Traces of Time

1 of 5 pieces, cross stitch on linen
170 cm x 270 cm
2002/2003

Relatives

Novel by Nils Viga Hausken

Once, long ago, a close friend told me a story about two elderly relatives she had known. They passed away aeons since, barely lived in my lifetime at all.
The brother and sister, as they were, dwelled all their lives in the house in which they had been born. They lived a quite life and neither asked for nor expected much.

On light spring evenings, when the migrating birds returned from their winter sojourn in the Southern Hemisphere, the companions would walk high up to the ridge to listen to the birds singing.
In a leafy glade they had fashioned a bench of stone.
Evening after evening here they would sit.
Not conversing, just enjoying the sound of the birds.

Recently, I went up to the ridge to look for their stone hewn seat and I wanted to hear those birds.
I didn’t find a path. The small clearing was now dense with trees and the view obscured. The bench was nowhere to be seen. Eventually I spied a rise between a group of trees. Beneath moss and undergrowth I found some remnants of the bench. There was very little of it left. But the songs of the birds remain.

Translated by Jane Power