I hope this post inspires you as much as I was inspired to write it.  During this process I discovered lots of things I had never acknowledged about my family and myself.  My inspiration came from Kirsten, please read her “I am” post, as it is wonderful and to find out how this all started just take a peek here. 

So here goes…

I am from cold milk delivered by the Milkman, from Kellogg corn flakes sprinkled with sugar and from sitting in the sun reading cartoons from the Sunday newspaper quiet and still.  Everyone in the house is asleep, all but me, I creep downstairs without a sound, in my nightie.

I am from the warmth and safety I call home, with smells of dinner cooking and something by Mozart playing in the background, loud and powerful, conducting the orchestra in my imagination.  Playing records all day long, Rod Stewart, The Carpenters, West Side Story or Oliver.  I know all the words.

I am from the rose filled crystal vase, grass filled with clover, the trees filled with cherry blossoms pink and white that take all year to grow then fill my senses with their beauty.  From lush green fields to a wide brown land.

I am from Sunday lunch and good manners, from Mum’s evening sherry and Dad’s pot of tea, and Jackie’s haircuts copied from the Women’s Weekly or New Idea.

I am from the stubborn north of England, from stoic Beaumont’s and patient Lowden’s who will wait it out and get what they want.

From please and thank you, and may I leave the table, and always eat your vegetables and drink eight glasses of water.  With fish’n'chips on Friday served on warm plates with salt and vinegar, pickled onions and real butter on the bread.

I am from the Church of England and a belief in something higher, that there are consequences for all actions and that one-day I am going to have to account for myself, good or bad.  Hymns you sing out loud in your Sunday best, and creaking pews, polished by time.

I’m from Durham, Germany and Australia, meat and three veg and always desert, it’s fruit and ice-cream or apple pie.  A ham salad in summer with pineapple, and a vanilla soft serve in a cone from the van, running outside when his music twinkles through the air.

From my Granddad, the 10^th Hussar, that fought in WWI, the stories he told around the table after dinner, and the man I call Dad who would spend hours polishing his boots and buckles and press his uniform until it was fit for a Queen.

I am from the shoebox that holds images of family and friends, of times past and new love, and all that comes with a big family and distance, love lost and found and words left unsaid.  My family is close-by, my relatives are far away, maybe that’s how it should be, and that’s how it is.