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Home-going

Home-going

Scotland, and back again

Melody Erin's avatar
Melody Erin
Jun 18, 2023
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Home-going
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And, just like that, I’m home again.

I don’t know what to say, except to apologize for the lateness of this post (I fully intended to write as usual on Wednesday, but found myself without internet access on the laptop we brought. Which meant I couldn’t even log on briefly to announce that the post would be late. Ah, the perils of world travel). After an even longer and more exhausting overnight flight than anticipated (the pilot on our cross-Atlantic flight said the maintenance crew used the phrase “hot mess” in reference to the plane he was supposed to fly 30,000 feet above the ocean for 7+ hours. Not the most comforting of pep talks I’ve heard), we landed in Edinburgh (locally pronounced: “EIN-brah” with a faintly rolling R) in the early afternoon, although our bodies said it was morning. The first thing I noticed was the air. We left Ohio in a haze of smoke that had drifted down from the wildfires in Canada. Suddenly, right in the middle of an international airport complex, standing about waiting for the car rental place to get over the fact that we had missed our appointed time because of the delayed flight, I smelled salt. Seagulls and other birds I couldn’t identify glided across a brilliant sky. Despite having packed for the forecasted 50-and 60-degree weather, Midland Scotland was unseasonably hot and sunny all that week; an unexpected delight that resulted in me spending the week in my swimsuit board shorts (the only shorts I had packed) and cutting off an older pair of Lee’s jeans so she could have something temperature-appropriate to wear. My husband, who wears shorts and tee shirts year-round (except at work), was the only one of us who didn’t start sweating the moment we went outside.

And we spent most of the week outside. Why wouldn’t we? Our group, which included most of my husband’s family, stayed in the historic Kinblethmont manor house in Arbroath. Which meant we were basically living in a museum. Like, there was a display of period weapons in the front hall, and a glass case inside of which a dress dummy sported a plaid hunting jacket that had belonged to Bonnie Prince Charlie himself (who must have been a surprisingly small man for one of such legendary charisma), who had apparently once hidden in that very manor house while being pursued by English forces. The staircases all sported those silky red sausage-rope-things that politely deny entry of wide-eyed tourists to the innermost parts of the sanctum—except they all hung to one side, doubled up on themselves, while the wide-eyed tourists slept in the canopied beds, ate in the formal dining room, withdrew to the drawing room to read before a crackling fire, watched red squirrels and pheasant steal birdseed in the back garden from the very modern kitchen’s ancient window, basked in the varied and numerous paintings and portraits that lined every wall, and danced in a fairy grove inside the walled garden (actually that was just me and two fellow believers, my sister-in-law and her daughter). It was magical, of course; but that was only the beginning.

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