Author: judyfairbairns

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Island Blog – An Olding with a Rainbow

For a wordsmith, words can fail me. It is tempting to think that this is a definite, the way it will always be. So melodramatic, but true, nonetheless. In the olding years there are many such quandaries, and much melodrama. We, who when younger faced down everyone else’s demons, including our own, with a get-up-and-go attitude, find ourselves something. Let me find the word…….old comes to mind, alone, lonely, less able, scared, less confident. Okay, none of those do the state justice. Let’s try this. Time. Yes, that works. We are inside a time we never thought would come, as nobody does. Once we were pivotal to the forward motion of our children, our husband or wife or partner. The other to another. In moments shared, in listening, hearing, encouraging, we were the ones who lifted, applauded, held gently back and let go when the fire was strong in a belief, a truth, watching, hoping, believing.

There’s a lonely in olding. Everyone has moved into their own futures, and rightly so, because the otherwise of that isn’t a healthy thing. No young should feel obliged to stay, in my opinion. However, what seems to be a defining lack here are the opportunities for oldies. Oh, I know about meditation and yoga for the over 65’s, the book clubs and the many other sedentary gatherings (excluding yoga), but that is not enough. What about learning to manage a chainsaw so we can cut our own wood, or tango classes, or teaching on how to make a bookcase from driftwood, to check oil levels, change a tyre, re-hang a door?

On the island, there are fine folk in the olding years, dynamic, ready for fun and we make it happen. We are fortunate here in a place where age means zip if you bring fun and laughter into the mix. But still there is something about widowhood that calls in isolation. Days can be long, the clock ticking a slow taunt. Thankfulness helps, walking helps but I can walk longtime and meet nobody. Aha, got it. It’s all about human contact and interaction, as me right now, the old y’un, the one who lives out there with that fabulous view, the one who smiles and makes great craic. Yes, her.

Even if classes for the ‘over 65’s’ was on offer and in the village, I doubt I would go, although Tango dancing might draw me. I am still lithe and bright and utterly surprised that I am 73 with arthritis and limitations. This isn’t about what is not on offer. This is about a defining timeline. I am old. Why do so many refuse to admit that? I find it a finery, as if I just pulled on expensive clothing. The fact that I got this far and after all that, through all that, is like taking on a rainbow, curving it around my shoulders and turning it and myself to the cameras.

For all these weeks when I couldn’t drive after cataract surgery, I have learned much about independence and the determination t’wards the redefining state of new freedom. I will drive again. I will work again at the Best Beach Cafe Ever and soon. People again, interactions, dynamic swivels between happy tables, a valued member of an exciting team, a purpose, a meaning, an importance, an olding with a rainbow.

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Island Blog – The Curve

You make a plan. I make a plan. That’s a straight line, or I planned it so, as if I am some powerful goddess, one who can just carve out this ‘here to there’ line and just know the delight of arrival in this very spot I had tagged on the map, bugles tooting, banners flying, the finish line right there. What a frickin eejit. And, yet, I still do this planning thing, as if, by planning, I supersede all intrusive attacks, as if I have autonomy, as if my marvellous and well constructed map will actually be noticed and included in the chaotic mappery of life.

I don’t know about you, but life is as tough as bark chewing in my experience. Just when you think things are ok (ish) something comes in, something you cannot ignore. It is as though someone, or something is out to get you. It isn’t and I can say that at my old age because I just know. Life is not a straight line. Life is a curve and not one you can predict. And that curve can go any which way and at any time. It is never personal.

What do we learn from this? I don’t think it’s good for mental health to spend every minute expecting curves, trip-ups and the like. But, to be aware of the vision of Life, the way she sees us, helps us rethink ourselves and adapt is a good thing. Those stories of unicorns and happy endings need to go because the seeding of them elevates little believers into the reality of a maelstrom with no clue.

It is tough out there. We need to teach our young more dynamic stuff. I don’t believe in stealing childhood. It’s such a short and precious time, memories fasted in hearts and minds. There are just too many lost boys, too many princesses out there.

Teach the curve, teach the techniques, teach the dynamic, teach.

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Island Blog – Eyes on it

I squindle with my specs. I do. the loud ones see me this, but not that, and the others, a bit smeary, show me that but not this. It’s a flipping palaver. They’re obviously both wrong. It isn’t me. It’s them. However, this visionary stoppulence thinks me. As vision alters, olding eyes and such, new aids are vital, for independence, and, of course, for vision. For which thank you to all those who see us, help us on our exciting journey on. When you know that you are in the evening of your life, you can become what you were as a young thing. I want my way. Don’t stop me. I remember it from youth, feel it now. Don’t tell me how to end this, or start this. Just don’t.

