A Moment For England

[I wrote a sympathy card today and addressed the envelope to a named house in the north of England; "Pemberley Fields," if you can believe it. No numbers in the addy except the post code. I come by my Anglophilia honestly...]

[My first awareness of something like an ethnic identity was when my maternal grandmother Jean's first cousin Joan visited California in the early 1970s. Whereas Jean was a bit fussy and particular, Joan was up for anything, as long as her tea was on time. I remember the accent, the tea, the conservative dress - Joan was the epitome of an old fashioned concept: the English village spinster.]

[In 1977, my grandparents took me, age seven, on a six-week trip to England, Wales and the south of France. Jean had emigrated at age eight from the U.K., going through Ellis Island with her parents and everything. She'd kept in close touch with her Yorkshire relatives, and started visiting them regularly starting in the '60s until Grandpa died in 1992. My parents weren't sure whether I could handle such a big trip at that age, but Grandma got her way (as she often did), and I went. I handled it, even if I flummoxed one waitress by requesting only one pea; I was required to have a vegetable. Brat!]

[(Imagine...England in 1977. The music! All I remember is seeing the video for ABBA's "Knowing Me, Knowing You" on the TV in our flat in north Wales, but that was burned on my brain. No Sex Pistols, no Jam, no Siouxsie, no Elvis Costello. Oh, well; if I'd seen a punk or a mod during that initial week in London, I wouldn't have known what to make of him.)]

[We stayed the longest in Yorkshire, where Joan put us up in her Georgian (era, not style) cottage in the quainte olde village of Low Bradley (near Skipton, if you're keeping track, and west of Leeds; Skipton's castle is worth seeing if you need a pit stop before the last leg on the motorway to Manchester). I became the little prince of that house, befriending the old couple across Silsden Lane and letting Mr. Webster teach me dominoes. I clambered over the stone stile into the sheep pasture beyond, and spent hours contemplating the British royal family tree and creating some regalia, coats of arms, and titles of my own.]

[I get the idea that Joan worked some kind of government job in Leeds or Skipton, and I remember distinctly Grandpa going out to get fish and chips one night so there'd be dinner waiting when Joan got home from work. He took longer than expected, and Joan opened a tin of meat in brown gravy and ate it. She couldn't wait for Grandpa to get back from the chippie. "I have to eat," she mumbled apologetically, mouth full of horrifying meat product.]

[Over the years, Joan visited us in Sonoma several times. She and my grandparents went to Hawaii, to Canada, and to L.A. to visit Jean's brother Don; she drove with my mother and me to Santa Barbara on one of the trips back to college - I have a photo of them in front of the Mission; and she came to my sister's wedding in '95. (That week we had chilly rain one day and temperatures near 100 just two days later. The only time I ever heard Joan really complain was about California's climate. Huh, compare ours to England's!)]

[Mom emailed me today to tell me Joan died yesterday. She was around my grandmother's age, so she was past 85 anyway. She never married (there's been a story of a sweetheart...killed in World War II?), and led her own life. I'm sorry she's still not there in that little stone cottage in that little village, quietly insisting on doing things her way.]

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