, and said our goodbyes to the Hamblin Trust the following morning.
We stopped by the port of Bosham for some presents and souvenirs at the Arts and Crafts center (I got a lovely cape for everyday wear and another one I’ll don for the Soul Circle the first time as a present from my sister), and had lunch at the Breeze Cafe, which offered a nice view of the sea inlet flooding the quaie street on the oncoming tide, and the van of a trusting kayaker who had not expected the water to be quite so enthusiastic upon his return.
Never underestimate the power of the feminine element, I guess…
Our three days of mother-and-daugher beauty have given us some magic to look back upon, to say the least.
