My first memory of the Scottish Borders was seeing a hedgehog in the garden of the house we first lived, near the Old Peel Hospital on the banks of the River Tweed. My mum woke me up to see it and we put out a dish of milk.
I remember drinking elderflower cordial for the first time as a teenager at the River Tweed Festival, somewhere near Innerleithen in 1994 maybe? I was there with Borders Youth Theatre as we were performing a piece in celebration of the river and it was here and around this time, I first learned about the importance of finding your tribe.
I spent lockdown in Selkirk where I walked along the banks of the Tweed, the Yarrow and the Ettrick, learning about the flora and the adult self I had become. Through walking and remembering I acknowledged for the first time how much the River Tweed has entwined itself through my life. From seeing a hedgehog at three years old, through my teenage years first finding my tribe and beginning the journey of understanding who I might become, to an adult turning 40 years old during a global pandemic with half her life lived. When I reflect on where I’d been and where I am going, I hear the sound of the river, eternally flowing, eternally changing, and eternally constant throughout it all.
Image: © Walter Baxter (cc-by-sa/2.0) geograph.org.uk/p/3389383
Peel House in the days of Peel Hospital, Galashiels.
