Author: judyfairbairns

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Island Blog – Beginnings

I meet them all the time. Here’s one. The trolley thing which holds an entire orchestra around lunchtime in the cafe has one swivel wheel twisted out. I skinny around, loaded with dried bowls, whisks, palette knives, sieves, whisks etcetera and my fast foot meets said twist. I remember, in a nanosecond the dancer in me, old yes, but innate, born in, fast and determined. Another is when I lift a load of heavy plates and their etceteras from the wishdosher, lower than my knees, mentally connecting,, with a eye-rolling ‘hey!’ to my strong core. We have to do this, I have to do this, because she, the core, can so easily fall asleep, thus forgetting herself and I need her, sleepy or not. These tiny beginnings I notice. I notice that I can do this.

All through any day, a cafe day, a not cafe day, I can hear so many spoken thoughts, random as skitters, flying wild, just spat out because there is that chance, that moment, that connection, that beautiful second when someone listened, heard, stayed a moment or two. As I wash up, walk out, serve, clear tables, chatter flies above us. Nothing lands, not for me, not for us as cafe workers, but there are times when a word and a table stops me in the buffers. I can see myself halt, heavy tray of china, detritus, cups, glasses, positionally armed and wondering if I will actually make it to the stackeroo and seeing without any connection, a new beginning.

I have many thinks about beginnings. I thought I did, that the only one I would go through was the day I said yes to marriage to a man, and it was easy. I fell in love and even though I completely don’t agree with falling, it happened. But in the now of my solo now, I look for more and find the beginnings in moments and interactions and connections I may well have missed before. There’s a something in that. There is so much, so much out on social media pushing out the unrealistic as if we fail if we don’t have perfect nails. I know that’s not all of it.

I begin with being open, aware and noticing and right where I am. Yes, I am on a beautiful West Coast island. I do not live in urban tricky. I don’t live in abuse, control, fear. I don’t even know how that feels beyond imagining.

The way I see beginngs is this. Angry spoilt middle class teenager thinking she could escape her life and the morning after. We are born where we are born. Identity grows and dishevels and what? I don’t know.

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Island Blog – The Grannies, the Shelf and Doorways

We are many. We are legion. We step back having been the quickstep for decades. We hold the walls, hold to the walls. We keep the balance, we interfere, we quicken and we falter. We don’t know who the hec we are a lot of the time, apologize and curtsey in doorways we never knew existed before, not in this house of endless meals, of welcomes, of beds made up short notice, late talking, of searching without the right language into the new world, one we really don’t understand, the lie of the land all around the home, bodies everywhere, party detritus tidal in its curve over a once ok carpet. Of a lot of holding back, of rubbing old tinsel lips in ponderance, of confusion and inexellence, where once we were excellent, the ones who bandaged, made fast decisions, even overriding the hesitating grandpas, who btw were astonished to find themselves on that high shelf, in my generation. In the laughness I see exactly that in the generation after me. Nobody is ready for that shelf.

For me, oh I know I am lucky, fortunate, blest, whatever. But I do remember the full stops, the commas, the parenthesese which came like a blow. It was never that I was eradicated, never that, but I sensed the invitation to full stops, commas and doorways. I was suddenly not who I was. Not excluded, never that, but there grew woods and motorways and lifestyles that rose up between us, between me as the feeder, accommodator, welcomer, and the new woman in his life, the new man in hers. It thinked me of those shunting trains on tracks, always going backwards. And I did. I curved away, into foetal at times, unsure of my voice. I had never even thought about my voice before. I lived in chaos, beautiful chaos, exhausting chaos for many many years and I was she. I was She. I lost my voice. Not the actual voice but the knowledge of it, the recognition for me. It had been an usual, ribboned, rainbowed, musical, gifted and now the hesitation to emit anything vocal spun me into a hole in the ground.

Something rose me, rised me up. It was the acceptance that you, young person, now my child’s beloved, is a generation below me. I want to learn from you. I also see your welcome. I am aware of doorways. I respect you, see your dreams, love that you want time with me, invite me into your video games and endlessly bleeping iPad or whatever trackillion light tracts. And your beautiful children, real humans with a truant of consilplisit emotions and longings and dreams. And I am still Granny, or one of them. There is always a welcome, warm food, bandages and no judgement although I might twist a tea towel at you if you don’t help with the washing up.

