The Reunion

Iona Carroll

It's a fact that Scotland's people have moved around a lot. It's probably possible to find a Scots person in just about every corner of the globe carrying with them their Scottishness and valiantly trying to keep their national identity alive. Some Scots left because they had no choice; others left because they had choice but they chose to find a new home elsewhere.

So, in light of all that, it was great excitement for me, an Aussie, now living in Scotland, to meet with an old school friend, an Aussie, too, whom I hadn't seen for thirty years! In a reunion such as this which comes after such a long space of time, we suddenly and acutely become aware of the number of our days. All these memories give poignancy to the present moment and make the moment so very precious. Reunions are happening all over the world all the time. I began to ponder an imponderable - what makes people move from their birthplace and paradoxically, what makes them want to return?

Because my friend, Noela, too, had a desire not only to see me and renew a part of her life, thirty years on, thirty years lived through, thirty years of experiences, but she also had a desire to meet with her distant Scottish relatives, her father's people, who had remained in Ayrshire. So I began to think that even after three generations away there is still a desire to return to the country of ones ancestors. Noela's relations were a coal mining family, history there. Lives lived. Noela's great grandfather had left Scotland bound for Australia in 1912 and, as is the way with so many families, no contact had been made between Scotland and Australia until 1988. Given the nature of communication in those days, it was only after Noela's father began to research the family tree that the reunion was able to take place. So Noela, in meeting her relatives and discovering her own Scottishness, was able to understand a little more of herself. She was able in that very short space of time, three weeks in total, to understand that even though people leave their place of birth, it stays with them and is passed on even after generations.

The sights and sounds of Scotland. Noela said she had a sense of belonging, a feeling of being here before. That what was so different was also so familiar, that the sense of history in the old buildings and towns, the compactness of the place, the very stones breathed continuity. That three generations away from Scotland, and Ayrshire, in particular, was in her blood. An unfathomable mystery. There was the excitement of it all, of course, on the conscious level, the green fields, stone fences, fat sheep in fields, even fatter cows grazing in so much grass. And hills and villages, all so totally different from the brown, parched land she had left, given the miracle of flight, a few hours previously.

There was magic for Noela to hear Scots voices and expressions, familiar words she used to hear her father speak, and strong measures of humour and hospitality all along the line. In Ayrshire, Noela found that in this very short space of time compacted to stretch to a lifetime of memories, that travelling is at times, a discovery of self. Amongst her father's people, Noela found graveyards, located schools that were no longer schools but people's homes, recognisable from old photographs, but most of all, she felt at home.

These two reunions, the one of meeting me and the other of meeting relatives which seemed on the surface to be so very dissimilar were, on a deeper level, much the same. Both reunions stretched through time. Was thirty years so very different from one hundred?

What mysteries lie in our lives which can sometimes be uncovered by a reunion. Precious things, reunions. Memorable moments. They give a respite from the mundane, revive and restore and lift the spirits. And there is a wonderful thing, too, about reunions and that is that the memory lives on in hearts and minds, long after the physical meeting has gone!