The Sunday Letter Home – Telling Wales how much I miss her -

     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 according to my own standards. I was happy - truly happy.

   Wales is not the perfect paradise of a person’s dreams, nor is it an idyll or fantasy. It’s a real place, a Celtic country, a modern cultural mecca for many, and a nation that’s been a nation for a very very long time. It’s a marvelous destination and a very flawed homeland. When I moved there in 1985, fresh out of college, I had a phrase rolling around in my head that was said to me, by Professor Elliot (a Welsh-borne fellow who was quite good at teaching creative writing at my college and who kindly allowed me to buy him something to drink now and then at the Town Lounge on a Friday night...) and he said to me, after hearing my lament “I wanna go to Wales!” which he had heard far too many times in the Town Lounge, and he said to me, “Then bloody go there! Stop blubbering over your glass and just bloody go there! Find out how you can make a meaningful contribution and just bloody go there!” Yeah, that really got to me. The words “meaningful contribution” and “home” really got to me. That was in May of 1985. A few weeks later I was boarding a plane to Heathrow, then a train to Anglesey, North Wales, and not because Professor Elliot gave me permission, mind you, but because I gave myself permission.

   A few times in my life, when I’ve told this tale to others, they’ve asked me, “Why did you go? Why did you leave your home in California? What were you hoping to find?” and of course, the inevitable question, “Did you find what you were looking for?” I’ve thought about how to answer those questions many times.

   I went there because I'd become obsessed with the place. I have that flaw in my personality. I get hung up on something, then do a large amount of research on it, then dream of moving there or building one just like it or becoming some kind of hero while there, then the whole fantasy falls flat. Reality steps in and breaks my heart, yet again. I left my home in California because I did not feel I had one, back then - a home, an anchor, I mean - hence it was no trouble and very little effort to think of leaving this state. I've changed my mind about that over the years. I truly love California. I was hoping to find the missing pieces of the puzzle, back then in college. I didn't. I was under the mistaken impression, back then, that "Home" was a place, a physical location that just needed to be found, conquered and occupied to make everything whole again. That, too, was a mistaken impression. To be frank, I've no idea what "Home" means. At this point in my life, I suppose it might mean something simple, like, "It's someplace that I belong, where I feel comfortable, where I feel safe." Yeah, that's really all it is, probably possibly maybe perhaps. But all of those things are attitudes, perspectives, ways of looking at Life.

     Wales has an awesome history, and a mythos very much of it's own creation. It has it's own language, cuisine, lifestyle, belief system (both Pagan & Christian), national musical instrument (the harp). It also has a distinctive political style, a few peculiar national traits, a somewhat left-of-center take on entertainment, a rather brutal self-deprecating social climate. The Welsh dislike the English, but they are rather tolerant of the "Saesneg" (English in the Welsh language, meaning literally, "strangers"). The Irish have a strong tradition of getting drunk, taking up arms and going out to slay the "damned limies" whenever possible. The Welsh, on the other hand, have the same passionate Celtic dislike of the Saesneg, but choose to just ignore them as far as possible. If they are pushed right to the limit, they will - with "extreme prejudice", as the Irish do - take out the English, but in a very quiet, subtle fashion that leaves no mess, no trace, no ruffled feathers, just a smooth undisturbed surface, like a deep peaceful pond on a summers day.

    In that way, the Welsh are far more dangerous. They have a much longer fuse, it takes them far longer to get angry, but when they do, the result is quite definitive. They've had much longer to figure out how to take care of certain problems, if you catch my drift. They've got all the details worked out long before they take care of the situation.

    But laying all that nonsense aside, the land is beautiful. There is a color in the hills of North Wales that should have a name all to itself but doesn't yet. It is made of the wet grey slate in the stones of the mountains and also in the clouds just after sunset. There is a gold sheen in those same mountains that appears with the first dawns in the spring that is matched by the gold that comes from the mines that were so treasured by the Romans. Welsh gold has a particular rosie hue that they (the Romans) very much coveted. There is a color in the water of a river rushing over glacier cut stones that is the same stain as the bracken covering the hillsides. And the color of heather appears in those hills too, as well as in woven cloth made in the looms on 18th Century mills in Mid Wales that still make cloth for shawls and bedspreads. There is a gorgeous glorious desert flavored with elderberries, with an unpronounceable Welsh name, that is served in taverns in the South Valleys, and they serve it with a sparkling cordial made of elder flowers, and those are such fine flavors that you understand immediately why the Welsh serve them only at weddings.

   In Wales, the details are so important because Life is too damn short and one wants to slow it down by focusing on those details, savoring those flavors, and lingering over the sunsets and sunrises.

    That's what makes it "Home" and that's what makes it worth writing home about on Sundays.