“In the seaside town Hastings there is a local legend that the town is under an enchantment known as Crowley’s Curse. The curse compels anyone who has lived in Hastings to always return, no matter how far away they move, or for how long. The curse can only be broken by taking a stone with a hole running through it from Hastings’ beach.”
I lifted this more or less directly off Wikipedia where I went to assure that a stone with a hole in it is, indeed, called a Hag stone in English. (And yes, Hastings does refer to that Hastings, 1066, William the Conqueror.)
Where I look for hag stones, they are called hole-cows. Holy Cow, that is an odd name (but not as odd as Audhumla, the holy cow who was part of the old Norse creation myth.) I think our beach may have a reverse Crowley’s curse: anybody who have ever picked up a holed cow wants to return. Is it called a blessing, then?
My daughter is an avid cow herd. She has an incredible eye for pattern recognition and never returns from the beech cowless. I skedaddled to Denmark alone this summer to help clean up a couple of estates, and she gave me the homework assignment to find a cow. The result graces this article, but I left the little herd on the beach.
When my father suddenly died eight years ago, the whole family congregated here at my parents’ vacation home to put him to rest. During one of those hard days, my daughter suggested that we went cow hunting. My husband, our kids, and I went for a stroll on the beach, looking for hag stones. And for a couple of hours, with our focus solely on the beach pebbles, we felt no grief. On this crisp sunny April day, we felt the wind, the sun, the salt in the air, the sound of waves crashing in our ears – and togetherness. It was the walking meditation we all needed at precisely the right time.
Might it be that serenity that brings cowherders back?
After having done my newly assigned homework, I went to watch the sunset from “sunset hill”. Another Danish-American family from New Hampshire had the same idea and I helped them to a photo of all of them. The mother had taken her American-raised brood back to her “turf”. I didn’t ask if she had ever picked up a hag stone.
A local couple with their adult son joined us. As the sun set, the woman checked that I was who she thought I was – my father’s daughter. “We all still miss him”, she said, and I instantly knew the “all“ she talked about. They were local friends my parents had made after they retired and lived in their vacation home most of the year, and my father had volunteered as treasurer for the local sports club. These friends had filled the church eight years ago.
The sunset incident touched both my heart with gratitude and my mind with curiosity. There is something about engaging and investing one’s time in one’s local community that does magical things. My parents had a house on this plot of land for almost 30 years without knowing any of these people. We knew and partied and dug potatoes and had bonfires and tea and went fishing with all the immediate neighbors – that may be stories for other posts – but apart from that we didn’t socialize with anybody in town. But once my father donated his time to the community, he got so much more back than he gave. He got a new purpose. And appreciation and recognition from his peers. And friends. He got belonging and a legacy.
Do we hesitate to put in the effort if we don’t think we will live in a community for more than a few years? And is that why people leave, because they don’t feel they belong and haven’t gotten any friends, and feel unrecognized?
I feel I am poking around in mud with a stick here. Who knows, I might end up getting my hands dirty.
I talked to my daughter after writing most of this. She told me to go find another stone and bring it home. In her heart, they are greetings from her grandfather. And given my recent experience, that seemed not too farfetched an idea.
Hi Charlotte, I love this post. When we evoke the past, and memories and family history, these are topics that truly ignite me. Thank you for sharing these beautiful reflections. I imagine that our friend Paul Haury could have a thing or two to say about the belonging aspects that you question at the end of your piece.
I come at this from a bit of a different perspective. I talk a lot about my parents, both of whom are now 94 years old. My dad was always the more social of the two, and that’s still true. Mom was more retiring, less interested in conversation and getting to know people. She was always more about cocooning at home or wherever they were staying at the time, reading and not mixing it up with neighbors or acquaintances. For close to 30 years, they left Wisconsin in the winter and traveled mostly to Florida until April. They always went somewhere different than where they had gone the year before.
The five of us kids always wondered at that. Later we figured it out. Mom never wanted to get invest herself in any community. She had it in her head that if they got to know people she might have to entertain them and that Dad would want to spend time playing cards and doing things with other people, which wasn’t her thing. By being nomadic snowbirds, the chances of getting to know someone and becoming close was more difficult if you only lived somewhere three months and then vaporized.
In their hometown here in Wisconsin, Dad was on the board of directors for the credit union for more than 30 years, he was a member of the parish council for the church where they belong, and he was in a golf league. Mom got to stay home with her books and magazines. She wasn’t so much an introvert as a shrewd conservator of her time. Dad has always been indulgent about Mom’s wishes, so he always allowed her to make their plans for where they would stay for the winter.
It truly does make sense that if you don’t stay anywhere too long, it’s less likely for you to set down any kind of roots or cleave to the community in any way. Somehow I want to close with that great bit of wisdom “Wherever you go, there you are.” I just did. Thanks again for the opportunity to reflect on a wonderful topic.
Thank you for this rich comment, Tom.
Now I am curious whether this was your mom’s explanation or the story you tell yourself about her choices?
What I have heard from some women who used to play second fiddle to their husband’s career all their lives are either of two outcomes: 1) disappointment that even in retirement he never had time for their wives but had to find a new “audience” or 2) exasperation that in retirement she had to provide all the social interaction because he never invested in any but his work relationships. (I am sure there are a lot of content women as well, but there are the complaints painful enough to let out.)
Intersting post, Charlotte
It seems people have similar thinking worldwide. In Denamark you have the olace where one must return to eventuallly.
In Egypt they say those who drink from the Nile River must return to Egypt.
You haveTHeHag Stone. These days Moslems celebrate Hag to Mecca and pilgrims strive to reach the symbol ofHag and that is the black stone.
If there are all these sayings about returning to our home towns, I wonder why so many of us are running around like crazy…