I was running on Wednesday or Thursday last week, trying to escape the looming Bronte essay I had to write, and trying also to find West Cambridge, when Cambridge began to change around me. I was running away from the city center, and gradually, as I ran under yellow and red trees and over the muffled crackle of autumn leafmeal, the houses began to fade, and I could spy a glorious sunset on my left, with a cloud that looked like the rearing torso of a lion sandwiched between two other clouds.
I think that I was running away from more than just the city center and an essay that day. I was feeling confused and inadequate over loneliness - something I think every first year university student, and particularly international student, go through. I was frustrated that I hadn't fallen easy into a social group, that I still hadn't been able to really be me, that I hadn't found that someone whose room I could go to spontaneously, to sit on their bed and talk about how we should explore the botanic gardens together and what to cook for each other that night and whether she could help me read my essay and tell me honestly if I was being too boring.
After about 20 minutes, I saw a sign saying 'Public footpath' and turned down it.
I ran a short way along a small path, and then over a bridge that stretched over the rush and rumble of cars and trucks on the highway beneath me. And then I got to the other side and...
Blackberries.
Blackberries everywhere.
The foliage got denser as I kept running through it, my shirt or tights occasionally getting snagged by a blackberry bramble. The blackberry bushes grew tall around me, sometimes even forming arches overhead. I felt encased in this safe safe world of soft sounds, leaves and fruit. A small space, a secret place only I knew about. I picked a couple of berries as I slowed my pace to an almost shuffle. Suddenly it didn't matter that I felt inadequate, or that I didn't know how to structure my essay. All that mattered was that God had directed my path into somewhere where finally I could hear myself think, I could see myself breathe, I could think about not myself but my God who provides berries in the wild for the animals and birds, and who cares for me.
I picked up my pace again and kept going past the blackberry area to the beginning of the highway. I had the strangest sensation that I could, if I wanted to, keep going down that grey asphalt road, striding alongside cars, all the way to London, all the way to Heathrow, all the way home. But I turned around to get to my room before dark.
The next day, I returned - and this time I was prepared. I spent almost an hour in my secret space, blackberrying. I filled a whole container. I caught the before-sunset moments when the sun and the clouds dance together.
This week I made a blackberry and apple crumble with what was left of them, and shared it with my floor mates, who I've been meeting more often as I cook in the kitchen and who all liked it.
The next morning, I took a taxi through the cold fog to the train station. I talked to the taxi river, who's from Lithuania, and said that in the dry-winters of Lithuania you can go outside in a t shirt and not feel cold but in the wet-winters here you'd freeze. I was about 50 minutes too early for my train, so I sat on the platform with my laptop and began working on my essay, with fingers that after a while became so frozen my typing became noticeably slower.
I met Mum, Uncle Rog and Auntie Michelle at the platform. They'd driven all the way there to see me and pick up another car for their road trip down to the Forest of Dean the next day. It's incredible how God works out his timing. How Uncle Rog and Auntie Michelle and Eva could come all the way from New Zealand up here, just at the same time as Mum came with me to start my Cambridge term, so that she, Uncle Rog, Auntie Sarah and Grandma could have a proper family reunion - all on the weekend of Grandma's 85th birthday!
We watched a Winter's Tale at the Theater Royal, which was built in Victorian times (1819) and is very small and cosy. We watched 'A Winter's Tale' and all the old people around us getting chocolate, stem ginger and strawberry ice cream during the interval.
'I don't think the girl who was born on the 10th of August, 1930, or the 9th of August actually, because Mummy's watch was 40 minutes ahead, could ever think that she'd be celebrating her 85th birthday!'
She blew out the candles, Renny descended on the chocolate cupcakes, Grandma insisted on cutting and serving the cake even though it was her birthday, and Auntie Michelle gave all the adults Lemoncello from Italy, which Grandma gave a tentative sip, screwed up her face and then hastily unscrewed it, ' What is this?'
Happy, happy birthday Grandma. May the good Lord bless you.
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