The Sound and Scent of Sunday Morning

Sunday morning is an open window in the gabled bathroom on the third floor in Roger's limestone Victorian row house on the end of Queen Katherine Street nearest Kendal Castle. Out his front door and a few steps to the right puts one on the footpath up to the castle built around 1200 which housed many a Kendal Baron, most notably Thomas Parr, father to Katherine, the sixth wife of King Henry VIII.

The open window in the bathroom lets in the rousing historicity that hangs in the air of Britain. It flows through and mingles in swirled patterns with the steam from the shower that I can move this way and that with the motion of my hand, like a magic wand. It is England, it is the air that smells of coal fire, verdancy, and the lingering presence of many thousands of years of inhabited soil. The earth is so solidly marked by humans in this place, no respite from the workings of man, which has created the inimitable scent of Britannia. It fills me when I am here. It is the stuff of powerful nostalgia . . . the simple smell of place.

Today I accent the scent of Britannia with John Freida's Sheer Blonde shampoo - a bit of wishing on my part. It is a travel-size bottle I purchased yesterday at Superdrug in the Westmorland Shopping Centre, while in a stupor of travel-induced exhaustion. More than buying shampoo, I wanted to lay my body down on the floor with a pack of Superdrug nappies under my head and let sleep take me. Instead we spent our first 20 pounds on things with which to clean our weary bodies in the week to come - letting our various chemical concoctions slide through the bathroom window and mingle with Britain's olfactory ethos.

I have slept now, my head rested luxuriantly on a pillow, in a bed, rather than a pack of nappies on a tile floor. I am readied for the Sabbath which greets me now, through this same open window, with the ebullient tones of Kendal's bells.

In the ten months we lived here in 2003 and 2004 I opened the patio doors of our very small flat on Garden Road every Sunday morning, without thought to temperature or rain, to welcome the bells of the parish church. The sound seemed to pound in my soul, singing to the part of me that worships and finds the contentment of life in faith. "Ring out Wild Bells" Lord Tennyson proclaims. Oh yes, wild, and sweet, and filling the little space that is my home. And for some reason it feels so French. I've not been there. I've really no experience with all things French, and I can't imagine it to be more transporting than all things English, but there you are. The bells roll in through my wide doors and I am pulled away over the English channel into lands certainly no more magnifique than those I now enjoy.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

This is the last stanza in Tennyson's Ring Out, Wild Bells. They are all beguiling and worth repeating. A fit melody to accompany the hours before I go to worship.

I had not thought of the bells in the many hours on the plane, or the weeks of volcanic anxiety before the plane. They are a sweet surprise to me now as I meet my first morning of only six on this short stay.

Why do we not have parish churches and Sabbath bells in the thick of Salt Lake City? Well, at least beyond the Cathedral of the Madeleine. We are near enough that every now and again I can hear it. Back in our days in the Avenues Matt and I had an ongoing inquiry regarding for whom the cathedral bells toll. They are nice bells, but not Kendal on a Sunday morning bells. Perhaps the space which they must fill is just too large in such open sky. Kendal offers a nestled English scale that keeps the reverberations cozily fitted in the streets of the town.

As if the bells are not enough to keep my feet light on the walk to church along the River Kent, when they have finished we are serenaded with delightful bird song. Birds that Susie says "must just be happy to live in England." Like the cows that make such sweet cream because they live on England's "green and pleasant" hills. Maybe the earth itself keeps turning just because it is so happy to have England resting upon it.

This morning, the goodness of life is because England is here. . .and I am in it.

A Perspective in Ash

Today I wish we had television; Comcast cable with 23 different news channels to surf through. It is the first time I have thought such a thing in the 4 years since we abandoned television altogether.

I'm guessing I'm not the only one who had never heard of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano before last Thursday. In fact, "hear" may be a loose term in regards to this volcano, as I have only heard one person actually try to say the name. I believe it is more commonly known as the "Icelandic Volcano".

I don't mind. American ears, much less tongues, just don't do well with that many oddly chosen consonants.

So there's the ash.

Then theres 96,000 flights canceled over the last five days.

Then there is me, sitting in front of my computer, checking BBC and CNN for updates every couple hours. My eyes sting. My pregnant body wants a soft chair. In short, I want cable news to pour over me while I lay on the couch stressing over

whether or not we will fly to Manchester England on Friday for Matthew to face the grueling ordeal of defending his doctoral dissertation.

There is a proportionate amount of uncertainty swirling about in the ethos, above our technology dependent heads, companion to those millions of tons of ash being spewed by a heretofore unknown fracture in the Earth's crust. Such dense uncertainty leads to chaos in absolutes.

Absolutely no flights.

Absolutely no way home.

Absolutely no idea in anyone's head when things will change.

All this exported from Iceland.

I liked it better when Iceland was mainly exporting woolen goods.

Had I not spent a good deal of money on plane tickets to England for dates so in danger of being terminally affected by all this, I would have the luxury of being a curious, and slightly sympathetic bystander - as I usually am - in regards to most chaos and catastrophe that comes to me by way of NPR - with variations on my level of sympathy. This time my stomach hurts and my head reels from only the potential effect awaiting me...not to mention my poor, doctoral defense bound husband.

My anxiety and "suffering" is a little bit inconsequential at this point. I am a person, in my home, with my family, enjoying a bed, not yet caught in the web over Europe. Except that web is invisibly large. When considering the domino effect of closing Heathrow Airport the web gains some visibility as a thing that consumes the world. The British Empire may have let go their purchase on many a foreign shore in the last century, but you close down London's airports and it is felt in every far corner of the earth.

Yesterday Caroline stood at my side asking questions about the video clips showing stranded people all over Europe and the UK.

"Where is the ash, Mommy? Are you and Dad going to England today? Where is your airport"

I pulled out our Great Britain Road Atlas A-Z, and showed her Manchester, and the parts of England that might be reopened soon. She flipped through the pages stopping on London.

It looks like this:

"Wow," she said, with appropriate awe. Declaring, "That's the world, kiddo."

That's Caroline calling me kiddo, not me talking to the four-year-old.

And she's got it right. London is THE World. It lies at the center of so much civilization and economy - even today.

But as I put Cecily to bed last night and said a prayer that consisted of just this phrase; "Heavenly Father, thank you for my family," I became so profoundly aware that this little house, with these five people (almost six) is MY world. England is a thing that has contributed in no small way to the development of my world. But it is here, with this family that I find I am untouched by any amount of uncertainty...or ash.