Bog Myrtle & Peat

The night before my son was born, my father and I worked late in the fields behind the house. We were lifting neeps by hand, shocking the roots with our knifes in the dark. There had been snow for two days, but it rarely settles this close to the sea. It only lay as slush in the ruts, and the tractor pulled against the weight of the water until it stalled and the trailer was bellied in the mud. The wheels turned, but they only pulled us deeper down – and friends who say this place is largely rock would never believe the depth of rich and loving muck we found to bind us. 

The moon rose, and cattle steamed beyond the dyke like a string of lanterns. Now and then, we’d turn and throw a neep in their direction, simply for the pleasure of hearing a hustle and crunch in the darkness. Some of the neeps had been turned by the frost and rotten in the drills. It was too dark to tell good from bad, and it sometimes made us laugh with disgust to reach for something sound and find it burst around our fingers like a coddled egg. Geese went down to roost on the shore, and each new root rang a different thump on the growing pile.

Looking ahead, I wished that my son could’ve been with us that night – and not just a day early – he’d need to be about my age for the thought to land entirely. Because who knows where we’ll be when he is old enough to see us clearly? Every day is the end of a thousand continuities, and even the smallest change is often a finish. Perhaps he’ll know us both, but never as we were that night as two shapes lowly talking. And there’s nothing bright or spectacular in the work of lifting neeps anyway. I only wished he could’ve seen us and known for sure.

We never spoke of birth that night. In the woods at the field’s end, a song thrush sang to the starlight, and we talked of that instead. My father and I have plenty to say on the subject of Thomas Hardy, but he likes the poetry and I prefer the novels. It’s a well-established bone of contention, but I know that in a trunk of heirlooms, he has a copy of The Darkling Thrush which was copied down from the newspapers by his great grandfather in 1901 when the words were still new. It’s passed between the generations like an heirloom, and my son will carry it forward some day, whether he likes the poem or hates it as I do. But like an heirloom, it isn’t presented on the moment of arrival – it’s simply left behind. And in a mood of revolution, it’s rich to think ahead to future generations when my day still hasn’t come. 

The time came to stop for the night. We’d said the things we had to say, and none of it about Hardy anyway. Then stumbling back towards the house, I reckoned that a fresh pair of eyes was long overdue in this ancient, talked-out place. In the morning, a thousand miles away in the glare of a hospital’s diode lighting, my father looked down to the face of my hot, plethoric son. He gave a brief smile of recognition, then stood back towards the door as if he couldn’t stay long.