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Island Blog – All the Way to Whales

I know that I am still a rebel. Against what? Good question. The thing is that ‘most of us grow out of it’, supposedly and politely and concomitantly and absolutely fitting in to lives so very far from our dreams. So reads the manuscript. I am at the steam spout end of my kettle life and with not one regret. I know that without the grounding, or sea-going strength of the man who saved me, I would have gone to some dive somewhere and died of over-ness. I would. I know it. He, the older-than-me, wild, foolish, closed up man, held me. He did and for decades, through the utter chaos of children, the strife of in-laws, well, just one, actually, through the fears and the choices we made, the walking out of that crazy. The first whale watching business in the UK, benign research, the first. I bought in, was right there, in the rain, boots on, helping the first intrepids aboard, handing over sumptuous packed lunches, thermoses, just knowing they would be coughing their way through engine fumes all the way to whales and that I would be there at the end to collect them, dry them off, feed them scones and jam and tea and, more, to laugh with them about the bounce and tricuncular shitski of the Atlantic, god bless her, around rocks and other irritations.

I think I found an outlet for my red, rebel. To be honest, I think rebel is born, within a child. I have one or two of my own supporting that. Thing is, what do you do with this red thing for yourself, when you just know life isn’t as it might be, when confines and controls and mysogyny and religion divides and sadly conquers. How can you see this at 7 years old without the language to process, let alone explain? My theory is this. Many of us are here in this uncomfortable playground. Many pull away, home to the familiar, the compromise and live with it for decades, never mind minutes and nights. I am a pull away, although some might say I compromised, settled, and to a degree, they are right, although I twist at their conclusion. I loved full time, moved into wife. I loved that. Things shifted, changed, the moment a child was born. I changed. I grew fierce, defensive, powerful. That modem operandi never changed with four more birthings. I never loved as I loved them, never. Maybe that was a troubling thing.

See that red rebel? She is wild and bothers not about doorways nor invitations, nor stupid rules, nor old past judgements. Atlantic thinking. I remember on a warm evening, way back, after feeding three courses to 16 guests, seeing them right, warm fire, help to bed. Alone in the corridor of clearing up, ironing the tomorrows, letting out the collies, watching the big kitchen sink to rest as I wouldn’t. I remember the wild excitement of seeing whales out there, the out there which billowed into the farmhouse kitchen, way beyond food time, but I will always provide food. I saw them, briefly, the whale-watching ones, saw their smiles, the twinkle in catched eyes, the long hold goodbye. I smiled at the rebel connection. There are many of us in the wings.

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Island Blog – I Matter

I do this checking body language thing, watching people, wondering and knowing, even though there will be never be proof of what I surmise. She is the controller in this relationship and he doesn’t like it but never found the courage to say and now, bowed as he is, it’s too late. Or He is bloat-chested and very chuffed with himself as she follows obedientally, agreeing to his choice of her coffee rather quicker that I’d like. However, to my delight, a pizzicato in the mathematics of this cafe running thing, a young family changed my daily stuck. Young parents, looked easy, together, although I did clock the male as leader. That’s ok and fine and wonderful as long as it doesn’t mean domination and control and, looking at her, I think that’s a Never. They came together the beautiful (I thought) parents of 3 little ones. They bought this, that cake and then, as i washed up for Scotland, I heard their children, their play in the area with a rug and safety with draws of toys, for definitely an hour. We worked on in the washeroo and in the kitchen, serving soup and focaccias and this and that herbal tea, for two, with oat milk, no milk, cold water, and so on, with scones, plus jam, without, lemon cake, flapjack, banana loaf divide into two, add this, possible?

Everything is possible. So we’re told. I think we learn ‘possible’ through difficult times. When everything is easy, we don’t seek anything and certainly not a change option. In fact we actively avoid that. But in the mostways of our days we do seek change even in little shafts of light, just a tiny something, a lift, a beckoning. I met the wrong people at such times, followed the wrong beckoning. I think many do and then those brilliant strong and compromised people become beige at best afraid and hiding, but so slowly and over time. Life calms to mouse quiet and so very lonely.

I am fighting self doubt daily. It doesn’t matter what I have achieved. It’s never about that. It’s always about someone I admire, and respect telling me I matter. Even now.

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Island Blog – Thinks

I did that thinks thing this morning at 0500, my favourite hour. Birds are up already, but I like to be in their slipstream as they just get on with living. After the usual catastrophe of doubt and fear on waking, all the blame on me (always) and then my leap from bed as if the before was a collaboration of bedbugs. I land floor level, barefoot. I always know the light when I wake. I know when it is 0300, a captious and taunting skinny light lemon, cautious, like a new student. I know when the buttermellow trickles in, when the sun is doing his rise thingy, tendrils slipping over hills and horizons. I huff, roll my eyes. Finally you big showoff. Even with cloud cover he speaks.

