I have started this personal story so many times and never got very far. So I shall begin and edit later – maybe then, I will reach the end – if there is one.
I am a Saturday person. By that, I am trying to say that I have a sense of being on a journey and yet almost never have the feeling of arrival. It can be a long way from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. We all are on a journey of sorts, the journey Life presents us with. How do we deal with it or learn from it? This story tells in part how it has been for me and what I think I have learned so far. It is written solely from my perspective and is wholly open to be contradicted by those I mention who have brushed up alongside my path from time to time.
I was born into a farming family, the youngest of three children by four and a half years. My brother and sister only eighteen months apart were inevitably closer and I came along as something of a surprise. Very different in character and personality from my siblings, I was always a quiet and more contemplative child. These tendencies became emphasised as I grew older. I must have seemed something of a ‘Changeling’ with ears and nose slightly too big for my head, a pale complexion and dark fine hair that fuzzed at the back when I lay in bed. Maybe I was aware even then of the subtle disappointment my parents felt in the person I was becoming. I developed an ability to be invisible, never having much to say and keeping out of the way, playing by myself, although it must be said, we lived in relative isolation, the farm being situated at a reasonable distance from homes of potential friends.