I am listening to an audio book about the past of my Celtic forbears. The clearances. The story is of the potato famine in West Cork, but it happened here too. Families starved into submission, turned or burned out of their homes and left desolute. Begging.

I n this surface life, when our children have no idea of their history, because what? It’s painful?

We need to teach. Eyes on it.

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Island Blog – Judy Who?

When I don’t write a blog for over 3 days, I become Judy Who. i do. Although, and I confess this, I am miffed. It’s only been 13 years since I have become Judy Someone and just like that in 3 days I have to trawl through Judy Blue, Judy Bloom, Judy Diacticus. That stopped me. Eventually I find myself, like a snivel in the shadows of someone else’s sneeze. It thinks me. I am such a Get Real Woman that it even works for me , albeit clumsily, at such times. I need to light up, to get out there, although where ‘out there’ means nothing to me, and by default, everything. I check my neck, my collar bone, my shoulders, my arms, wrists, fingers. I still work even if the working parts are a bit wonky, definitely escarped with striations, aka wrinkles. I am like a walking mountain, standing here after a gazillion years of marriage, a mother of five extraordinary kids, alone.

But and but, life throws me skywards over and over again. As long as I go out there I meet a softening, kindness, conversation, hugs, random lights lit in my day, as if everyone knows me, and they do. We share cuttings, ideas, plans, wee catches of their lives and of mine as we salute and pass by. The wakeup for me is to decide to rise above ground, to flower, and to allow that my name may be forgotten. And to laugh at that.

I kind of like Judy Who.

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Island Blog – Lonely and a Yellow Fallen Thing.

Jeez, every time I type a word, an intriguing word that this isn’t recognised by the world of chiitterlings, I infuriate myself. I can actually feel the twist of a wild in me, until, that is, I remind myself of the days in which we now live. The cobwebby shadowland once called Grammar has been doorshut and locked for a long time, and to be honest, I am the first to squint words into their other possible selves, to re-weave consonants and vowels, to yip and encourage adverbs and adjectives to go home and shower, pick new clothing, make new impact, so I should probably shut the eff up. The word is Nemesism. It means turning aggression and gui

I know what this is. It’s the past of my past and the past of my dead dad, the eloquent deliverer of more grammar than most people could swallow in a lifetime. Oh, but he was marvellous, the way he held a room and it seemed effortless. He brought words into the dance of his story, words nobody understood. I knew that. I watched him, and them, fixts smiles, a little tipsy, clueless. But I got those words, looked them up and when I did I just knew I could never use them, not in the bus queue for work, not in a meet of friends intent on a friday vino collapso. And right there, right in the now of that, rises the Lonely. I have known this companion for ever, for decades and he/she arrived so early. I was about to dive down to the next paragraph, to take this away from me, to write about the Lonely I see, clearly, in my grandchildren. Then I returned, because I don’t want to dilute this. There is too much dilution on the webby world of now. Everything is fine, presentable, perfect, happy and completely not the whole picture.

Reduction. Lonely is everywhere. In all, in the chitterlings, the next linear up, the awkwardlings who suddenly become committed to one home. A collision. It’s like two boats going different ways in a collision and then an okay collusion, plus diffusion ending in confusion. We change. I remember my old dead husband, my beloved, my nightmare saying, all stuck out chest and strutting, that he has not, and never will, change. This informed me. He won’t, so I need too, and I would never have known the choice in that had it not been for his resolute. And that led me into a wonderland of thinks, jinks, augers, fears, sprites, opportunities, dances, shadowlands. Quite an adventure. And not just once. No. Many times over many years because this. You can be be with someone and still be lonely. You can be in a crowd and feel lonely. You can be meeting your trusted friends in a safe place and feel lonely. You can be in a long marriage and feel lonely.

I propped up the falling yellow thing. The whip wind and the rain drag is overwhelming. It came in. I saw the puddles. Cornflowers, sunflowers, many decked, There is Lonely everywhere.

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Island Blog – Tinkle Rain

Today begun massively soggy. I heard the grass groan, I swear I did, it woke me at 5. Pelting wetness as if anyone or anything needs that, at least here. Africa might. Thing is we are within the mercy of mercies here, standing under awnings, umbrellas, bus shelters, trees and buildings because there’s too much of this wet thing…..and everyone is bored with repetition. I need to decide my decisions. It matters as I am no control freak, whatever the hec that means beyond being a judgement from someone who just feels better making that judgement. However I do want to exert some control over that which I can, or could, within certain circumstances, exert said control. Not rain, unfortunately.

I decide this is the way it is up here. I remind myself that Australia, Africa and other dry zones now face wild fires and drought. Drought? What does that even mean, feel like? In this wetzone, I cannot imagine, although I do recall weeny droughts here, like a few piddly days, maybe a week, ten days and the flapdoodle of local gardeners. I remember hose bans and those out at midnight watering. The Facebook illumination of these gentle gardeners, the pointing fingers. Didn’t like that. Sometimes a garden is all we have in a life of loneliness.

