Sister 1 And Sister 2 Meet For Lunch...
Our morning run seems quite morning run ish, after just two outings, it feels like a spin before breakfast... There is something about these cliff paths that means that it doesn't feel a very long run... And yet the route we have chosen takes nearly two hours...
We were awake just after 6pm and off and up the first hill not long after 6.30....
These hills I know so well...
When I was little we used to holiday here... I have very vivid memories of walks up to the top of 'Golden Cap' with my little sister Rosy, our 'mummy and daddy' and the dog Candy...
When I was older and had started to train with intent, I took to running instead of walking up to the summit, where I would stop to survey the views, the blue blue sea, the Jurassic coastal footpaths and then sing hymns at the top of my voice...
Hymns have always been easier for me to sing, and to remember the words to as they were imprinted on me from very young!
They were the form of praise I knew best back then; before I was introduced to mantras and chants and so 'Praise my lord the king of heaven' seemed a fitting way to celebrate being on top of the world, the wind blowing through my hair - celebrating being in a body able and fit enough to run up and down these hills....
Our route now starts further long the coast from golden cap, but the hills are as steep and the feelings of praise for the beauty and for my body which can run them still... Is as strong....
Running in the Alpujarra mountains of Spain last year brought the same rising of joyous celebration within me and at the top of a peak, instead of 'praise my lord the king of heaven', I sang instead the Gayatri mantra... In essence it communicates the same energy.....
Rosy, my special sister 2, and I were meeting for my belated birthday treat for me today...
We sat in the gardens of the Alexandra Hotel enjoying a delicious lunch, with the sea sparkling below us and golden cap shining in the distance... Memories of our childhood and Rosy's life here in recent years captured within its grassy slopes...
We have sat in these gardens with our father... Lunch promptly at midday then, Jamie, Rosy's son's christening party happened here nearly eighteen years ago.. Rosy and Nicks's wedding reception was held here too.... The energy of hours of lunches and conversation and celebration remain in this sacred space.
I have images of being forever in the sun on these lawns, the circles of time, round and round we go...
Two sisters in their fifties, time seeming but a flash... We talked about her children when they were babies... To us it doesn't seem long ago, to them a lifetime...
As we got up to go inside for pudding and coffee two seagulls swooped finishing off our leftovers, bridging the space between now and then, times past, the future, the now... All that was happening then, and now, me and my sister, remembering our parents, long gone, but alive in our memories and our hearts...
And in swooped the gulls once more, bridging the gap between the living world and the spirit world.
I read yesterday that opening ourselves to their energy enables us to communicate with the other side.
Sisters together... The little girls our parents knew, now women older by some years than our mother was when she died....
'I feel for Mummy having to leave so early...' I said to Rosy, she agreed....
And so we continued onto rhubarb crumble and coffee, enjoying our special sister 1 and sister 2 time, linked through a shared childhood, but more than that an eternal bond of love and sisterhood.