She unequivocally adored her English father, his love of horses and dogs, his impressive ability to build and repair almost anything, his deeply honed knowledge of earth and farming. She also took definite pride in coming from mad, savage Scottish stock on her mother’s side and she warned us of our likely inherited Celtic inclinations, none of which sounded good, but she was unable to keep the satisfaction out of her voice. “Irritability,” she said. “Intolerance. Irascibility.” By contrast, I knew almost nothing of my English father or his people. He seemed airdropped upon us, formed from soil and water, like Adam. And if he was sprung from earth, there was nothing of his smell or behavior or look that suggested otherwise. He was elemental, eternal, as if a version of him had always existed in perpetual adulthood, as I had always known him. But gradually with the instinctive impulse of a girl-child trying to feel her way forward by looking back, I created the parameters of my father’s family and heritage from the habits and adages that had slipped out of his Englishness and into our African lives, their peculiarities made more vivid by their inappropriateness for either our climate or lifestyle.
What do You think about Leaving Before The Rains Come?
