A684

A684

I saw your boot yesterday

peeking out at me from beneath a blanket.

And it made me wonder who you might have been

before you were just a boot - 

a red boot that looked quite heavy,

sticking out beneath that blanket. 

I think the blanket was wool,

And I wish it hadn't been.

It didn't look soft enough - 

your boot was already so hot and thick.

Something like this moment should have been much softer for you,

whoever you were before they covered you up with a wooly blanket,

knowing it wouldn't itch,

and hid what was left of you from passersby like me.

... Apart from that one boot the blanket couldn't reach,

because you must have been tall,

and probably a father, too, and many other things,

before you wrecked more than a day out in Cumbria,

and a once-beautiful bend on a stretch of perfectly good, English road,

where you just couldn't wait,

took the corner too quick,

and, head first, became a hot, thick, red, heavy, fucking upsetting boot. 

What a bloody waste.

Dear Theresa May, May I Please Go Home For Christmas?

Dear Theresa May,

May I please go home for Christmas? 

You see, it might seem ridiculous that I am asking you that question, but it has been more than a year since I was "allowed" out of this country, since you - via an incompetent team of your employed Border Agents and Home Office staff who have "dealt"(or not dealt) with me thus far -  began holding me hostage, imprisoning me so that I could not hold my family in my arms - all because I also happen to have fallen in love with and married one of your fellow English citizens, and would very much like to work alongside and share the rest of my life with him.

My husband may not be the Home Secretary, Ms. May, but he is just as English as you are. If I matter little because I happened to be born elsewhere, then know that you also have Andrew Passmore, an iconic musician, exceptional teacher, and once-proud and still outstanding Englishman in your hands. There is nothing I can say or write to wholly explain the weight of this burden of uncertainty and imprisonment on a young couple, no matter how strong that relationship, as is our own. The first year of marriage is meant to be bliss, but so far we have spent the first ten months of ours fighting a government that we have long had faith in to give us a document that will let us exist. You are paid and thus bestowed the incredible obligation to enable us to move on with our life. We have demonstrated that we meet the financial threshold, and are surpassing it even further now, so what else remains to be dealt with?

Even since the time of my application back in January, and since the time of my appeal in July I have been given extremely valued teaching posts at two reputable private schools in this country. As music teacher and housemistress I teach, coach, nurture, and sing to sleep up to 600 English children every day. Thank God that those institutions had enough faith in me to trust that I will be able to supply them with a passport “soon.” I am in need of updating my driving license to a UK license, so that I can assist with driving between schools, rather than relying entirely on my husband and drawing him away from his own work commitments, but am unable to progress with this process without my passport. It must be clear that we are both hard at work, and desperate to commit to and love our life here; the Home Office has, now, for too long wasted their resources on the wrong people. Andrew and I have been awarded a lucrative grant to compose a new work, and teach masterclasses on British music in America, in December. Thus far, we have not been able to accept these opportunities for ambassadorship, being unwilling to risk that my passport and visa would not be returned in time. My husband and I were on half term recently; as our students and colleagues flew off to rest and refuel in holiday destinations, or visit family around the world, we were denied these basic human rights to live and love and find happiness in the world around us. And that, again, Ms. May, is up to you.
You and your Home Office are effectively not only damaging our lives, but destroying our first year of marriage. Imagine, if you can, having the one you love bombarded on a daily basis with texts, phone calls, emails, and more of each, for nearly a year, being told they are here illegally, being threatened that if they do not leave they will not be allowed back into the country, and will face prosecution....all when, in fact, they have already won a battle they were forced to fight against your Home Office in which they proved they have every right, according to the immigration laws they understand, uphold, and respect, to settle and sustain their life here. This is our story, Theresa May. And these are the sorts of harassment we have been enduring for nearly a year, since the Border Agency made severe miscalculations when assessing our income, and claimed that we did not meet the £18,600 threshold for married couples; we proved in an appeal which has cost us over £3,000 of our wedding gift money in legal fees (even though this utterly ridiculous 'case' against us never even got as far as court) that our income nearly doubled the threshold at the time of our application, and yet still, several months later, I am still waiting to be granted a visa, to have my passport returned, am being harassed by the wrong subsidiary companies, and ignored by all those that matter. If you want more detail feel free to explore this previous post, which I wrote in the days leading up to our tribunal: How I Became A Girl Without A Country When we won in July we began rejoicing, especially when we were told it would be two weeks and I would have my passport in my hands again. It has now been nearly four months. I do wonder - do you find that acceptable? 

