Hayestack

We rushed through Raleigh/Durham Airport and descended the escalator.  At the bottom, Emily stood rocking a bundle in her arms. A tiny face appeared in the bundle and we had our first glimpse of Poppy, our first grandchild. With her mop of dark hair and pretty little face she looked the most adorable baby ever. It was love at first sight.

“Drew told me to use the GPS to get home as I always get lost,” said Emily as we shot down the highway missing our exit. The coloured line on the satellite navigation display doubled back on itself. Emily looked annoyed. “Don’t worry, I’ll sort it out,” I said, ” Keep straight on,”  We shot past another missed exit as I peered at the screen. The Satnav was talking to me. A disembodied female voice, indistinct, but, I fancy, slightly tetchy seemed to be saying, “Idiot, you missed another exit.”

At last, we swept into Juniper Avenue and came to a halt outside Drew and Emily’s house, an imposing building bordered by a church, a cemetery and funeral home. “Be careful as you get out,” advised Emily, torrential rain swept half the drive away yesterday.” We opened the front door and we walked into Christmas. The tree and lights were stunning.

We had arrived in time for graduations, Emily for completing her Nursing Qualification and Drew for his Master of Divinity. We had arrived in time to attend both.  In the meantime, there was Poppy.

She smiles at the drop of a hat and really seems pleased to see you. She has the prettiest face topped by a thick mass of dark hair. Complete strangers would stop us in the street to admire her. One elderly woman accosted Poppy and I in a mop-cap shop in Williamsburg. After cooing over Poppy for some time she began to tell me about her grandchild. She took my polite nodding as genuine interest and began recounting the life story of her grandchild.  I seemed to have joined the Grandparents’ Club.  I only wish I could have been as interested in her grandchild as she was in Poppy.

The phrase,”I’m going to climb into bed” was literally true for our bed at Emily and Drew’s. Any higher and Georgina and I would have needed a grappling hook and crampons and oxygen for the altitude. Fortunately, neither of us suffered from vertigo. It had been made by a friend’s father who had assembled it using the wrong sizes screws, a thing we found out when I tried to move it flush to the wall.  The earth would have certainly moved for us had we been in it at the time.

We had come from an African summer of 37 degrees Celsius to a North Carolinian 7. I, for one had forgotten what it was like to feel cold. In the event, I took the precaution of counting my fingers and toes every morning to make sure i had not lost any to frostbite in the night. Georgina was less concerned. Her body naturally runs at a temperature at least 5 degrees higher than ordinary mortals. To say she is “hot stuff” is literally true. I could fry egg and bacon on her back in the night and have breakfast already in bed in the morning.

Drew and Emily’s house was quiet and relaxed, as one would expect when bordered by church, cemetery and funeral. But it has bags of character. We saw little activity from the neighbours. The business at the funeral Home seemed particularly dead.   Everyday, sometimes twice a day, I enjoyed the mournful hooting of a train in the distance, a hauntingly romantic and evocative sound as only an American train can be. The low rumbling of the wheels would reach a crescendo then gradually disappear.  Georgina and I would rush to the bedroom window to see the locomotive pulling a long line of freight wagons as it passed by the end of the road. Occasionally, if you were lucky, there would be two locomotives pulling the wagons, a “double-header”, as rare as an egg with a double yolk. But, even greater fun could be had in the bedroom – Drew’s super broad and super fast wi-fi internet connection.  Back in Rundu we have a dongle which is so expensive to run you need permission from your bank manager to switch it on.

We did venture out of the bedroom occasionally. Most days we took Poppy out in her stroller. We braved the arctic chill to visit the local library, the post-office, the emporia and the  Olde English Tea Shoppe where Poppy’s parents worked. The Union Flag at the entrance welcomed us.  The interior was snug and homely. You might have been in a maiden aunt’s quaintly decorated parlour, one who collects bone-china teasets and decorates the walls with them. It was a charming place in which to partake a cup or two of Earl Grey. Judy, the proprietor and an obvious anglophile, was delightful and effusive. She greeted us like long lost friends, a skill for which Americans have a particular knack.

Tags: America, Christmas, church, Drew, Emily, Georgina, Poppy, Rundu

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