The moment has almost passed because security settings had to be renegotiated but - today my girl left home again and this time it felt so final. Of course there was university, then flat shares and house shares and back home for a brief internship and away again to another house share but today it's to her first home with someone special.As the spare room emptied of her careful store of restored furniture and the £35 washing machine from Ebay; please god it works, what's left is twenty six years' of discarded debris which lessens with every move. I breathe a sigh of relief that collatoral damage to walls and floors is minimal as I pace the void picking up, replacing, returning to order an insignificant part of life - a room. The room where she came when she woke, playing with trinkets from a basket whose lid was arranged with an aborigine's breakfast (gift from Australia). How many strings of beads did those little fingers break as her parents snatched a few moments more rest before the day began? And how many of those dried seeds heads did those little fingers manage to prise from their settings?
But today, as I spun the wing nuts on her discarded flower press back to the birthday when she received it, I remember the pleasure of choosing the best one our limited budget could afford with anticipation of the quest ahead, of finding suitable pressing subjects.
And there the remants of those days are revealed: four organic scraps; brown tissue petals with traces of purple lingering until the light of day sends them the way of dead things. Two dessicated leaves in prone relief. Thinking of the gentle little fingers that laid them carefully there. The reason why a rose can not be pressed entire and, 'oh, why does the colour have to leave?'. The stain of lost sap in the paper layers like blissful memories of protected times when a kiss would make it better.
For sentiment's sake then, a bit of My Girl, who will always bring sunshine on a cloudy day... hey, hey, hey.
