Freckles

It’s raining! It’s quite a shock. The Fox will be let off watering duty tonight. The ground in the garden has deep cracks, it’s been so dry. Maybe now they will disappear again. Certainly everything will perk up with the little bit of liquid. I’m hoping also the air will be fresher & the Fox will cease melting. The humidity has been getting to him.

My own thoughts have once more turned to my mother. If she’d still be alive she would have been 106 later this month. As it is she died nearly 40 years ago.

What set my thoughts off was a conversation with Linda, our home help. Her younger daughter is feeling troubled at the moment, due to all her freckles.

All this sunshine of late has brought out my freckles. When I was a young lass, still at primary school, I felt self-conscious about them. I hated them & moaned to my mother about them. She said to look around at all the people with freckles. They have something else in common apart from their freckles. They’re nice friendly people. I did look & she was right. Ever since then I’ve accepted my freckles happily. I told Linda this story to pass on to her daughter.

In some ways I’m quite grateful to my freckles. My skin is very pale, paler than most blonds have. As tans came into fashion, my skin resolutely stayed white. I’m lucky. I don’t burn. Occasionally I’ve gone red but the next day you wouldn’t have realised I’d even been in the sun, unless you saw the dividing line between the covered & uncovered parts of me. However, I do turn a sort of brown. The freckles multiply in the sun & start to join up. At a distance it gives an impression of a tan even if closer to you realise it’s a series of orangey brown spots, a sort of pointillist painting. At the moment the freckles abound. And I think of my Mum.