Where are my roots?

I’ve challenged myself to write twenty pieces, each inspired by one word from a random list I found online. The next one on my list is ‘Root’, and it’s been tricky. I was also stumped because I’d misremembered that in our writing group ‘Root’ had been one  of the suggestions for our writing. In fact, it wasn’t Root, but ‘Rope’. After much thought I’ve tried to write about my own roots – and to be honest, I’m not very satisfied with what I’ve written – but here is a first draft:

Root

Where are my roots? I would have to say Cambridgeshire, even though only part of my ancestry is to be found there. Despite my roots being deep in my Cambridge, I have other roots – mum’s family came from Littlehampton, and also from London and Tasmania, from the Jewish settlements and cities of Europe. In Cambridge are places I lived, places my family lived, schools I attended, and roads and streets I walked and cycled along.
 I was born  in Cambridge, so was my sister, my grandma and my dad who lived there all his life until he was forty-seven. My parents were married in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre more commonly known as the Round Church, and had their children (us) Christened there. So Cambridge is my blood, my bones, Cambridge made me. I walked its paths and byways, I cycled its streets and roads, I explored its countryside and swam in its river.
When we moved west I – we – accepted that there was no alternative, but we didn’t forget our city, and all of us secretly longed to return. I no longer wish to go back except to visit, too many other things have happened and I have become planted in the west.
I realise that my Cambridge no longer exists. Change is inevitable in this world, at an ever more rapid pace, but many years have passed since Cambridge was my city. (Despite the lack of a cathedral, Cambridge is a city) I have a different Cambridge in my memory, and my dad’s Cambridge and his stories having become attached to mine.
In junior school I was taught history. It would seem very simplistic now, but it started with what was then thought to be the birth of ‘civilisation’ in the lands of the Tigris and Euphrates (how wonderful and magical those names sounded to me) As far as I remember the next step was the Roman Empire which we were taught reached Britain and discovered there was a small settlement at a crossing place on the River Granta. The Granta still flows (its lower stream is called the River Cam) and the bridge over it gave the settlement its name Grantabridge – which morphed into Cambridge. Cambridge was also at the crossroads of two Roman roads: Akeman Street which led out into the Fens, and Ermine Street, the road to the north. When I was a child, I would cycle along Akeman Street – never realising this narrow urban road was the footprint of the Romans.
The Granta, and the Cam were my watery roots, I canoed and punted along them, and swam the course of the river through the city, and the Granta through Rupert Brooke’s village. I cycled beside them and over them, my childhood was entwined with them, or they with my childhood. I’m rooted in Cambridge, but those roots are fed by my rivers.

Needs some more work I think!! My featured image is an old newspaper cutting showing the Portland Arms in Cambridge where the Elsdens lived for many years.