I downstairs myself in my awful dressing gown and sit, and watch. Birds are lining my fence, They know I will fatball and mealworm them into their day and they are waiting. I wait too, watching their dance and bounce and lift. When I go out barefoot into the clover of my grass ( not mine, just borrowed) they dive and skitter around me, waiting. I fill the fatball feeders (RSPB of course) and tip some mealworms into the sieve bowl. All the while I am doing the thinks. The guilt I woke with didn’t stay back upstairs with my pyjamas. I make coffee and sit to gongoozle. Being in the present is something I know is pivotal. To just watch, to stop, to pause, to breathe, to notice and to reflect. I don’t find it easy, but I want it.

\We had crazy weather last night, thunder and lightning and colours and magic. Astonishing and brilliant and scary and flooding and scary and the whole sky alight with anger and spectacular. It is calm now. Up here, way north of the heat and the confines and the lack of sleep and the burning fear, we are the lucky ones.

It is the weather now. It is. We should think about that.

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Island Blog – Symphysis and Sine Qua Non

I am not friendly with the new Oxford Thesaurus. The original, assembled in 1800 and something, would have been filled with delicious words, now long stuffed in the attic. Words with musical flow, words which have depth, structure, timpani and texture. I don’t mourn their loss. I do mourn their loss, but I will still find them, even though I knew nothing of the 1800s beyond the authors and constraints of the day. Today I was thinking of conjoinder, of the word for life partner, of the push and pull of any relationship. Glancing back to my own past, I saw a scatterment of brilliance, of sunlight and of storm and of unclinch. I saw the giving and the taking, of the imbalance. In the words of my old Thesaurus, battered and losing yellowed pages given half a chance, I find so many words. I was satellitic. I know I was when I fell in love. I orbited without question until I did, and then came the tumbles. I think we all know what I am saying here. Falling is wonderful and euphoric and scampatious but it doesn’t last. Looking back, glancing, I can’t say I can point a finger at the timeline when something shifted, but it did.

Relationships are a bizarreness. We contain, maintain, restrain, align, define, rejink, rethink. It’s how life is and that’s not a gloomy thing, a shadow counterpart, a darkling sepulchre. Oh no. It’s a profferance, a chance to rise. When I realised that this orbiting thing just made me dizzy and distant, I cut off all my long and thick chestnut hair with pinking shears. I was in a temper, yes. He loved my hair. I hated it. The cutting was a ferocious hack, painful and very slow. I remember walking out looking like a waif in wellies and taking pack lunches to both himself on the silage cutter and Bruce on the Something Else. I went to Bruce first. Oh, he said, his smile a bit wonky. Good luck. I nodded, handing him up big sandwiches and a drink. That walk between both tractors saw me and Lunch full focus, could have been miles. I was so visible. My first No More Orbiting illuminated, every stumble step, every mental correction, every giveaway, every risk held in my body like fizz.

He took his lunch, his face rockface, turned away. I had hours till he was home, the weather good for cutting and bailing the precious winter food. I remember the skin on my back alight as I walked home, the relief on entering the farmhouse kitchen, then the fear, the judgement I knew would come. School collection and noisy kids were a good distract. Eventually, he came back, tired, wanting what he had left at breakfast, missing that. But I had landed, no more orbiting. I had no idea where I had landed, but I had, I could feel it, the roots growing from my feet, solid and symphasistic. I didn’t feel strong at all, and even though I was banished from the marital bed, I had begun a singular journey in a conjoined duo, and I could not go back, would not.

Sine Qua Non.

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Island Blog – You Did This

An ordinary day. I awoke to my range sputtered out and her sputtering was soot, all over soot. Thankfully, possibly politely and to save me, her spit didn’t go too far. Anyone who has dealt with soot will know how determinedly it holds to itself. Tiny balls of refusal, sitting there, all sizes,complete and resolute. Cleaning cloths are ruined in immediacy. However, I know this game. She, the Spitter, the Fed Up. Someone turned me down too below the hum beat of the home and she obvously struggled to breathe, eventually panting into something big and black and stuck to the wall, like a nothing much. When I arrived down about 6, I could see the story. Ok, I said, because she is very important to me and keeps my winters a warm hug and much reassurance I will call in the sweeps. Your throat is choked and you have done so well, because, if I am honest (confession here), I knew her flues were compromised and did nothing about it. I am not a woman who does nothing about an alert, but this time, I did. I swabbed her down, caught those balls of refusal into kitchen roll and binned them. She, my lovely warming range will have her skirts twirled and her breathing tubes whistle-cleaned and her privates rid of all amorphous carbons next week. A relief for sure.

