A family meal

It has begun. The bated breath (what a funny expression that is) before meeting close kin we hardly know. The delight in seeing them and their children who belong to me by blood as I do to them and then the sadness of saying goodbye just as we know we like each other.  I look into Gwen’s face and she looks into mine and we see each other and also other people.  She sees her grandmother, in me and I also see a bit of mum in her too, along with her father’s dark eyes. The children both have the amazing thick hair of my sister and little Elise’s has a wonderful chestnut hue.  They arrived on bicycles and we had to decide what language to talk because we didn’t want the kids left out.  In the end it was a mix, trading words amongst ourselves so we could say what we wanted to.  And there was a lot to tell.

The kids were cautious at first but delightfully hungry and gobbled up our predinner snacks with relish while we waited for Stephane, still caught up in the aftermath of the shooting at work. (Nobody was hurt it turned out but it was very disturbing of course).  I clumsily tried to show the kids their two cousins in Sydney and one in Siem Reap.  They loved the video of Caiden eating yoghurt and saying “Yog”.   Then Ewan took over the phone with the competence of all children nowadays and found the photos he wanted to see.  Grant being Grant had a video of Gwen and Stephane’s wedding of ten years ago on his phone and that enchanted them for ages.  “Look at Mama!”  In fact Gwen looked lovely in a special green silk wedding dress as she walked down the aisle on her own, deploring the idea of being “given away” by her father.

We sat at the little iron table in the garden and ate the chicken and the lovely chocolates Gwen had brought and we talked about all sorts of things – the fear that had attended Ewan’s hole in the heart operation which had been 100 per cent successful, their work, our Greek trip, the migrant crisis.  The children crawled into our bed and had a fight in which Ewan pulled Elise’s lovely hair and so Elise settled for the sofa. 

Eventually it began to patter down with rain and I wondered how on earth they were going to cycle home, especially as Ewan was now sound asleep.  True cyclists as they all were they tossed off my worries. When the rain stopped we said goodbye with heaps of urgings to come to Australia and we watched them all glide down the road,  Ewan decidedly somnambulistic (there must be a proper word for riding a bicycle in your sleep).

Of course I wondered if we’d ever meet again and felt a little sad.  But, I thought, we’ve signed our names in the books of their lives.  They will remember the dinner in our mad little flat with plants growing out of the wall and a whole wall made of a shattered mirror.  They’ll remember the old aunt and uncle who came from Australia just as we’ll remember them with their honest souls and their bicycles.

Gwen my niece