As I wrote in a recent letter, My English husband and I were lawfully and lovingly married on 29 December 2012. We made the decision to postpone any kind of honeymoon so that we could immediately send off my passport and Visa application, being aware of the timeliness of our situation, and that if we didn’t act quickly my student visa was due to expire at the end of January. Having all due respect for the institution and legal process of immigration we were sure to act quickly and thoroughly. However, in March we received word that my application had, mistakenly, been refused, on financial grounds – that I had ten days to appeal or leave (leave this country, my life, and my newlywed husband). We didn’t, in fact, have 10 days at all, because the refusal came on the wrong side of Easter, and with no post going in or out on the surrounding days of our “due date”, we had to rush everything – again – in order to have it all in on time. Having launched a legal appeal, paid out more than three thousand pounds in legal fees, and now having had the original decision withdrawn after submitting all of the same financial evidence, albeit in a more sophisticated form, I find it disheartening, incredibly frustrating, and profoundly ironic that the same body, whose strict deadlines we have stayed up numerous nights to satisfy has been so grossly unable to meet targets they have, in turn, offered us.
I have written several letters since to the supposed team who are meant to be looking at our case, and have received no acknowledgment. If they can offer me no hope, can you, Home Secretary, at the very least?

It has been two years since I was able to hug my grandfather. He is an 88 year old World War II veteran, who loves my English husband, and whose health fades year by year. If I do not get to be with him this Christmas, to sit on his lap, and sing carols, worshiping the Christ on whom our marriage is founded, that will be your responsibility. So, I ask again, because your team have refused to enable this country to become my own, and because I have asked everyone else at your Home Office already and have been completely ignored, please will you help me go home for Christmas? 

How I Became A Girl Without A Country

This post is for me. I apologize if it reads more like a meltdown than a blog this time around, but sitting idly by has never been a strongpoint of mine, and writing makes me feel better. [Forewarning: we've been watching How I Met Your Mother lately, and Ted's narrative style seems to be seeping into my voice at the moment.] So, here it is, kids: the story of how I became a girl without a country.

For those who don't know the ins and outs of world travel, or the wonders (and horrors) of ex-patriotism, allow me to enlighten you. My whole life I have been the kind who would have looked at the world through rose-colored glasses if I had the choice. I would think better of people until I was forced to experience the worst they could give me. It's not that I'm naive, or that I mistakenly understand ignorance to be bliss, but I have a deeply rooted desire for things to be better than they often are. It makes me, probably, a bit of a Madame Bovary. Everyone hates Emma, don't they? She's impossible to satisfy, and destroys herself because of it. But I actually relate to her in some ways. I relate to her desire to dance away life in an impassioned world of Dukes and fine cloth. The thing is, I believe, somehow, in my own supposed illusions: I have faith in a Divine plan for this life I'm living, no matter how impossible it is to decipher what that plan may be right now. I'm not blind to the fact that I am blessed, that I am utterly loved and in love, and that many of the experiences I have had singing, acting, writing, and traveling have taken me places that some people would never understand or dream of going. The point is - I came to England with the widest, most optimistic eyes this world has ever seen. I wish I could see the security cameras from Manchester Airport when I stepped off of that plane and had done it - had packed my life into two giant suitcases, left my home, and moved to England, all by myself. I'd survived a destructive relationship that had left my soul pretty emaciated for a while, I'd thrived and got my bachelor degree in music, I'd sung with the finest academic choirs in the world, and there I was, stepping off of that plane and onto beautiful, English, early and sacred-music enriched soil. I was healthy, I was happy, I was passionate, I was devoted to my dreams. But they are doing their worst to crush that optimism. Whoever "they" are, they're trying to beat down those passions, my love of this country, my desire to make music here, my enthusiasm to build a life and a family here with my husband. And, I think, that's why this phase of my - now, our - life is especially trying right now. By the end of this I'll hopefully have arrived at a possible reason why.

When Andrew and I got married in December, we had a month until my student Visa was going to expire, and so I had to send my passport (and his) to the UK Border Agency a couple of days after our wedding, so that I could swap from the student category into a married visa category. Sending our passports off meant there could be no honeymoon, but having my family and friends around us in England, many visiting for the first time, we wouldn't have wanted to hop on a plane and leave them there anyway. So the plan was always to send off the passports, wait to get them back within 3-6 weeks, and then start planning a long-awaited and much-desired delayed honeymoon. Unfortunately, many more than 6 weeks passed and we heard nothing. For those of you who don't know the immigration system (or lack thereof) they make it virtually impossible to track down an application. They do not provide phone numbers or emails, or any direct lines of contact. Basically, your only option is to wait until you hear from them. So that's what we did, from January until the end of March, when one day we came home to find a large envelope from the UKBA on the mat in front of our door. Now, I've been through the process of applying for a Visa on three occasions, and it's always gone smoothly before, but when they've sent me my letters to confirm that all was well they always came in small, thin envelopes, so when I came home to a large envelope I was immediately concerned. The nerves about the weight of this application set in, and I instantly had a stomach ache, and my heart raced. The ink on the front of the envelope looked scribbled in such a way that it didn't set my mind at ease; whoever had penned my name on the front thought I was a fool. But I had to open it, and when I did I found my Notice of Decision from the Border Agency, which was not only that I had been denied a married visa, but that I had 12 days to leave the country or (thank God) file an Appeal with the Immigration and Asylum Tribunal. My initial reaction was calm, that it had to be a mistake, so it would all be ok, but one look at Andrew's face, completely deprived of color, and I sunk with worry and concern and love for my husband, who I'd just dragged with me into an absolute mess. But there wasn't time for wallowing. When you're told you have 12 days to either build the biggest case of your life or give up your life, those 12 days swirl into a storm. Our 12 days happened to fall before Easter, so while we should have been singing long-anticipated Alleluia's on our first married Easter Sunday, we were admittedly whimpering them. I almost forgot to mention: Our "12 days" did not actually allow for Bank Holiday considerations, and since ours fell on the Easter weekend, meaning there would be no mail from Friday to Monday, we actually had fewer than 8 to get all of the evidence we needed together. We did it, and then came expense number one: £140 to request an Appeal with the Immigration and Asylum Tribunal. 

