What If I Stayed?

and other questions that make me cry

The fields are brown. The leaves are heading the same way…

I leave. It’s what I’m used to. It’s what I do.

I start a new school. I make friends. A year, maybe two. Then I go. On to the next.

A new job, a new city, a new crowd. A new language, a new country. Whatever it is. I leave and move on to the next.

There’s a song called The Parting Glass that I first heard as the hidden track on Ed Sheeran’s first album. It’s a traditional Scottish song, a farewell, sung at the end of an evening, and it speaks to me deeply. Scotland, after all, is one of the many places I have left.

Women who wander need departure songs.

So fill to me the parting glass, goodnight and joy be with you all

That’s the last line of every verse. Versions vary from singer to singer, from Irish influences to Scottish ones. There’s a refrain that’s sometimes there and sometimes not. The song is alive. You can’t pin it down or solidify it, but you can carry it with you when you move. It can move with you. It moves with me.

It played on repeat as I packed up my apartment in Cape Town, preparing to move to London in 2014. The cupboards grew emptier, the cases grew fuller, and I saw myself, perhaps in the form of an old man, sitting at an inn, ready to get up and go. Don’t fill a glass to me, for I drink not alcohol, but indeed, as the lyrics declare, I must rise - and I wish you all joy. Then off I went to London.

The first time I sang the song for others was on a stage in Soho, three years later. Having allowed the corporate world to chew me up and spit me out, I needed to sing. Singing soothed my soul. It forced me to breathe. It was a practice in holding my head high, opening my heart, and sharing my voice. The 6-week singing course I took culminated in each one of us complete and utter amateurs singing a solo on stage, to the rest of the class. I sang The Parting Glass. Then, a few months later, I left London.

I sang it in Cape Town, to a fellow storyteller, in the corner of the room, while our class was on a break. It brought tears to her eyes. If I remember correctly, she said she’d like me to sing it at her funeral. I sang it again a week or two later, to a small audience in my living room. I was engaged by then, to a man living in Italy, so I knew I would be leaving again soon.

I’ve been singing it again this week because I love it and it soothes me, but I want to stop leaving. I’ve been wondering. What if I stayed?

Leaving is what I do, or at least, what I have done but does it have to be? What if I stayed this time? Day in, day out, season after season, until I grow old and even after that.

What if I sang you this song tonight, simply because I’m leaving my laptop and going to sleep? What if there was no greater departure to be marked? What if I had friends here, and I knew I’d probably see them again during the week, and again throughout the months, and the years, and at their children’s weddings and when their grandkids came to visit, and then at their funerals too?

Tonight, I offer you my voice, alongside my written words, while I sit vulnerably in these questions. It is strained, shaky and imperfect which is exactly how I feel this week. Goodnight and joy be with you all.