It smelt like coffee. Rain trickled down the glass panes of the conservatory, the droplets of water causing a satisfying beat, as if the glass were the skin of a drum. It is homely, it is nostalgic. It smelt like grandma's kitchen. Hot drinks being poured into large mugs; large mugs being sipped delicately until the beverage was cold.
I could not understand why they drank the coffee. It was bitter, and left an ugly after taste that seemed to linger until I brushed my teeth. Instead, I drained plastic cup after cup, of summer fruits squash. It was sweet, sugary perhaps, but the taste reminded me of being walked down to the park, grass dried to a hazy, straw yellow.
The chattering of the adults added a rhythm to the constant beating of the rain. It was a strange song, about money and mortgages; however, I sat contentedly on the lino floor of the conservatory and stacked multi-coloured lego bricks. I built a house, made of red, blue, green and yellow bricks, it had a flat roof and looked similar to that of, what is now, a modern house. It had no windows, and a small black door that did not seem to match my colour scheme.
The people in the other room continued to chatter until the sky darkened to pewter grey, striped with luminous, charcoal clouds. My mother, a tall lady with chocolate brown hair and similar russet brown eyes led me into our kitchen. I could no longer smell the coffee that seemed to stain the air. Instead, I could smell vegetables being boiled alive in pans of scolding water, I could also smell sweet strawberry, cut in half, sprinkled with sugar. It was pure nostalgia.
YOU ARE READING
Hiraeth
Algemene fictie'A homesickness for a home to which you can never return, a home which may or never was, the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past.'