I feel the caution alone and trapped inside the soggy. It was cold. Preventative, a shuck, a go-away. Awake at five, the usual, and happy with the dawn blackbird and the light. Coffee, strong, black, music on. I am all about music. Like blood flow for me. And looking out. Early birds, the lift of geese, jeez the noise of them, as if every time they lift there is confusion, or so it hears me, a mere human.

I worked on a tapestry today, a half cut not much, boring elevation of colours with no direction. I am so crap at hobbies. I worked once on huge canvases with wild brushes, wild and unthought thinking, inspiration in my fingers, my heart red pulse, sensing everything, every sound, even a creak on the stairs, the call of geese, the sudden of single seconds. It’s quite hard to tamp down. But it’s ok. So back to the rain, and there’s a relevance.

It rained, pelting, unremitting, wet. I watched dog walkers in full waterproofs walk by. Nobody else had to do this wet walk thing. Around 4, the rain got bored of itself, turned into a smurr. I sensed a weakening and pulled on my boots and stepped out. It was glorious. The rain, still falling, was soft and gentle on my face, like a spar treatment. All branches were lowered, so dipping was required. The raindrops shivering on leaves, on the tiny fronds of woodland flowers, the sparkle of hope on fallen trees, beautified my walk. And the rain on my face. I lifted myself to that gentle caress, the cold of it, the knowing that this came from far beyond my knowing, carrying stories I will never know but have inadvertently absorbed. Felt like a tinkle, gentle fingers.

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Island Blog – Cross the Street

We walk as we always do, along the paths we know. Of course we do. It’s safe and familiar and we meet the same people, the same contours, the same trees and spaces and views. We know who we are along the way and it’s comfortable, normal, uneventful. To be honest, we don’t want ‘eventful’ not as a sudden thing, not in this life we have worked hard to bring into a shape we can manage. Manage. As if life is ours to control. No surprise then when a shadow falls on our path and we are suddenly and severely compromised. Of course, there is a perception thing going on here. Most of us, hopefully, won’t meet muggers, or a pavement explosion, but we will meet rejection, taunting, something that trips us up and makes us fall hard. Could be a realisation, a thought, an encounter, a sudden eclipse wherein we see what we have avoided seeing for possiby years.

Here’s a thing. A thing I have pondered for decades. What is it that keeps us in the familiar? Think on it. I am guessing that the people we most admire have broken the chains of it, whether in a film, a book, a story, the ones who actually had the courage to cross the street, those who said no, this is not me, and who stepped out and kept going, with the wrong shoes and no money and into the unknown .

I meet teens who know who they are and it isn’t who they supposedly were. They speak out and they cross the street and I applaud them because they are bravehearts. I know I am granny and old but I glory in this. We all deserve pavement space, can work together to shift and move, to single file or to shimmy around each other. I believe in this world and it’s about bloody time. We need each other, We need the skills we all bring to the work place, to the world to the pavement.

I have crossed the street, the odd times I have been in a city, when I knew I didn’t want to encounter what was ahead. Another time I could see a blanket of threat heading my way. Youngsters yes, joshing yes, but with the louding of parental lack and that saddens me. I didn’t cross the street then, although I probably should have done. I kept walking and smiled up. 10 lads, merry, Bacchus, The ages of my own boys. Hey, I said, have fun. Thanks Missus, they all said, swerving around me.

Not need then to cross the street, and there’s a message in there there too.

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Island Blog – Alternates and a Finagle

You can wake up feeling the other side of marvellous. I do. All the guilts and swithers come in like vultures on the carcass of me, picking, resolute. At such advances, I turn over, relocate myself, bring my mind into the present which is probably, at such times, about 4 am. The duvet is swirled around my neck, a throttle, my feet cold, the upside of me definitely downside. There might be cramp and there will certainly be the untruth of me coming at me. This is not who I am. This alternate is not welcome. Ok, I need coffee to deal with that in a sentient and settled way, even if I am in a ghastly dressing gown and the only bird out there is a barn owl. At least I am the right way up which I am not in bed. In bed I am compromised, open to all demonic flapjacks.

Thinks me. And what I knowknow is that nothing stays stuck on the page as it did in school. The real of life is that everything shifts like opinions, clouds, affections, every damn thing. There is no statis. There is no finite, not with people, not with nature, not with life. I’m not even sure there is finite in science, not that I know a scooby about science. The key is to be dynamic, adaptable, open to change. Such a truth and an infuriation.

