It is telling, perhaps,

of the human condition how a long and eagerly awaited homecoming can make one feel an inexplicable sadness. I sit in what was my girlhood bedroom, now my father's "study", an overly-posh word for what it is, and I cannot make out whether I am the same person now as then, whether I regret everything or nothing, whether life feels infinitely long or fleetingly short.

On the windowsill, my father has an old photograph, a portrait of his father's family with parents and eight children - my great-grandparents, great aunts and uncles, and my grandfather at around eight. He looks so much like my younger son you would think someone has photoshopped my baby into the picture. My great-grandmother is not many years older than I am now but looks almost seventy. She will die not long after the picture is taken. I cannot remember whether she lives to see the baby of the family drown. The child is around four, fair-haired, tiny, frail. I imagine I can see him already marked out for an early death. My grandfather was born 1900. The picture will be nearly a century old.

Even this far "south" (all is relative), the days are almost 24 hours long. You would think it would give people a sense of eternal life, but quite the opposite. The Arctic-Slavic blood in my veins spells out "it will all end soon" with every heartbeat. Oh, life, life.

© 2006 Anna MR