The day dindled on with a this and a that, gentle and amorphous. I did things, swept floors, enjoyed watching the trickles of my life conjoin and connect. I watched the sky, the cloud bumps and the pull-aways, the almost parental cloudal wrap, as if the kids need corralling. I washed things which required washing. I fed the birds, watched them jink along the fence, saw the long unpainted fence, thought about that. I read awhile, and then something blasted in my phone, a voice saying my mobile is in danger, hacked, all information already absorbed. It was alarming at first, the voice cutting through the audio book I was listening to, I will not panic (I told myself). And it kept coming. Your private information, bank info, passwords, social connections all compromised, all hanging off the cliff. I still didn’t panic. I might be ostrich here. I did breathe a lot, out in out in, mostly out. I thought, child. I thought Stu. In the overtake of my screen, where the invader could not be swiped away, I could still connect with him. He talked me through it all, go here, swipe there, delete there. All done and deleted.

It thinks me. There are a gazillion things I can, and will, sort myself. There are more which I cannot. I believe that the strength, the power in me is knowing that and then recognising it and then taking action. Tripling. I see the tripling gate. If I go through this, ask for help, I am weak, a failure, needy.

I say oh no. You are brave. You are real. You were the strong support once, and through decades of so-called ordinary days full of soot and cold and turnaways, for days, weeks, months, years.

Remember them and smile. You did this.

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Island Blog – Beautiful Words

For weeks I have not been able to drive, not since early May, maybe before. I forget. The initial shock of being told I couldn’t see well enough to be safe on the roads, even these single track roads when most everyone I met coming at me was someone who knew my sassy mini and who waved and whom I recognised. It felt like I had been taken prisoner without the offer of bail. My own home grew bars, my thoughts grew bars, not musical, but steel and silent. Thing is this. Without my ability to drive, I am no longer independent. Yes, I can walk down the village, and I did every day just for conversation and milk or wine or cheese or garlic, but going any further was forbidden to me, just like that.

It began in Africa. Took me a few days of fear and denial to admit that everything was cloudy and at other times a firework display. My son whooshed me to an optometrist who confirmed that the cataract (whatever the hec that is) in my right eye had suddenly come about. Come about was a term I recognised in advanced ballroom dancing lessons, at which I was apparently good at and at which I won a gold medal. My partner didn’t which surprised us both. I thought I was a visionary, one who sees far ahead and believes, but it was as if I had sunk into the depths. I don’t stay there but I have to tell you that the days became weeks, time slowed and the doubts took on caps. I would wake each day determined to be positive, usually effortless, and almost before I had sternly and confidently made strong black coffee at 0500, I felt the downpull.

I travelled to my cataract operation, as you already know, and the hoped for change in my life took about ten minutes. Seemed too easy. But the doubt kept whacking me in the gut. I applied the drops, didn’t bend over my waist (who does that anyway?) didn’t lift anything heavier than a half full kettle. Seriously? For 4-6 weeks when I live alone? What about the box of bird fatballs or bringing in wood? What about pulling on my shoes? What about the fact that I am the only me in this glorious wee home and things happen, heavy things, bendy things? I followed instructions nonetheless. My eyes are everything. My driving my independence, my sudden choice to go here or there, to give a lift, to get out and beyond my thoughts.

Today, this day, the day after Solstice, the day after Father’s Day, I go to the mainland and the ferry works to time. I have time, arriving way early to be safe. My heart is overbeating herself. I tell her, wheesht. We are fine, even though we might not be. Whatever comes, comes. We can do this. I wander. I never wander in Oban. I get out quick. Too many people doing this wandering thing, much pavement dodging. A non-stop stream of cars, although that word doesn’t work. Not a stream, more a punch. I stop at a cafe, settle outside, order a black americano. Delightful place. I converse with a couple going to St Kilda, and two young women who had bought crofts and had sheep. They all lifted me as I watched the doors of Specsavers open. In I go.

I brought in so many fears I am surprised we all got in. I know this place and the welcome is fresh as a new morning. I sat, not long, called in to the optometrist and resisted telling her she held my future in her hands. She was beautiful and gentle and laughed with me and still the unbeliever in me has met that before sentence was delivered. And then she said. ” You eyes are healthy, no problem anywhere. Your vision is sharp now. You can drive.

I never heard such beautiful words.

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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.