Sense 04 — Ways of seeing

A note on what gets passed down

Lately, I’ve been thinking about where my attention comes from.

My nan is living with Alzheimer’s now. It’s taking hold, and she is different to the woman I grew up with. It’s hard to witness, but as she changes, I find myself returning to the memories I carry of her — and of her mum — and noticing how present they still are in the way I move through the world.

When I think about my connection to being outdoors, I don’t think of landscapes in the abstract. I think of my great gran’s garden in Whitton, London. It was small and was the only garden she ever had, but it held so much. There was a little fence, and on the other side of it were her vegetables. She believed deeply in growing food. She kept chickens. She collected water.

She had a water butt that gathered rain from the shed roof. It was always full — dark, deep, and quietly mysterious. As a child, I used to look into it and think it might lead to another world. She was always happy for us to go into the vegetable garden to pick things and to eat whatever we could find. There was an ease to it; a generosity I didn’t realise I was absorbing at the time.

My nan (her daughter) had a courtyard garden in Crook in Durham. It was a tiny backyard that backed onto an alley. She grew things from cuttings and planted seeds from apples she liked the taste of, just to see what would happen. It was a place of constant experiment. Not precious. Not controlled. Just attentive.

Then there’s my mum. She taught me to walk slowly. To place my hand on the bark of old oak trees, to close my eyes and to listen so that I could make time for what’s already there.

What I’ve been realising recently is that these women shaped my attention long before I had language for it. They didn’t teach me to notice the world by instruction. They taught me through care, repetition and quiet permission.

And now I see my daughters doing some of the same things. Kneeling, picking things up and listening, all without being told.

It’s made me think about how ways of seeing are passed down; not perfectly, not intact, but with us nonetheless.