S.L. Pritchard

     There’s nothing that will get the tears flowing like a “mental vacation” to Wales. Pair that with a Mother’s Day event like we’re planning for next year, when several mothers will be all at the same place for once in our family's history, and there won’t be enough kleenex to deal with all that maternal precipitation.      Heavens Above, I miss that place. I lived there from September 1985 until November 1988, and again for a year in 1996/97. I’d been studying the history of Wales for many years. I’d studied the language, the cuisine, the music of Wales, specifically harp music (I play the harp). I’d been captivated by the story of Wales. I’ve been in love with that place for as long as I can recall. I found “home” there once, something I’ve been looking for all of my life. Something I’m looking for, still. All the best things that can happen to a woman, happened to me there. I was married, I had my first home, I had a baby, I had my own garden at last. I lived my life accor

Chapter 1.      There was a quietness about being at sea. Although there always seemed to be the sound of wind and waves and the engines throbbing, all the time, all night and all day, those seemed to be natural noises. They had their place on the waves. They were things that belonged, when at at sea. The things that did not belong and that were repugnant to hear were angry voices of the workers, or an angry dog barking, or the ghastly sound of breaking glass. Sometimes that would happen in a gale. A window would just finally give way after a terrible pounding. It was expected in the course of a day or evening of gales and waves that some window glass somewhere would get busted. Often a fish or sea bird would be found very nearby the site of the breakage and that made it easy to figure out how it got broken.    Some critter was caught in the maelstrom and got hurled into a window. If it had hit a human, it would have done damage to him. In fact that did actually happen once. The p