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| The last photograph I took from my dads car of the fields near my home 2010 |
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Whenever I came home from wherever I’d been Dad would pick
me up from the train station. Three of four times a year, home from university
or the handful of times when I was working in London or Edinburgh, he would be
there waiting by the car. Due to his job the car often changed, but my Dad
always seemed the same; handsome, mustachioed, smoking a cigarette, a brief
often amused smile at my appearance, a customary greeting of usually no more
than a few words then into the car, a turn of the key then off we moved in the
direction of home.
Dad didn’t listen to the radio and was no fan of small talk,
probably due to the fact that as a car salesman his days were filled with the
stuff. After ten minutes chipping away at a conversation I usually gave up and
watched the scenery pass by the window. In the fifteen years that we made these
journeys together that scenery seemed to hardly change, day or night it held no
promise of a future, it was always that place I’d left behind. I clearly
remember the car, motion, the smell of the interior, leather, polish,
cigarettes and the pungent orange air freshener combining with Dads aftershave;
some Christmas gift dutifully splashed on each morning
No matter the question he managed to dispatch it with an
answer of no more than a few words. The silence was like a screen between us
and the hum of the engine our only audible companion. As we neared home the scenery gave way to open
fields, the fields of my youth. Then the long straight road that passed my old
school, sitting on the darkening hilltop offering a brief glimpse of the past.
Slowing into a turn, tires on a gravel road, headlights illuminating a small
row of houses, my mum silhouetted in the big bay window. Home again.
