Secret Garden

My surprise parcel came in the mail today. I felt like a young birthday-child. An audio CD by Secret Garden called Earthsongs. The Celtic songs are more heavenly transcendent than rooted in the earth. The Irish violin virtuoso, the drums and haunting voices remind me of melodies I used to hear on my travels in the Arab countries.

I have a ‘secret garden’ that I go to with my daughter when we want to do nothing more than be together. We don’t tell anyone where we are going. It has an art gallery with ever-changing exhibits. I remember the first time we went there we stepped into a new age jewelery exhibit. We became Cleopatra and Nefretiti pouring over our jewelry troves. There is a café and sometimes we share a platter of exotic roti bread with spicy dips or we are consumed by the sheer indulgence of the easy moments together and order giant solid chocolate baskets filled with raspberries, blueberries and cream. Then we go for a walk around a manmade lake on a winding path that meanders in a landscape of tangled weeds. We laugh at the antics of the acrobatic water birds that surely put on displays just for us. No-one is there. The whole complex of buildings and nature is surrounded by a ring road of strange residential houses that have won Architect Awards. We admire their desert gardens of pebbles, cacti and stylishly stark high walls that look like boxes piled up, and then we pretend we are in the secret places that we have been to in Damascus. Times expands and we connect in an easy rhythm, walking as one, breathing in synch until we reach that state before her birth when she was still in my womb. She told me once she wished she could have stayed in my womb forever. I told her she has, forever.

Thank you sister-in-law, for the Earthsongs. They have transported me to my secret garden.