Jam and the Dam

29th July 2012 

Saturday

I pack a picnic and we drive north into the folded green hills of Somerset. We walk round the perimeter of an odd shaped lake -  a dam which was once a deep valley. I think about the flooded trees under the water and remember another dam - Kariba  - on the borders of Zambia and Zimbabwe. A whole tribe of people had to be moved to drown that valley - the cost of hydro-electric power for two countries. My husband asks me what hydro-electric means.

We eat our picnic under white scudding clouds - smoked salmon bagels with strawberry jam and chillis for my husband and egg mayonnaise Ryvitas for me and a big box of salad. I worry about the strawberry jam  - does this mean my husband is losing it around food combinations? Somehow chilli jam works with salmon but  strawberry doesn’t even if it’s mixed with chilli. Maybe I’m just being a food fascist - my father used to eat sugar on lettuce.

Sunday

Today we walk on the windy cliffs above Charmouth -  the voices of holiday makers on the beach below us blown out to sea. The coast path is closed because of the recent land slides. So we take the high inland route but the ground is fissured with deep cracks and dry ruts. It feels precarious under my feet - this ancient terrain shifting and uncertain now.

Like my inner landscape - crumbling at the edges.

At least the pussy cat is eating and sleeping as if all is right with the world. Maybe the tumours inside him are dissolving. Or maybe all the love and prayers he’s receiving are healing him. And releasing me to accompany him on his  chosen path without falling into the deep shadows of guilt and grief  - my own drowned valley.