Artichoke

My partner and I have started to pack up the caravan. My best friend left yesterday for her train back to Bristol. I landed with a thud the second I turned from saying goodbye. My face had creased before the tears came, as though a pained expression was permission to let them flow. They dropped heavily from my lashes - raindrops from a leaf.

Everything from that moment has been in hyper-focused motion. The smell of the toilet in Sainsbury's was foreign suddenly, the international, cleaning-product-scent of asian airports. The noise of our little town reverberated my senses, and churned childhood excitement of cities yet undiscovered from the depths of me, like sand disturbed from a seabed. The caravan is reforming its shell-like structure, and the lettuces we planted in March stare at me now, eight beaming children that I will not get to praise when their moment in the spotlight is ripe.

The home that Sol has created here, and my fingerprints in it, is hollow all of a sudden. It is a sanctuary in which for someone else to celebrate the waxing days of summer. I often look at all my many homes (the caravan is my fifth in this past year), as markers of time in which I practised something. Here I have practised a great number of things. I have practised patience, for passing by someone inside a caravan too frequently is like rubbing two pieces of flint together, and is bound to spark a flame if true patience is not practised. I have practised, wrangled, and fought with my limits of discomfort in those formative winter months of relieving myself outdoors, and getting out of bed in minus temperatures. In this home I have practised love, with the most wise and patient teacher. I have not yet mastered solitude, despite my determination, and I am quite sure that on this matter I have much practising to do.

It is difficult to tell, when one wishes more than anything for far off skies, whether leaving and its associated pains can ever be soothed or dodged. In my short lifetime it has become the deepest wound, and yet the most rewarding - to create roots only a little below ground so that they are easier to pull up again. Our sweet peas, which extend a mere three inches above the soil, are waving in agreement now.

I learnt recently that globe artichokes won their name because they are able to grow and prosper anywhere in the world. I have one to the right of me, proudly upright with her royal spines that are just beginning to hum with purple, and I wonder where she feels most at home. Her lineage of wanderers do not make her any less grounded in this place, any less assured in her right to blossom here. She has made her home amongst the nettles beside the chicken wire, rises just the same as in any other soil, and yet here she is.

The passing through of change, the mystery of movement and the dancing meaning of home, beckon me with their inevitability. I sense from this phenomenal perennial that my next practise will be to stand a little taller, and to blossom, home and land regardless.