Roots

I walk up the slightly muddy path towards the kissing gate. This is such a familiar route my feet seem to know how to avoid the wettest spots. Tom and I used to walk Sal, our black labrador, up here when he was a toddler. It was slow going then but Sal was patient and content to sniff around whilst Tom collected sticks and stones and hugged the trees and poked at piles of dead leaves to see what was living inside. I’d have the baby backpack with me in case he got tired. Not that he would always be happy to hitch a ride. I remember the odd tantrum up here when he was going through the terrible twos, and threes, and his teens were pretty awful at times too, although then he would just sit in the car on his phone while I walked – Sal had passed on by then so couldn’t be the one to tempt him out.

When he was tiny, Tom would want to touch all the roots along the embankment here. Snakes he used to call them. When he was a little bigger, more confident on his feet in his red wellies, he would find a stick as soon as we got out of the car and bang each of the snakes in turn. He said he wanted them to go back underground where they lived. It’s only two or three feet high but without the tall, straight yew trees along the top this little ridge would wash away. On the other side the roots are firmly embedded in the sandy soil but on the path side the roots are exposed before diving deep at the bottom of the bank. I remember explaining to Tom, when he was at the ‘why?’ stage, that the trees were holding the soil together. And then the three of us hugged – me, him and Sal – so that our arms were roots holding the family together.

When Tom was at the teen refusenik stage I would look at the roots and see them as clinging desperately to the bank to hold the trees up. I’d uncurl my balled fists from my pockets, straightening my fingers and rolling back my shoulders. If the trees can cling on to this delicate sandy bank and grow tall, then so can I and so will Tom. And he has.

I squeeze through the kissing gate and my feet take me up the hill where the crows shout and play in the air currents below.