Before I go on it should be explained that the sole reason we have been denied this visa is purely financial. Despite paying them nearly £400 to process my application, this sect of the government, it seems, is incapable of working out self-employed income, and as musicians, much of our income comes in the form of performance. It's legitimate income, of course, and Andrew pays tax for his because of the nature of his work as a performer and private teacher. My visa, up until now, has restricted me to 20 hours of legal work per week while I was a postgraduate student, and I've not been able to legally self-employ in the UK, so everything I earn has had to be shared between us, which works fine because Andrew accompanies the lessons that I teach anyway and helps coach our students, so we happily share the income in his name - or, for all legal purposes, I donate my time and he gets paid. That being said, the government imposed a threshold of £18,600 in July of last year. Every couple applying for a married visa must make this between them in order to demonstrate that they can afford life in the UK without claiming benefits. We not only meet this threshold together, but exceed it by almost double. Still, however, the UKBA has mistakenly claimed that we do not meet that threshold. There is currently a massive debate going on within the government about the legality of this figure, by the way, and our lawyer has said that by the time we get to court next month it may no longer be law (it's that ridiculous, causing the destruction/separation of countless families. We take little comfort in knowing we're not alone, and count our blessings that we don't yet have children getting dragged into this.) 

Now, back to our 12 (actually 8) days of Appeal prep. My first instinct was to make sure that even if we had messed up our calculations and didn't make the £18,600, that I could fix that so that now we did. I started calling and emailing all of my employers, essentially pleading for help. Help came from my part-time job employers at a small Yankee Candle shop in York. They gave me a raise and added hours to my contract so that even if my previous income hadn't been enough that I would now make the £1,000+ pounds per year that they said we were missing. This set my mind slightly at ease, and was deeply appreciated, but it turns out it still wasn't the answer, because the Appeal verdict (my lawyer has since explained) doesn't necessarily take into account whether your situation has improved since the time of your original application. If you have a kind Judge at your hearing then he may look ahead at your future prospects (mine include a lecturing job I've already been offered to teach a course on British WWI poets and songs at the University, and an offer to lead a weekly music workshop for children at a local school) and give you some benefit of the doubt, but there are many who won't. So, back to the drawing board. We decided the best way to validate our self-employed income was to go to our accountant, and have him verify our income for us, including the past three years, so that we could show that yes - while you obviously won't sing or play for the same choral society, wedding, or funeral every year - these kinds of gigs are still dependable, and always pop up when you need them, as evidenced over the years. Any musician will understand the way this works. And there we have it - Cost number two: £500.00 for the overnight preparation of our accounts.

With the accounts in hand, proving our income comfortably exceeds the threshold, we submitted my Appeal and felt confident about our case, and about the prospect of saving the money for a lawyer and representing ourselves. "How could we lose? We're right." But that's when the phone rang. Andrew grew up with another boy in Hexham, whose father, it turns out, is one of the top immigration judges in the country. He'd heard through the small town grapevine about our case, and wanted to help. "You are fools if you do this alone" he said. "This is not just some meeting. You're going into battle." Thank God that he called. We'd hoped, naively, that maybe he could be our judge and just get the mess taken care of, but instead he insisted it would be more helpful if he requested not to have our case so that there could be no claim of conflict of interest. We told him we couldn't afford a lawyer, to which he replied that it would be far cheaper to get a good lawyer than it would be to go it alone, lose, have to pay my flight home to America, I'd lose my job, we couldn't afford to keep renting our house, we'd have to pay Andrew's way across because we wouldn't be able to bear being apart, we'd have to pay to re-apply for the visa from outside of the country, and then, all being well, we'd have to pay for me to fly back across again. He started getting in touch with his friends, asking for favors, trying to help us. Thank God. The lawyer who will represent us in court has taken us on as a favor to this Judge, so is offering her time freely to us. She, in turn, got us connected with a friend of hers, who has just been awarded the UK's Immigration Lawyer of the Year from the government, and he's agreed to represent us for half price. A major blessing, for which we're immensely grateful, but still another £750. 

