And she got off at Macclesfield Little Legacy 25

THE TRAINSPOTTER OF LOVE by Henry Normal

She was sophistication personified

an angel with hazel eyes

unmoved by my yearning

to my passion burning

her indifference would not yield

as the train stopped

my hopes dropped

and she got off at Macclesfield

This week I went home.  I call it home, it's not where I live, but it's where I grew up. For the first time in years I went by train, which reminded me of this poem which always makes me smile.  This week's little legacy is about the place where my mum and dad decided to disembark in 1984, and call home.

I arrived on Monday at the train station.  Sadly the last time I was there, we were collecting my brother, who'd arrived from London, shortly after mum died. I've written poems about that moment, too personal to share here, but wonderfully therapeutic.  But this time I surprised myself, I smiled, thinking of all the times mum was there to greet me there and of her elaborate waving off rituals.

I went home to look after my dad.  He was having a routine operation so he was in and out in a day, but needed a bit of TLC.  So I also walked the corridors of the hospital my mum worked in, and where she spent some of her last weeks, this time last year.  That felt okay, I had been nervous I would go to pieces, but I didn't feel that way. This time I could also remember happier times, meeting mum for lunch in the hospital canteen and walking home through the hospital from secondary school.

While I was home, I met up with an old school friend who has just bought a house near my Dad, I walked along the street where I went to Brownies, and the place where mum collected our child benefit.  So many little snippets of memory hidden amongst the backstreets I grew up in.  Even though we've not seen each other for a couple of years, and not since mum died, my friend and I slipped into easy conversation, reminiscing, over sloe gins, until the early hours of the morning. 

Until recently I've avoided wandering too much when I've been home, thinking it would be painful.  My friend suggested maybe it could be the opposite, it would bring me closer to my mum.

She was right, it did.

Little legacy is a remembrance project , a positive and creative space, to celebrate small things handed down by predecessors. Feel free to link up a little legacy you've been thinking about this week, or to leave one in the comments. Here's the code and here's more on Little Legacy

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