The Seeds of Our Home

Scotland was not my first home, not even my second.

Like all good love stories, it was not without its hardships and obstacles to overcome. Moving to Scotland with a small infant in tow and knowing no-one at all was always going to be challenging. Despite the beauty and buzz of the city, after many months of living here it still felt unfamiliar. I was, and perhaps still am, a stranger in a strange land.

But slowly it won me over. Gently, over time, it revealed its secrets and offered me a little space in which to plant my flag and start to grow roots of my own.

My Scotland is not a single place. It is a quilt of experiences and memories that have woven themselves into the fabric of my being and added yet another layer to my already eclectic sense of identity.

It is days spent in ancient castles and cathedrals playing with my son, exploring the past and inventing stories and tales of what may have happened there. It is fun and playtime, running through dark passages and spiral staircases and playing knights atop castle walls.

My Scotland is the excitement of sitting in the car and beginning a new adventure to an unknown place. Of embarking on a journey which will ignite the flames of our imaginations, gifting us a feast for our eyes and souls.

It is moments playing on sandy beaches. Squealing, as we talk ourselves into entering the cool waters of the sea and shrieking as we make race tracks in the sand.

My Scotland is laughter as we run across woodlands and embrace the child within. It is pausing to explore the tiny details we might usually overlook and wonder aloud together at what creatures may live there and make the earth their home.

It is collecting shells and stones to treasure as keepsakes of our travels and feature as protagonists in the retellings of our adventures. It is seeds planted with little hope of any chance of growth only to find, a few months later, our windowsills flourishing with colourful flowers and plants that threaten to reach the ceiling.

My Scotland is filled with colour. Beautiful sunsets of purple and pink on short winter days. Red, orange and yellow skies as the sun sets perfectly over a watery horizon. It is bright yellow wellies splashing in muddy puddles and red sledges against white snow. It’s filled with yellow gorse on green hillsides and purple heather on autumn days. It is grey stones on a trodden brown path and pink blossom blowing across the window in the spring breeze. My Scotland is aquamarine and deep blue sea against a bone white sandy beach.

It is landscapes whose grandeur continue to take my breath away. Mountains that rise from the ground like giants, watchers, thousands of years old. Sights that I had only ever seen in pictures, only to discover that the pictures failed to convey their true magnitude and impact.

My Scotland is wild camping and cuddling together as a family in a cramped tent as the wind and rain batters us. It is Glen Coe and forgotten raincoats and campfires. It is ice-creams and barbecues besides lochs. It is filled with family walks and attempts to find waterfalls as a small child asks to be carried. It is the renaming of places to Fantasy Hill and Tidy Land.

But more than all that, it is potential and invitation.

Here is the place where we had to begin anew, where we were forced to carve out our own small space and form new habits and traditions. Where we challenged ourselves to confront difficult times and discovered hidden strength and perseverance.

Here is where we took chances. The place where we leapt into the unknown and blindly trusted that we would find a solid landing ground, and we did. The place where dreams were followed and realised, where patience was tested and hypotheticals turned into realities. Here is where we planted new seeds of hope and watched them ever so slowly begin to grow.

My Scotland took time to take shape and form. It did not come easily and was sometimes filled with friction and downright opposition. Sometimes it felt impossible.

But it was patient and let us discover its gifts slowly in our own time. It welcomed us and with each new experience, rewarded us with an appetite for more. It filled us with a thirst to explore further, to be braver and more ambitious. To make memories that we can treasure long into the future.

My Scotland is not something tangible, but an essence. It is wonderment and hope and inspiration. It is daring to dream. It is the space to pause and appreciate the possibilities before me and finding the courage to seize them when they come. It is trusting in my inner resources and resolve. It is what has turned a foreign land into a home.

Scotland was not my first home. But it is the one which has captured my heart.