Between the Windows: Speaking of A Child in Wales

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Speaking of A Child in Wales

I have a copy of Dylan Thomas' poem "A Child's Christmas in Wales". This is the cover on my small copy

It begins:
One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

Here's 6-year old Peg in the mountain village of Llanafan.

2010: The sun began to warm my face even before I woke up to see it. It reached across the room to my bed. My bed is a green flex-steel couch that I have been sleeping on since my husband died three years ago. I often lay there thinking before getting up to start my day.

Thinking about the depth of the sun’s reach made me think about the photos I wanted to hang on the walls and where they should go. It was obvious that they should go between the windows, where that reach wouldn’t harm them. The windows would give me a direct view to the current world; the photos between them would give me a direct view to the past.

That’s what I do for enlightenment and enjoyment – sometimes I live in the past.

Genealogy, or family history, began as a study when my son was in the 8^th grade. We were homeschoolers that year and it seemed a good way to study history. It became a passion for me but now has settled down to a frequent activity.

Through my research I have come in touch with people from the past. Often they are people of whom the memory has nearly faded away. That’s the reason I put them between the windows – to keep them from fading away entirely.

This is their story and mine.