I've mentioned, along the way, how the costs have kept adding up. It's also worth noting that every time we've had to mail anything we've had to have it signed for or recorded delivery - always the most expensive forms of posting, and we have had several now which total somewhere around £100 in mailing letters and documents back and forth to the UKBA. 

The current episode: When we received our initial denial letter back in March, all of my application materials were thrown into the envelope, unsorted, and I thought it was odd that everything came back except my passport, our marriage certificate, and our initial application which had been refused. I've since worked out that they are witholding my passport and will not return it until a ruling has been made, which could be several more months from now. I was supposed to be doing an early music program with Andrew in France this summer, but I'm not able to leave the country while my passport is witheld by the government, so those invitations have gone out the door. Next time I see my passport, it will either come back with my married Visa if we've won, or come back alone if we've lost and I have to leave the country immediately. Anyway, I was instantly very/most concerned that our marriage certificate wasn't returned, so I rang every number I could find and finally got through to an official who explained that if I requested any of these documents back then my case would automatically be thrown out, and I would have to leave the country immediately and reapply from outside of the UK. When I asked if I could at least have some reassurance that my marriage certificate was being witheld, since I didn't see any reason for that being missing, the woman on the phone apologised and said there was no record that they had it. Our precious, months-old marriage certificate, signed by both of our mothers on one of the most beautiful days of our lives, was probably lost, or, as I saw it, stolen from us by a disastrous office. The kind woman on the phone (for once) gave me the postal address of the office in Sheffield that would have handled my application, and suggested that I start writing letters. So I did. Immediately. 

I sent my first letter on the 8th of May, and heard nothing back until the middle of June, when, in some kind of miracle I got a second class package out of the blue containing our marriage certificate, along with a letter explaining that I should, also, have received a bundle containing all of the evidence the border agency was planning to use against us in court, including my initial application. However, that bundle never arrived. In fact, I'm certain it was never sent. You see, my letter was dated the 8th of May. In her letter the secretary confirmed that she had opened mine on the 28th of May, and that the bundle had miraculously been dispatched on the 8th of May, before she even received my letter requesting it....hmmm....Anyway, it goes without saying that I was skeptical it had been sent at all, furious that if it had been sent that such personal and financial account details were out floating somewhere and had been lost, and wondering what to do next. In her letter she said that if I hadn't received the bundle to let her know as soon as possible, and she was kind enough to give me a direct phone line to her. However, when I called the next working day, I received an answer from a male voice who laughed and informed me that she was now gone on leave, but that he could try to help in her stead. So my case passed on to him. Now, this was over a week ago, and I've been waiting for his phone call back since I explained everything and made a request for my original application. Until I receive that application back I can have no idea where their claims are coming from, or what we're fighting when we go into court - the uneasiness that lurks is distressing - did I somehow mess up and write the wrong figures in? Did I forget to include part of my or Andrew's income on the form? I can't imagine, in a million years, that I would not carefully check myself and be sure I wrote the correct figures in to add up to more than the threshold, but when you can't check you can only worry. I've done the math over and over again, and can not come to the figure they've provided. Anyway, I've been waiting more than a week to hear back from this guy. He's rung me twice on blocked numbers while I've been working and couldn't answer, and both times he's not left me a message or means of getting back in touch. Then, today I came home to another one of those all-too-familiar, dreaded envelopes. My stomach is getting used to sinking each time I see one. This time it was from him, and he wrote to tell me that he couldn't do anything to help, that he could see from my case file that my bundle had been sent, and he would not send another one, that I would get a copy of the bundle in court, and could then use it in my appeal if I so wished. Can I scream yet?

Because all of this isn't stressful enough, I've been quite humbly preparing the Doctoral thesis proposal of my dreams for the last several months, and in recent weeks I've been at the stage of beginning to ask funding questions. I knew I was too late for this year, because funding applications would have needed to be in right around the same time that I got my Visa refusal letter, and it pretty much squelched all of my best laid plans. My rather remarkable potential supervisor-to-be has been incredibly patient throughout all of this, though. We've met and phone conferenced together about the research I'm proposing, and he has expressed a desire to support this research with rather competitive and substantial funding. My first instinct, though, was still to prepare and apply for a Fulbright grant. My maternal grandfather was a Fulbright Scholar and I've dreamt for a long time that I might be able to carry on that legacy with my own PhD or DPhil. However, upon investigating the options available to me, I discovered that I am no longer eligible for Fulbright funding because I have lived in the UK for too long. *cue laughter* So, without completely sinking down, I looked up AHRC Funding, an even more generous grant-giving body in the EU, which funds Andrew's research and pays him a handsome stipend. Upon looking into their grants, however, I found that I have not lived here long enough to be eligible. That's when I sank. I am, truthfully, a girl without a country. My own says I've been gone too long, and the country I've adopted says I haven't been here long enough. I learned about Limbo and Purgatory for the first time when I was 14 in my high school freshman English class, but I never fully grasped why they belong in discussions of Hell until now, 11 years later, when I'm supposed to be basking in the bliss of my first year of marriage, and am instead fighting to have a place we can call home together. 

