M is for Memories; time with John and Sally.

"Excepts from Memory by David Whyte:

Memory is not just a then, recalled in a now, the past is never just the past, memory is a pulse passing through all created life, a waveform, a then continually becoming other thens, all the while creating a continual but almost untouchable now. 

Memory is an invitation to the source of our life, to a fuller participation in the now, to a future about to happen, but ultimately to a frontier identity that holds them all at once. Memory makes the now fully inhabitable.

The genius of human memory is firstly its very creation through experience, and then the way it is laid down in the mind according to the identity we inhabited when we first decided to remember, then its outward radiating effect and then all its possible future outcomes, occurring all at the same time...how we live the story we have inherited. 

We can be equal to the story we have inherited, no matter its difficulty, by stepping into its very centre."

One of my letters from France written to my mother in 1986 - Sally is fetching me to take me across to Mme Brimaud, we rented her home in Marly-le-Roi. Sally features in so many of my memories of those years we lived here in France.

Here I am, visiting John and Sally, friends from our years here in France.

John and Fred had met through Telemecanique while Fred still worked for the firm in South Africa, so when we arrived in Paris in 1986, John and Sally helped us through the settling in and we got to know each other well.

How I love the flow of memories from our times together and also the story telling to bridge all these years and how life has played out for all of us.

Friendships, 30 year memory, Paris - Andrea, me and Sally, 1986.

And here we are today, around a lunch table, in a quiet corner of Normandy, how lovely: