Open Writing

My grandparents often talked about home. I didn't think of asking where they meant. My curiosity wasn't highly developed when I was young. Things happened, bad things, good things. My grandmother discouraged the asking of questions. 'Ask no questions and you'll be told no lies,' she'd say. Or her favourite one, 'Children should be seen and not heard'. I understood what they meant, but 'Little pictures have big ears,' was beyond my understanding. I asked about that one day, and they took great delight in laughing at me. From then on, whenever they said it, they would look at me and laugh.
One day, when my mother was in a good mood, I asked her where 'home' was. She looked at me, and said, 'It's England. Where people left to come to the colonies to find a better life.'

'What's the colonies?' I asked. But she told me to go and play.

Well, I knew about England. That was where the King and the Queen lived in Buckingham Palace, in London, with Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret Rose. Now I just had to find out why people still called it home. I knew my grandmother had been born in Australia, and also my mother. My grandfather had been born in England and had run away to sea when he was nine, or so he told us. I knew my father had come to Australia with his father from England, and two years later, his mother and sister had followed.

This had been a long time ago, and Australia was our home, so why did they still call England home? They weren't the only people who did. It seemed everybody around my grandparents' age did so. Their friends, relations, and neighbours were always talking about home. It was all very mysterious.

'Grandma, are you ever going home?' I asked one day.

She paused, looked up from her knitting, and said, 'Perhaps I will, 'when our ship comes in'.'

'Can I come too?'

'Definitely, that's a promise. When our "ship comes in" we'll all go to England for a holiday.'

*

I step off the plane into the terminal at Heathrow, with my husband. We have flown from New Zealand, where I've lived since I was fourteen. This is our retirement gift to ourselves. A trip 'home'. It is April. The strains of my father's favourite poem plays in my head, 'Oh to be in England, now that April's there . . . '

I visit England for my grandmother, (whose ship never came in) for my mother, who had wanted to come, but never made it. For my husband, to find his roots. And lastly for myself, and for of all of them, known and unknown, who crossed the world to find a better life.

© Shirley Henwood