“The blossoms fell like confetti in hard rain”

I’VE never really gone in for all this ‘I am my beloved, and my beloved is me’ stuff.

This week, I’ll have been married to the same man for 25 years and I’m not my beloved and my beloved is not me; He’s one tree. I’m another. But this is just a quibble because as far as art, fortunate accidents, blossoms and roots go, I think this Captain Corelli quote is bang on.

The first bunch of pretty blossoms fell from our tree in a sudden gale, when a stark blue line appeared in the plastic window of a Clear Blue home pregnancy kit, a few weeks after we met first. The blossoms fell like confetti in hard rain. Straight down. No drifting. Though we had an inkling about what might be left after the emotional bush fire of having a baby, looking back it was nothing more than an inkling, based on flowery things like thumping hearts in train stations and having top fun eating chips in arctic winds on Whitley Bay beach. So it was surprising to find that though the blossoms tumbled fast, something weird started happening to our roots; instead of inching away, they started inching towards each other, and here they are, 25 years later, tied up in a big knotty bundle. God knows how we’d ever untangle them.