...which is why I'm tired, and why I'm weary, and why it's getting harder to pretend to smile, and why I think I look really old when I look in the mirror. I hate fighting. I don't want to have to fight for every little or big thing any more. The fact that I have to fight just to get a day off from work before the day of the trial somehow becomes that much more ridiculous when you just want to scream, "why are you making me fight about something as small and inconsequential and ridiculous as this, too?!!!"

But then I talk to my father, and he reminds me before he goes to snuggle my napping mom that the demons who are attacking us have nothing more than earthly shit to fling. And when the path that God's preparing for me, and for my husband, and for us finally reveals itself....I have faith that it will become clear just why Satan is fighting so hard right now to keep us from reaching that Divine destination of ours. I think it's gonna be pretty good, guys. Stay posted. 

Better Late Than Never: Lullabies For Little Ones

A recording project I am enormously proud of: "Lullabies For Little Ones" has now launched, and has finally come to fruition. Should you happen upon this post please consider purchasing this CD on itunes, amazonmp3, or CDBaby.com. Proceeds will go towards producing physical CD's, which will be presented to new parents who may benefit from the provision of traditional lullaby music for their babies. Click below for links!

Click Here For My New Lullaby CD, released Feb 2013

Not All Who Wander Are Lost...Really.

I attended a service of praise and thanksgiving this morning at Queen Margaret's School, where Andrew is organist, and the Chaplain left me thinking. Thanks, Chaplain. This was the morning in which the girls and their families sit together to worship at the school for the last time before summer term comes to an end and the girls go off into the world to their various new universities. As the Chaplain addressed the graduates he called upon them to simply follow two rules of advice: to be kind, and to be humble. To go into the world, humbly, he said, is to (as the latin 'humus' suggests) be closer to the earth...to go humbly into the world, then, is to have both feet firmly planted on the ground; to live humbly, then, is to be grounded. He acknowledged the value of being recognized for the accomplishments and talents we've been given, but went further to say that it is, also necessary to remember to be grateful to the hands that nurtured those talents and made those accomplishments possible in our lives.

I don't think I was particularly engaged in worship this morning. My head has been clouded, I have been guilty of consistent worrying, my body and heart are admittedly weary. But no matter my resistence to enter into an attitude of worship I found myself caught up in prayer, whether I liked it or not. God was speaking to me, and I was going to listen. If I'm perfectly honest I have not felt grounded lately. My music degree has been over since January, and my creative writing masters coursework finished this week, and while I have quite a few beautiful gigs lined up, I've been taking quite a lot of mundane work just to keep financially stable in preparation for a catastrophic amount of student loans coming due very soon when my full-time student status comes to a hiatus. Lots of people have asked what comes next. First and foremost is our December wedding. It's a beautiful thing sharing engaged life with my best friend, and it seems to be the straightest, clearest path in front of me. I want to begin a PhD desperately, but the trouble is I'm not sure which direction I want to take myself in. I can't seem to choose between early childhood, renaissance performance, baroque performance, English...and I don't think I've been a good listener lately. I've been too ungrateful - borderline resentful - of my varied passions.

When I was 4 years old and graduated pre-school I was awarded "Class Caregiver" and "longest hair" (which I'd cut crazily short the day before the ceremony, but they still let me keep it). When I was 14 and graduated middle school I was awarded "Jill of All Trades." When I was eighteen and graduated high school I was awarded "Most likely to become rich and famous" and "Most Musical." Lately I've been predominantly feeling overwhelmed by my interests in just about everything. I love working with children - I love the nurturing and care that is involved, I love writing, I love acting, I love language, I love making music - medieval, baroque, contemporary, solo, choral - I love teaching, and above all else I love performing. But this morning was a reminder that, perhaps, the reason I am not grounded is that I have been worrying and worrying, allowing myself to fear what will or won't come next in my life as an artist, as a musician, as a writer, as a teacher. I sleep poorly at night wondering what I'm going to be, what I'm going to be able to do to contribute to our life, to make something of myself upon which I can help build our family. And, as this morning reminded me, I have not been thanking the God that gave me these passions. I've not been allowing myself to see that my various gifts/passions were/are first and foremost gifts, given for me to use, from my Father. How arrogant, actually. Instead I've been seriously resenting the fact that I'm stretched across multiple disciplines. If I've been learning anything, though, it's that music is at the core of my being. All of my other passions are like evergreen roots that spread out from a musical core. But rather than worry, for now, it's time to start trusting that everything is going to be ok. I have a dissertation to start and complete in two months on children's literature, I have a 'Venetian Carnival' concert to prepare of Grandi, Monteverdi, Strozzi, Vivaldi, a joint 170th birthday party performance of Mozart and Purcell to prepare for one of the founding fathers of the early music movement, I have a French Baroque and English Baroque concert for da gamba, voice, and two harpsichords to prepare for September, I've started an artist management business that's going surprisingly well, and I've taken an additional three part-time jobs this month, and I seem to have a wedding to plan : ) Writing it all down is like a splash of cold water on my face. I've been worrying so much about letting my musical life take a backseat to everything else, but, as ever, it seems to be the solidarity around which everything else is happening.

Dear Heavenly Father,
Thank You for the gifts You have given me. Thank You for the hands you gave me to care with, for the voice you gave me to sing with, for the ambitious mind you gave me to dream with. Help me to see that they are given, that they are purposeful, that they are mine to use in Your name, in Your will.

...Not all who wander are lost....Tolkien is so right.
-Nia

Better Late Than Never?

I owe my sincerest apologies for such a long, 6-month-or-so absence. Life, it seems, has decided to abruptly sweep me off my feet...or, rather, an Englishman named Andrew has! So many people have been asking about everything that's been going on since our engagement last October and I thought this might be the easiest way to give an update, so here's a nutshell version for all of our friends around the world:


Andrew and I met when I first arrived at the University of York in October of 2010. In fact, he was the first  person I met (God has an interesting way of making great stories happen in our lives before we can even possibly begin to realize it) when my supervisor brought me to see him rehearse in the concert hall. He was in a dress rehearsal for a concert of music by Strozzi and Monteverdi...anyone who knows me would agree I should've known then and there that I'd fall hopelessly in love with the man. But it was a long time before our sweet friendship turned wholesomely, and beautifully into the romance of our lifetimes. We became colleagues and friends first, and over the course of a thrilling academic year I came to wholly respect and admire his musicianship, leadership, and utter selflessness in his caring for literally everyone. I had never met someone that I couldn't keep up with before, let alone who could really keep up with me...what a fun challenge, I thought : ) But it hasn't been a challenge, it has been a thrill, and our lives have found the most wonderful pace now that they are woven together and heading in one common direction toward marriage and our future. August was our beginning, and by October we were engaged. Life has been the most beautiful whirlwind imaginable since then. When Andrew asked me to marrry him he took me at midnight to Hexham Abbey, the church where he grew up singing as a chorister and playing organ. He'd convinced me that we couldn't get in any earlier to tune a harpsichord he needed to play the next day, but once we were alone inside he convinced me he couldn't concentrate and would I follow him up these long, winding, spiral steps so he could show me something. Up we climbed, high above the rafters of this incredible abbey, basically inside of the organ all the way to the top. From up there you could see everything. It was exquisite, especially in the dim light of autumn midnight. A used to climb around up there when he was a little boy. I had told him that if he was going to propose to me I wanted him to ask me somewhere that meant a lot to him, since so much of England was all still foreign to me then. He sat me down on a box, and when I looked up he was down on one knee in front of me. From there I can't tell you much, because I honestly went slightly into shock and I have NO IDEA what he said! I was able to snap out of my shock enough to hear a few key things near the end, enough to be sure of what was happening. The proposal was perfect, the first ever up inside the organ at the Abbey. The next night the Abbey congratulated us by offering us a complimentary evening with a private spot in the choir stalls to hear Stile Antico sing a candlelight concert. You should've seen this diamond sparkle while we sat there listening to Palestrina and basking in the loveliness of it all...I never truly understood how diamonds could be a girl's best friend until that evening :p

Driving down the road to Devon, our (crosses fingers) future home

Wild horses in Devon

The last 6 months have been a gorgeous whirlwind. We've traveled around the country together, seen all sorts of incredible things. One special trip took us to visit Andrew's maternal grandparents down in Devonshire. I always wondered what it would feel like when you find the place you want to live the rest of your life. First, I found Andrew. All I knew then was that wherever he goes I want to go too, and then came Devon. There are palm trees in Devon. I kid you not, there are palm trees in England! There are quaint amusement parks with steam engine trains and peacocks, there are moors and dales to climb on where you can just walk up and pet wild, wandering horses, France is just across these exquisite harbors on the English channel that light up at night with fairy lights along the water and the tied up boats. It is paradise to me. The docks smell like homemade sugared doughnuts even in wintertime when those summer stalls are tucked away for the season. We've been dreaming about settling there to one day start a family ever since, but all in time, and first there is a PhD and a second masters to finish in York, and we are so blessed and happy to be living in our gorgeous little studio flat here, just a few minutes walk from campus, and a short hop into the city centre we both still love.

A weekend or two after our engagement took us on
our first visit to Granny Rita and Grandad in Devon where this photo was taken

Now, I feel truly guilty for neglecting to respond to a treasured teacher's request to know more about Christmas in  York. I let the busy music/performing season and a choir tour of England get the best of me, and my chance to blog slipped by, so, Mr. Denis, this is for you. Better late than never? 

Last year I posted here ( Christmas 2010 post ) about a Christmas/Advent experience I had in York. The season is indescribably beautiful. All of York begins to celebrate the holidays far earlier than they/we do in America. When I first arrived here I noticed it straightaway, and almost immediately knew I had come to the right place, because I LOVE Christmas. Americans get upset when holiday music plays on the radio before Thanksgiving...in York Christmas decor is out and the preparations for the season begin even before Halloween. I, personally, think it's wonderful! The real intense stuff like Christmas fayres, etc...doesn't come 'til much later, and I suppose that is what's really worth writing home about : ) This year York put on a gorgeous Christmas fayre in December, which came just days after the St. Nicholas Fayre and Market, and according to the press "It's official - York is now the most Christmassy place in Britain." We took a few pictures of the city centre in York to show you what it looked like in 2011: 

I may be too scared to drive here for now, but
I love filling up the car despite the expensive cost in £ (eek!)

Outside of York Christmas was in full swing as well. Andrew and I have the advantage of having a car (although I'm still too chicken to drive on the "wrong" side), so we get to go exploring all sorts of places together outside of the city, in various English counties, which I've decided are divided up geographically around the country kind of like states are in the US. Each one has its unique characterictistics and flavors, some are far more attractive than others, some much more industrialized, others purely pastoral. This year we ventured about an hour and a half outside of the city to a tiny village called Grassington. Now, Grassington re-defines middle of nowhere. Going there was one of the loveliest drives I've ever been on, literally in the seemingly middle of nowhere. There was the occasional farmhouse but for the most part there is nothing at all until, at long last, you arrive. What brought us there, you ask? The Grassington Dickensian Festival, celebrating its 30th Anniversary year! Check it out here: Grassington Festival  Essentially the villagers all come out and dress up on three Saturdays during the month of December. There are all kinds of wonderful events, but mostly everyone walks about singing and drinking mulled wine, and all in Victorian costume a la Charles Dickens (hence the festival name of course). When Andrew and I arrived things were winding down, but the first thing we saw were three school-aged boys in full costume singing songs from "Oliver" and shaking a tin can to earn some money. I could have pinched myself. In fact, I might have. There were barrels of fired coal placed all around the village to offer the relief of some fire warmth from the freezing cold temperatures. The pictures on their website are far better than mine came out in the dark but I'll post a few anyway. 

Andrew getting a very hot cuppa hot chocolate from a Dickensian

One of the lit barrels in the village to warm our hands

Throw in a lot of adventures over a few wonderful months, a trip to America to meet the family (!), a Messiah tour around England with our new harpsichord (!!!) and that, my friends, is the last few months in a nutshell! Oh, and I got my Masters degree in January too : ) I promise I'll do better and write more frequently again soon. So much to share - finishing up this second masters in creative writing, planning a wedding in Northumberland! And we're off to France next week for a Valentines/Birthday trip! Believe me, the posts will definitely come. Is it fair to be so happy? : ) 

Finally, a few other pictures from the beginning of 2012, and our first snowfalls in Hexham (where Andrew grew up) and in York just this week!

Our car, and the view from the Passmore household in Hexham...if you look close
you can see the Abbey where Andrew proposed to me in the distance

Sheep fields : )

St. Andrew's Church, Corbridge, where we'll be married December 29th this year!

A snowy Clifford's Tower (medieval castle ruins) in York city centre

The walled city of York in the snow

Wintery Walmgate

A beautiful house on our road, made even more lovely beneath the snowfall

One masters degree - check!

A Lollipop and Some Confetti

Just when I feared my blog was at risk of falling out of use the last seven days happened. I don't even know where to begin to describe the week, except to say that since my Nana passed away just over a month ago things have come to pass that were entirely unexpected, and it seemed to play itself out in a whirlwind this week. It all started with a lollipop and some confetti:

Those of you who've known me for some time probably know that my Nana and I were very close my whole life. She wasn't just the warm, loving matriarch of our family; she was also my confidant, playmate, and fellow mischief monger. We are utterly connected, and as we grew older together she was ever embracing more and more of her childlike self, so that we could meet somewhere in the middle and playfully embrace life together every perfect time we had the chance. This meant things like sneaking out of the house with my Poppop at 11:00 at night to get late-night cheesecake at 24-hour diners, sitting on the couch nibbling entire boxes of cellas together, a lifetime of trying to sneak an early peek at unopened Christmas presents, and whimsical days of eating popcorn and gawking at cute boys at Circuses. My spirit, I think, is somehow infused with much of her own. I've never taken it lightly that my middle name is hers, that in a family of hazel, green, and brown eyes both of ours are blue. 

You might also know, or you might not, that my Nana loved to try to sneak trinkets and silly things out of restaurants and diners...forks, salt shakers, sugar packets, etc...completely harmless but it always earned her a good scolding from all of us. Additionally, and more immediately important for the sake of this post, she also tended to ask for sweets every time we went anywhere. This could be candy, or ice cream, or cheesecake, but probably more than the others she always wanted to be rewarded with a lollipop, like a child who's behaved well at their doctor or dentist appointment. Now, I'm not an especially superstitious person, but literally since the moment she passed away last month I have been finding lollipops everywhere. And I don't really eat candy, but these lollipops keep showing up everywhere I go. More significantly they're usually dum-dums, and I don't even know if they sell those in England. Yet, every couple of weeks or so I find one lying on the ground, once on the floor in front of my bedroom door at my flat. The day my Nana passed away my Aunt found one lying on the ground next to the car door at our usual diner.

As if all of this wasn't enough then came the confetti. The day I got home to England after flying back to America for the funeral, I dropped my suitcase onto the floor and collapsed onto my bed after a long, physically and emotionally draining journey, and as I turned over onto my side I saw a tiny glimmer next to my eye on the pillow where I was resting my head. I sort of sat up to look at it, and lying there on the pillow was a single piece of golden confetti, in the shape of a graduation cap. The sequence of events here is significant for the skeptics amongst us...I simply walked in the door, set my bags down on the floor about five feet away, and laid down in bed. And there was a piece of confetti on the middle of my pillow that I am certain was not there when I left...as it turns out, it is identical to the confetti my family used at my baby cousin's high school graduation party in Long Island, New York, a couple of weeks before Nana left us. If it is all merely coincidence and nothing more then it's a lovely one that makes me smile, but for me these lollipops and that tiny piece of confetti have been the kisses on the cheek I miss most about her. They've meant feeling like she's with me when I need her most, as if to assert that she's not far away, that it's all going to be ok. The family is going to be ok. And that's where all of this starts. 

Blissful afternoon in Edinburgh, eating ice cream at the park with friends

I think the best way to do this is to explain the timeline of a few events: I woke up on Monday morning in York, went to sleep on Monday and Tuesday night in Edinburgh, Scotland. I was back to sleep in York on Wednesday and Thursday, and on Friday I was sleeping on a bus that was taking me all the way to London through the night, and then on to Paris. By Saturday afternoon I'd spent some time in Paris, and by Saturday night I was in Vernon, sleeping just a couple of miles from Giverny, where Claude Monet once painted his waterlilies. On Sunday morning I woke up to French bread and coffee, went to Monet's jardins et maison for a brief but breathtaking visit, walked through the Impressionists' Museum gardens, and then got into the car and headed to spend the next couple of days in a beautiful seaside town in the north of France called Honfleur. Apparently it is a very popular tourist spot with the Brits. Monday night I got onto a train and made my way to the outskirts of Paris to sleep in a beautiful flat in the business district. I woke up on Tuesday morning in Paris, made my way via the Metro to the bus station, drove through the afternoon to Calais, boarded a ferry, made it back to London by early evening, waited anxiously for a few hours in Victoria Station, and by 5 am on Wednesday morning I was back sleeping in my bed in York. Wow? Wow.

Now, I do have the most insatiable appetite for travel ever, but even for me this week was, quite simply, nuts. But the thing is, I feel like it's expected of me, kind of like the torch has been passed on or something (admittedly silly) like that. My Nana's story is built on the greatest love story I've ever heard. It's the greatest love story most people have ever heard. Just ask and I'll tell you sometime. I just keep thanking God because I don't know what else to make of all this, for every perfect day that I get to savour. Who knows if my own will be a love story, but these days I can feel my roots spreading out, soaking up rain and planting themselves right where I am in the soil of a story that is beginning to brew beneath the surface of my life, and whether it turns out to be a love story or not it will be my story, and so far it is turning out to be indescribably beautiful...

This is all stirring up so much poetry in me :)

Finding Aengus

 




















Looking deep into orange shadows

 cast in the glow of dying embers and cooling ash,

anyone, lulled, would be drifting to sleep,

but I must tell you, first,

before I, sinking, seek you

in the delicate hush of my dreams,

that today, when I was with you,

for the first time found a hazel wood,

felt breathlessly alive in its fragrant breeze.

I've ached all my life for this place we passed by,

pitifully wandering while ages of apple blossoms 

withered in my sea-salted hair and died.

But today, as if it no longer wanted to hide,

there it was on the road, quelling my thirst

like a kiss long desired.

And perhaps it would matter little 

but as I felt my spirit flying off into the wind,

clinging only to the shiver of your eyes fixed on me,

I recognized the heavy branches of my secret forest,

saw its aged sign peeking out behind fruit-laden trees,

and just then came floating in my ravished mind

welcome thoughts of one day waking to the only

thing now left in this world worth seeking:

I would not ask you to be for me the sky,

no matter if we are old or young,

only to simply, when the time is right,

kiss my lips and take my hands,

and as the hazel wood beside me, 

forevermore be.