The Welsh have a beautiful word—Hiraeth. The word has no direct counterpart in English, but describes the longing and yearning for home—the home of your youth or the home you have had to leave, maybe even the home you have never had.
Poets know Hiraeth well. Burns and Yeats and Colum are swimming in my head as I type:
“My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here . . . .”
“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree . . . .”
“O, to have a little house! To own the hearth and stool and all!”
Hiraeth is that which lives in the deep heart’s core.
In a corner of our wrecked basement, splattered with watercolors and piled high with puzzles and games, sits a small round table. Its style is vintage 1960s or 70s, with a battered top—white with a pattern that looks like gray stems frozen in winter—and a straight metal base held up by three concentric triangles. It is nothing to look at, and so very, very small, yet it once sat a whole family for evening meals. My children, used to our huge, wooden table, are incredulous each time I remind them that this neglected relic was my family’s kitchen table when I was growing up.
My mother and father prayed hard for more children, yet they would never have more than would sit around that little table—mother, father, daughter. I learned to hold a knife and fork and cut my own meat while watching my father sitting directly across from me. To this day, I still hold the knife in my left hand.
I see the table now in its glory days. Most of the time, my mother would dress it up with a pretty, lace-trimmed cloth. She had been a professional seamstress before marrying my father and could make even the most humble piece of furniture look attractive. A fringe of long beads (in a style only to be found in the seventies) hung in the doorway between the hallway and kitchen. They were topaz-colored and so much fun to run through—so much fun my mother had to tie them up on both sides to discourage my endless dashes. That table is where I told my mother my troubles or listened to my father’s talk of politics that I didn’t understand, attentive anyway, because he would probably start telling stories as soon as he refilled his pipe.
Once in a while, my mother would be following Weight Watchers, and there would be tunafish and LeSeur peas and canned beets, but on a good day, I would come home from school for lunch to find a TV dinner waiting for me—Salisbury steak with mashed potatoes. On a bad day, it would be a plain bologna sandwich. Yet, whatever it was, there was always a woman there listening, interested, laughing at my jokes, cracking a great many of her own, and offering me a cup of tea. How bad can bologna be when you have all that?
Hiraeth is a love, deep and warm and abiding; it is gratitude for those souls who loved us without ever asking for thanks; and it is a constant reminder that we mothers not only make home—we are home for the dear ones around our tables.
...and she's back. ::happy sigh::
Posted by: Lissa | February 06, 2015 at 12:01 PM
A bit rusty, but trying. Thank you, Lissa!
Posted by: Alice Gunther | February 06, 2015 at 12:36 PM
Beautiful, Alice! I meet someone the other day who was moving back to Wales as his wife is Welsh and wants to come home. Hireath. You have so wonderfully described this word for all of us.
Posted by: Carole in Wales | February 06, 2015 at 12:38 PM
We had a curtain of beads in the late 1960s and early 1970s also. It makes me smile to think of the fun we had running through them!
Posted by: Marie | February 06, 2015 at 01:21 PM
A lovely return.
Posted by: Lisa T. | February 06, 2015 at 05:44 PM
Oh Alice, this is lovely. So glad you are writing again :-)
Posted by: Ellie | February 06, 2015 at 07:02 PM
My Welsh heart thanks you!
Posted by: MacBeth | February 06, 2015 at 09:44 PM
That was beautiful Alice! So happy you're back!
Posted by: Susan | February 07, 2015 at 12:13 PM
Beautiful!
I love the description of your little table. Love that you've kept it all these years.
My aunt and uncle had a curtain not of beads but of shells. I remember the sound they made when I ran through them. How delightful to have it brought back to me.
So glad you're blogging again.
Posted by: Melanie B | February 07, 2015 at 10:30 PM
Thank you for affirmation that what we do, day in and day out, matters. Most days I really wonder.
PS I just, not two weeks ago, took your blog off my blog's sidebar. Like a loyal dog, I had waited, but saw it had been a long time and thought you had probably moved on. ;-) I'm so excited to put it back on!
Posted by: Barbara | February 08, 2015 at 09:23 AM
Oh Alice - I think your secret name is Hireath! So lovely - I still think your blog is the most lovely of all in the blogosphere. : )
Posted by: Margot | February 08, 2015 at 04:35 PM
"There was always a woman there listening..." Best line ever. So glad you're back Alice.
Posted by: Kim | February 11, 2015 at 01:02 PM