This day my son is 40. For him this will probably feel like ripe old age, as it does for most of us. I can’t believe I am 40. Where did my youth go? It has been rudely swiped from my grasp without asking me if I minded. Time, it seems, has the swiping hand. Those of us who can’t even remember being 40, never mind being supple of limb and encased within a skin that doesn’t sag in all the wrong places, chuckle. We, after all, are miles ahead of the 40 year olds, all of us wrinklies pretending we aren’t, wrinkly, and all of us wishing we didn’t grunt on rising from a low slung garden bench. We tell the somewhat astonished sudden 40 year old that they have all these joys to come, countering the generational ‘joke’ with compliments on their achievements and their tight skin.

I remember turning 40. I was mother of five feral children but still in good shape, externally at least. I knew something was afoot but not what. There was an unusual amount of whispering in corners throughout the house. This, in my experience as a mother was nothing unusual. There are about 20 books of whisperings in corners that were never published. Bright and overly loud reassurances pinged around the walls like balls. No, nothing Mum, really. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! (again). Eyes full of darts between them, eyes avoiding mine. I just went about my daily work but inside I hugged the secret with no name, for today, it was all about me.

Around 4pm there was a knock at the door. Nobody knocks at doors on the island. In fact, the only need for a door at all is to keep the rain out and the dogs in. Framed in the well-chewed doorway (dog trying to escape) stood a nun. I thought at first it was Sister Michael, who had encamped herself in a caravan not far away and who flew about in the wind like a crow, her habit billowing out behind her like a sail. It wasn’t her. Who was it? My innate politeness kicked in and I welcomed whoever she was. Behind her stood my mother-in-law. Well, that wasn’t odd at all being, as she was, a devoted catholic. Nuns and priests were never very far away from my mother-in-law, but I did wonder at her thoughtlessness arriving with said nun, all grins and expecting tea and cake, on this, my 40th birthday.

It took me a good few seconds to recognise the nun. My mum. No, my mum is 600 miles away from here and she is definitely not nun material. But it was her. She had purchased the nun habit some time before and had turned up at smart parties inside it, trying not to giggle and making everyone laugh as mum always did, the joker in the pack. This well kept secret was the best of all gifts. My mum, nun notwithstanding, had planned to arrive this very day, just for me. I felt very loved. My kids had arranged a secret party and the evening was perfect. I found a photograph someone had taken of my face, mouth wide open, eyes bright, the surprised one. A perfect click. It smiles me now, when I look on it, on that face, so young, so tightly skinned, eyes like marbles in sunlight.

So this is a tribute to my son. In whom I am more than well pleased, not just for what he has achieved, which is a very great deal in terms of achievements, inner wisdoms learned, his peaceful warrior heart, his fierce and loving protection of his family, but also for his choosing me to be his mother. Happy birthday James. Remember this day, because tomorrow, it will twist away from you and be gone.

Lunar light is liminal. Lots of ells in there. Liminal is a word I like and its meaning even more. ‘Relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process.’

For most people this liminality passes by without being noticed at all from behind closed eyelids whilst held warmly in the arms of sleep. But not for me. I have entered what appears to be the place of liminal in my life for I do not sleep warmly in anyone’s arms for more than an hour or two. I can see the lunar light, even when the clouds curtain mother moon all around so that only God can see her face. It’s a greenish light, limpid, spread like swamp water across the floor of my room and it sinks my heart every time I wake to find it there. It isn’t that I have a dislike of the moon, far from it, but I don’t want to have to watch her for hours on end. In another time, I didn’t mind at all, turning to look back at the lunar glow seeping around the edges of my curtains and just knowing I could turn away to find sleep again, those arms around me, gently rocking. Not now, and now is precisely the time I need this rest because the demands of dementia are ever growing like an invading army. At first, it was just the beat of marching feet, distant but moving nearer each day. Now they come in tanks that turn the roads of my life into powder dust, destroying the boundaries and crushing the fences. I can keep moving back, but I am just me and they are legion.

I know I am not alone. There are gazillions of broken carers in this world and we all fight it at first shouting What About Me? a lot, to a sky without ears or heart. The quandary of dementia caring is that the carer may shout till hoarse into the oncoming hurricane, even knowing the pointlessness of making such demands on the only set of vocal chords allocated to them, and, yet, what is happening to the cared-for-one is beyond their control. All logic moved out somewhere mid-stage and has no plans to return. Conversations do not exist. Even the word ‘conversation’ is too long to define any exchange of words between us. It is more like random bursts of fire, and not always friendly. He can’t help it. She can’t help it. They can’t help it. Yes, yes, we know that. But how on earth are we to keep breathing through this, let alone imagine living beyond it, whenever that may be. Another dilemma. We want it over. We don’t want it over. And, yet, the person we spent our lives beside, the one who guided, disciplined, protected, laughed with, who soothed our pain, walked tall and full of hope has already gone a long time ago. Is it cruel, in this light of knowledge to wish it over? Yes, at times when the voice of Thankfulness sings from her fence post. Look at what you had. Look at what you have. Kick that self-pity out of the window. And No at others when you are beaten down to a serving girl with no glass slipper in sight. I never know what to think or which is right and which is ‘wrong’. I also know that both are understandable once voiced to another. They show many faces of sympathy but behind their eyes they’re thinking Thank God That Isn’t Me as they turn back to their own homes, devoid of mobility aids and raised toilets, homes for which they are suddenly very grateful indeed.

I am searching for ways to love the liminal light of the lune. Instead of wishing it away, I look it up in the dictionary and decide to use it to my advantage, to absorb the light into myself, to become a part of it and it of me. The second definition for Liminal is ‘ occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.’ Now that sounds like a fine place to be. If I am on both sides of a boundary or threshold, I am really rather marvellous. Versatile. Agile. Sounds good. I may be sleepless but right now I am awake. There is a day ahead when the sun might show his face through those determined clouds, but even if he can’t push through, I can.

And, what’s more, I will.