sun rays slant across the floor
shadowing doors and chairs
backlighting dust motes that drift from sun to shadow always floating just out of reach, too light for me to catch before they land on the picture frame for a dandelion chain or sunflower suggesting that dust bunnies collected under beds and sofas have been borne of these fluffs of innocent stealth that seem to disappear as the sun sets.
“We are but dust and shadow.”
~ Horace, The Odes of Horace
Mushrooms tucked in the base of a tree
~ life bubbling up to absorb
winter’s dead leaves and twigs.
“Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom.
~ Thomas Carlyle
This rather unsettling story is of rascism, class, a woman’s ‘place’, rigid rules of conduct and gender. It is of Anne Lister and Eliza Raine, two young girls in a boarding school in England between 1806 and 1815. Donoghue writes it in letters from Eliza to Anne with four chapters telling the story of school life. In the late 1700’s, Eliza and her sister Jane, were borne of mixed parentage in India, and sent ‘home’ to England when their father died. Little is known about their mother. They were put in the care their father’s colleague, a Dr. Duffin.
Eliza enters Miss Hargrave’s Manor School, a girl’s school, before Anne Lister. When Anne Lister comes to the school, full of mischief, energy and knowledge, Eliza’s life changes dramatically. By apparent accident, the two girls share a room they called ‘the Slope’. It was just big enough for two cots and had a sloped roof. Anne immediately fell in love with Eliza but their intimate relationship developed slowly. Eliza had been raised with little knowledge of relationships, let alone with someone of the same sex. There were whispers about other older single women, but for the girls the Manor School it was unimaginable.
Emma Donoghue is graphic about the Eliza and Anne’s private relationship, but also stories the lengths they had to go to keep it a secret when with their classmates. Anne, raised with two brothers, was rough and tumble and disliked following such rules. Eliza was the one who seemed to keep a check on Anne. If they were out on the grounds on their own, it was a much more difficult task. Eliza had fun those times, but always afraid of being caught doing inappropriate things, like climbing old ruins that Anne seemed to know the history of. In their last escapade, Anne broke her leg. Because she could not be cared for at the Manor, she was sent home.
The girls continued writing to each other, however Eliza, her heart broken, realized that Anne had many more relationships and theirs was not to be.
Of interest is the Author’s Note following the end the novel. Eliza Raine, Anne Lister and many of the characters in Learned by Heart are historical figures. Donoghue details the research she has done these characters. She has imagined the possible story between the two girls in Victorian, England and they challenges they faced at such a difficult age and time.
“the only lesson I learned, or at least the only lesson I remember, was you.”
~ Emma Donoghue, Learned by Heart
Title: Learned by Heart
Author: Emma Donoghue
Copyright: 2023
Publisher: Harper Avenue, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
Type: Fiction
Format: Hard cover
ISBN - 9781443470315 (hard cover)
ISBN - 20230460410 (Canadiana - ebook)
ISBN - 9781443470322 (ebook)
LCCN - PS8557.O559 L43 2023
Buds and blossoms of spring
warm my heart with
their dainty pink promise
“Spring is magic ~ sweet to the senses & easy to celebrate.”
~ Susan Branch, Vineyard Seasons: More from the Heart of the Home
I’ve been home today. Cooking, preparing meals, setting oatmeal bread to bake tomorrow, finishing what was left from yesterday, moving about my home wondering if I was doing unnecessary busy work. That thought lasted only seconds. More than puttering, I was enjoying my life. Feeling calm and centred. Not hurried. I could have read a book, or taken a nap. Neither of those entered my mind. I walked to the grocery store, a cool spring wind at my back, to bring home tea and chicken for supper; to the pet store for some supplies and then home.To be in these four walls, just feels good. My body does have the twinges of over 75 years of life, little reminders that I am not as young as I used to be; my heart with its scars from great joy or great sadness, beats quietly in my chest. Hurts and fears put at rest for today. Because today is the day I cherish.
“You must learn to be still in the midst of activity
and to be vibrantly alive in repose.”
~ Indira Gandhi
belief wafts skyward
letting go of earthly control.
“Nothing belongs to you of what there is,
of what you take, you must share.”
~ Chief Dan George
Mothering continues
as long as child and mom
share this earth.
Nor should it be any different.
For if taken from me,
a vast hole in my heart
would not easily mend.
Should any mom go missing,
another often fills the gap
with the same love and learning.
Their name may not be ‘mom’
but their heart is called ‘mom.
And with all the growing
from birth into toddlers years,
pre-teens,
adolescence,
young adulthood and onward
child~parent blossoms through
joys and sorrows;
health or sickness.
For each mom who grows
alongside her child,
another mom will be born
in another day or time
to learn the ways of being.
“Motherhood is hard enough without judgement
from others who don’t know the whole story.”
~ Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost
