The Shining Places
From the End to the Beginning
by
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In a long marriage, both partners mutate; the people who set out together are not the same two people after ten years, let alone after thirty or more. When accommodation is no longer possible it is usually because one or the other has become so much someone else as to be on a different journey. Our marriage has been like many, if not most: a river with calm reaches, treacherous bends, and episodes of white water to be navigated with caution and steady nerve. . . After many years of marriage there is a third and shadowy presence which is an entity—the fusion of you both—who walks beside you. It is your corporate experience, a private existence, invisible to and impenetrable by others. In his beginning work as a poet,“The Wasteland”, T. S. Eliot wrote: Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you Gliding wrapped in a brown mantle, hooded, I do not know whether a man or a woman --But who is that on the other side of you? 360 - 366 He was, critics agree, descanting upon the Emmaus Road resurrection story, but to me the allusion is a perfect illustration of what I have tried to explain about marriage. And it is with this image of the hooded third figure that I now move from the solipsism of my own earlier memoir to the post-Alan, or post “walking beside you”, story. It is my hope that the children who have blessed our shared lives will recognize this recorded testament for what it is--a legacy--and value it as such.
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About the Book
In her memoir The Shining Places: From the End to the Beginning, Hetty Clews retraces a lifetime of travels, not only in landscape, but also in literary pursuits, theatrical experience, and the exploits of her much-loved family.
Clews begins with recollections about a childhood largely circumscribed by war, but also sprinkled with such touching moments as sharing the top of her father’s egg on Sunday mornings and the realization that he would carry her when her legs became too tired. As she details life experiences from more than eighty years that include entrance to a university that opened an exciting pathway to an astonishing new world of books and a career in teaching, Clews also offers essays and anecdotes about marriage, family, and the uncertainties and joys that accompany any coming-of-age journey.
In this compelling, sometimes humorous memoir, one woman illustrates through her diverse personal experiences how beginnings can ultimately be discovered in endings.
About the Author
Hetty Clews earned degrees from the University of Birmingham, England, and the University of Saskatchewan. She was a professor of English and theatre for many years and has won several awards for teaching, acting, and writing. Hetty and her husband, Simon, have three children and live in Victoria, Canada.