I for one am rather tired of uplifting stuff. It’s as if pronouncing good things makes them happen. Which it doesn’t. I am definitely a woman of positivity but not because I am told to be. I am she because I have lived through shit and storm and loss and fight and I emerge as me. This is not a new emergency thing. I do it often. I don’t want to cause trouble, of course not, but at 73 I do feel the ‘ncy’ of emerging, like a professorial nudge in the back as if I need permission for this emergent-ness. I am so much a child of my time.

But what I have is the skinny thinks of my generation. I could and can finagle my way out of everything. We were buttoned up in scratchy pants and strapped into bodices. Our legs were covered, our eyes controlled, our hands and fingers gloved. Nonetheless we found our escapes. Life will out and those who thought they could ever control the life of another lost so much. Life is a wilding. Life is wild. Who you are is who you are.

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Island Wife – Be Brave

I remember being told that my book, Island Wife, would resonate with older women. I sat there, across a table with my publisher and my agent thinking, older? Yes, I was 59, but sassy. I was still in complete charge of my accoutrements, faculties and agendas. I could move like a dancer, arriving in some sort of wild costume and just off the Oban train, complete with a jaunty herringbone cap. Older for me was my mum heading for 80 and, although still feisty, a bit cautious over rocks – still game, though. I get it now. I started early, in love at 18, married at 19, mother at 20. Nobody does that, not in the lasting game, as mine was. I suppose that I just could not relate to the ‘older women’ thing. The ones I had experienced were tired, downtrod, got their make-up wrong and spent a huge amount of time pretending they were ‘fine’ even though that word meant something so different to me. Fine was about spectacular art. Fine was the way a butcher cut a fillet just right. Fine was how someone arrived looking magical into a gathering; a spectacular arrangement of flowers; a perfect sorbet. Now it has become a dismissal, a middling beige nothing.

I do remember the train journey to almost home, the stunning landscape, the chacha of the train along winding tracks, around lochs, through endless scapes of empty deliciousness, past the Hogwarts Express bridge, the winding of endless drover tracks, the moody mountains, the clouding, the spritzer of light. My thoughts carolled me to the ferry port. ‘Older’? I got that even as it thinks me. I realise I was being a mayfly on the surface of real life, aka, the truth. I believe that as I walked onto the ferry for home that I sunk a bit, got it, and it freed me. Of course my story will resonate with others who have experienced such a life.

There is so much vanilla out there, so much beige. On the out-there forums, everything is ‘fine’. It isn’t. Where is truth? Where are the young writers going through rebellion? Facebook and more are all about memories and wonderful moments. I do love to see that but it is not the truth, not real. If I said anything in my story, it was raw truth, still is.

Be brave.

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Island Blog – Im Patient, Com Promise

I’ve just reversed out from under my desk. Not my desk. A desk inherited with uneven legs and good drawers and with a fallen sharp thing hidden in the down below. Much like me. I had, I noticed, flipped my Winnie the Pooh calendar to September which, even for twitchy, fast-running me, is an overdash and so I set to correct, losing the lot down into the spider depths, hence the reversing thing. This, as you may guess, is a complete irrelevance.

I am (searching for an adverb) fed up with not being able to do whatever I suddenly, and twitchily have done without any thought and for years. I cannot bend down lower than my waist. Well, that laughs me. Waists are, from my own observation, all over the place. However, I know where mine is, and I do not bend below. This constricts, obviously. I am required to curtsey before the saucepan cupboard, before the washing machine, the freezer, before the cupboard under the stairs, before the picking up of any fallen objects anywhere. I can hear my white goods, my doorways laughing at me.

When releasing my washing from the cylindrical drum, I am required to kneel. I was never good at that. I pull out the sheets, towels, tees and jeans and turn towards the skids. Still on knees because I can’t lift anything heavier than a pregnant hamster (they don’t say that), I work my way to the pulley. I rise, good core muscles, and take each piece by itself. It thinks me. I never did that before, just wheeching the whole damn lot onto the struts without noticing a thing. I notice things now. My olding pants require either new elastic or a trip to the bin. Perhaps this is what I learn from this limiting limitation, my eyes so very important, so momentarily com- promised.

Without my work in the Best Cafe Ever, I am remote, stumped, awkward with myself. That’s one truth. Another is the wealth of help offers for lifts, deliveries, friendship. This glorious community. I know I am an im patient. I remember being compromised in Tapselteerie days, so sick I was falling over, but there wasn’t the time nor the opportunity. I was the It and there really was nobody else who could fill my role. I am so rarely decked and thank the bejabers for that because I am twitchy and need to move on. Although I would love for arms around me, for someone to bring me fresh food, light the fire, the candle, gentle the evening, I am alone, strong at times, weak at others. Hearing swans overhead, rushing out to see their traverse, watching still tide, seeing the lushgrow across the sealoch, catching the firelight, hearing the music.

A com promise.