May 20th, 1816

My dear journal, I have so much that I wish to tell you, yet I haven’t the faintest idea of what order to say it in.  It all holds equal precedent.  I suppose that it would be best to start at the beginning, but even that, I feel, is an ambiguous place.

My day began with Uncle Samuel asking if I would be able to help him in the fields.  I thought that this was odd, since Jenny was available to help, and surely she would have been more useful than myself.  But my uncle seemed intent upon having my help in particular, so after breakfast—gruel again, unfortunately—we went straight out.

The work, I must say was demoralizing.  Though I wouldn’t complain to him, digging up potatoes isn’t exactly my idea of leisure.  It reminds me too much of the work they made us do at the Retreat in the sweltering sun—gardening so as to tend to the gardens of our minds.  My lettuce always wilted, which I felt was too ironic to be funny.

But here, the air was bitterly cold, and though I had Jenny’s cloak—she’s been so kind to lend me things, I couldn’t have been more unprepared—I was still rather chilled.  The crops are not immune to this strange, dark weather either.  Hardly any potatoes survived the night’s frost.  The Hag must be playing with us again.

Uncle Samuel told me that no one has ever seen a season like this.  Though not exactly sunny, most Irish summers aren’t nearly this cold.  By the time we were done, there were scarcely enough potatoes to feed ourselves, let alone to sell.  Uncle Samuel was concerned, though he endeavored not to show it.  Instead, he was all generosity, and told me stories about my mother, precisely the thing I came all this way for.

When he knew her, he said, as she grew up alongside him, my mother was wild, mischievous, always getting into trouble.  She would hide toads in cabinets or under beds, caterpillars in tea kettles.  She sounded nearly like a witch!  I was quite surprised, for this was hardly the woman that I knew.

My mother was always poised, calm, like the sea after a storm.  Her voice was as soft and gentle as herself.  She held boundless patience for me and my father—for everyone.  I can’t imagine her enjoying anything but literature either—though her favorite was always Ann Radcliffe, so perhaps she did stay just a bit wild.

He also told me of how she came to London.  I had always presumed, from the way that she spoke of it, that it was because of the mind-numbing dullness of home.  She always said that Ireland could only have given her a small life, and that she wanted a grand one.  And the same for me, I suppose.

Uncle Samuel laughed when I told him this.  “Hannah couldn’t help but make a story more interesting,” he said.  He told me that my mother really left out of plain necessity.  There were simply too many mouths to feed at home, and there was work to be found in London.  I can see why she changed things; perhaps I would have done the same.  It was much nicer to believe that she came to her new home by choice. 

Of course, it was in London, working as a maid, that she met my father, and I think that I’ve recounted that story enough times.  I should have known that my mother possessed some sort of rebelliousness, to endure all that resulted from her and my father’s relationship.  People never seem to grow tired of whispering.  I know that better than anyone.

There is not much of my mother’s later life that Uncle Samuel could tell me.  He only met her once as an adult, when she travelled with me back to Liscannor all those years ago.  I don’t think that he likes to remember her like that though, for we never spoke of it.  I can’t say that I like to dwell on it much either.  But I do, all too often.

I’m not sure why I’m so inextricably drawn to the past.  I wish I knew, so I could untangle myself from it.  Yet it seems to be a tide, constantly reaching for me, then pulling back just as I long to touch it.  I suppose that’s not so unique.  We all have pasts, after all, and they all demand our attention.  I believe that it’s true for Uncle Samuel at least.  He looked so happy, and so sad as he reminisced.

I’m glad that I have Jenny here, to make new memories with as I excavate the old.  She may be the first true friend that I’ve had; at least, she’s the first that I did not feel I had to be the least bit guarded around.  Of course, we do have quite a few walls between us.  We decided, one day after I made one faux pas too many while doing chores for the first time, that the best thing to do is acknowledge that the divides are there.  It doesn’t do any good to pretend that we’re the same, that I haven’t lived a privileged life, or that Jenny’s mind is not a much safer place to be. 

This honesty, though, doesn’t change the fact that I still have yet to feel that I belong here.  Aunt Caroline makes that quite clear, with her cold glares and curt words.  Frederick says I shouldn’t worry myself about it, that I’ll never need to think about her again in a few months, but I can’t help but dwell on it.  That, and the fact that Frederick hates it here so much.  He’s annoyed with his accommodations, and that we never have any privacy in the small, crowded home.  I don’t say anything in those short moments we get alone, when all he does is rant. 

A piece of me, a selfish, foolish little part, wishes that my mother had never left Ireland.  Then, perhaps, I wouldn’t feel like such a stranger here.