It's Robbie Burns Day today

Robbie Burns Day, January 25, includes Burns Night, with haggis and 'neaps (turnips) and, of course, malt whisky.  I remember with much affection, several Burns Night suppers in Edinburgh. By the fourth of these, Wendy and I began to feel a strong sense of belonging in Scotland, a feeling reinforced by the fact that by then our kids all had lovely Edinburgh Scots accents. I'm sad that they lost these lovely accents after we moved to Ottawa. Rebecca lost hers almost overnight, Jonathan after a few months. David, who had become a Scottish nationalist by the time we left Edinburgh, clung tenaciously to his for many years. Even now after 45 years I sometimes think I can detect a faint trace of it if I listen carefully. 'Sense of belonging' - yes, I have a post lined up and waiting to add to this blog after it's published in Ottawa Review of Books at the end of the month, a review of Adrienne Clarkson's Massey lectures, on the subject of Belonging. 

There was another Burns night, in 1956, a hot, airless night with not a breath of wind stirring. I was in my room at my mother's home in Adelaide, and my vigorous exchange of letters with Jan Wendelken in Christchurch, New Zealand, had begun to morph into a courtship by correspondence. I became aware of a distant, incongruous sound, the skirl of bagpipes. They came closer until they were obviously in the lane behind the house.  I put aside the letter I was writing and went out to investigate. There was a kilted bagpiper in full regalia - which looked as hot as the red-faced piper obviously was. His father told me, in a thick Gorbals accent, that they were celebrating 'Rabbie Burrrns Night' on their first January 25 in Australia.  I wished them Goodnight and went back to my letter-writing.

Here's part of my letter of January 25, 1956 to Wendy - I began addressing her as 'Wendy' a month or so earlier - This came near the bottom of p 2 of a 5-page letter:

9.30 pm So help me, a solemn youth has just marched up and down our back lane playing unbelievably badly "Nut Brown Maiden" on the bagpipes. And his father, when accosted, answered in thick (and sober) Scots, "It's Rabbie Burrrrns birthday!"  And so it is. I just looked it up. Life is never dull for long.

This letter was the one in which I said to Wendy that I regarded her as my confidant, my principal, in many ways, my only one, to whom I confided my hopes and plans for the future. From this letter onward, our letters to each other became more intimate, more revealing of thoughts rarely uttered out loud in ordinary conversation. I'll say more about this and our letters back and forth across the Tasman Sea, another time.