“It is England we love, we Americans,” she had said to her father. “What could be more natural? We belong to it—it belongs to us. I could never be convinced that the old tie of blood does not count. All nationalities have come to us since we became a nation, but most of us in the beginning came from England. We are touching about it, too. We trifle with France and labour with Germany, we sentimentalise over Italy and ecstacise over Spain—but England we love. How it moves us when we go to it, how we gush if we are simple and effusive, how we are stirred
imaginatively if we are of the perceptive class. I have heard the commonest little half-educated woman say the prettiest, clumsy, emotional things about what she has seen there. A New England school ma’am, who has made a Cook’s tour, will almost have tears in her voice as she wanders on with her commonplaces about hawthorn hedges and thatched cottages and white or red farms. Why are we not unconsciously pathetic about German cottages and Italian villas? Because we have not, in centuries past, had the habit of being born in them. It is only an English cottage and an English lane, whether white with hawthorn blossoms or bare with winter, that wakes in us that little yearning, grovelling tenderness that is so sweet. It is only nature calling us home.”
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Shuttle
Have you ever gone to a place and immediately felt like you were home? I have felt that way in England and Scotland. You don't even have to go there, though, to feel that resonance. You can read a book set in a certain place and feel the same way. I found this quote by the author of The Secret Garden, Little Lord Fauntleroy, and The Little Princess that describes this feeling. I think there's something in our genetic code that makes us feel at home in certain places. Too many people have described this happening for it not to be true.
Is it just a coincidence that most of my ancestors come from England, Ireland, and Scotland? I've never been to Ireland, but I bet I'll feel the same way there. I love the music; absolutely love it. Whenever I hear Celtic music, I feel it down to the core of my being. It draws me, it says, "Come home." I want to. Someday I hope to live somewhere in the British Isles for a month or two. I wonder if I'd miss the US if I did that? I'd love the chance to find out!
I've decided to make a Christmas reading list.
This little bust was the first one I ever won when I was in a recital at age eight. It was also the last recital I was ever in!
This photo is looking from the parlor, through the foyer, and into the dining room.
Here are a few photos of the land around our house. There's cotton planted in the field behind us. It's a sad excuse for a cotton field, but this individual boll is pretty, I think.
In a previous post, I talked about going home to the 'old country'. Last Thursday I went home to visit my parents in Tennessee, the 'new country'. I have so much fun visiting with my parents when I'm by myself. We fall into a very comfortable mode of talking, eating, sleeping, walking, and anything else I feel like doing. I stayed four nights and had a grand time.
Snow had always been one of the wider gulfs between grown-ups and children. Adults wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible and so get on with their lives; children wanted to keep it around for as long as possible and so enjoy theirs more.
Our Bishypoo, Beau, is the dog of the hour. This morning he led us to the deer my husband killed right before dark last night. It ran off into the woods after being hit and couldn't be tracked in the dark.
