Bluebell Woods: A Note to My Parents

I can just see over the grass, the scent of blue bells fill my senses and I lay in fields of long grass until the sun hides its face in the earth. Feeling safe.

Today was good—I have had my fourth birthday and it is not for the presents I received for there was none, but for the special day when we all walked in the bluebell wood. My Father, too, visits the sacred wood in the heart of Sherwood—he longs for the green of limerick and sighs, he smiles at me and I know. The fact that the small Irish woman who we call “Mammy” has remembered to make it special.

We sang at the top of our voices such harmony, all four of us as we walked back to the tower made of stone. It is a large, forbidding building with rubble littering the pathways. I could not call it home, for we move, like the wheat in the fields. Some nights I have gone to sleep in one place and woke somewhere else. Itinerants, they call us and look down their noses. I will never care they will never hurt me; I am happy playing in the muddy lanes and being hungry. I can hear her humming “Oh what a beautiful morning” absent-mindedly. I watch her steely brown eyes follow me as I dance I am wearing a red dress and I have little blue shoes with buckles, my hair is black, long with a blue ribbon in it. I look different today because she dressed me this morning and I know she has tried. I feel loved. Mainly she is tired and empty, so many children in such a short time.

There is a glass jar and she places the blue flowers that the younger children have picked, in water. There are small sponge cakes and meat paste sandwiches. A small parcel with my name written on the brown wrapping paper ‘Katie’ in large letters waiting for me. I had just learned to recognize my name I become excited I can not ever remember getting any other present before. She makes me wait, sitting the others down to eat, they start to sing “Happy birthday” I can only here her voice; the others are too young to know it. She smiles at me “open it then” she says in the strong Irish lilt that she uses when she is pleased.