The Two Circles

These last few days I have been assailed by a bout of nostalgia so intense as to be almost claustrophobic. I have always had this tendency to live outside the present moment - wherever  I am I would rather be somewhere else, and whatever the time I would rather it were some other time - but it has never been quite as strong as at this moment.

Nostalgia is, of course, a bad master but at the moment I seem to need to dip into the capital accumulated over the years. Anything goes: Lower Hall Farm, Ringshall, Tripoli, Germany, Spain, Durham, Hamilton Terrace, Paris, Lyon, Brittany, Greece, Austin, Big Bend National Park, Houston, Paris again, Beaulieu, etc. With me, nothing is too recent for time to work its alchemy, and the process is already at work with Dubai even though we were there barely three months ago! Emma watching a Harry Potter film with rapt attention; Louisette falling asleep against me as I read some book to her; Vianney rounding up the stray Choco Pops on the breakfast table; the little fishing port which Anne and I walked to most days, etc.

But most of all my mind strays back, at the moment, to two occasions, separated by a generation.

The First Circle

It is the mid 1980s. We have crossed Switzerland and driven down the Adriatic Coast of Italy to catch the ferry bound for Patras at Brindisi. Now we are driving down the western side of the Pelopponese, the Frabjious Cats sprawled out behind us in the little VW camper. Landscapes and seascapes of heart-wrenching beauty: Pirgos, Olympia, Pilos, Methoni, the mysterious and desolate Mani, Githion, inland and across the mountains to Leonidas, the pleasant stately town of Naflio in the scorching heat... In our capacity of parents, and though we don't know it at the time, this is truly the holiday of our lifetime with our three wonderful, bubbly children. A very few years later, we return to Greece but by now teenage angst has set in and things are not quite the same.

The Second Circle

Houston 2005 and 2006

Houston 2005. As dusk falls, Anne and I venture out with Emma and Héloise, down Jo Annie Street, across West Dallas and onto the expanse of grass in front of the Americas building. The girls do their best to catch their still active grandpapa but to no avail as at the last moment he slips away from their grasp. Somersaults and laughter in the grass.

Houston 2006. A year has gone by. This time we take the girls to that sliver of greenery called Buffalo Bayou running down to the skyscrapers of downtown Houston between Allen Parkway and Memorial Drive. The heat is still bearable early in the morning and Emma, Héloise and I have the energy to climb up the bank and then rush down holding hands while Anne takes photos for posterity.

 

So that's me, like Gatsby, "borne back ceaselessly into the past".