Author: judyfairbairns

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Island Blog – Find your Guide

On the theme of Help, I have something to say. We, I ,have discovered over endless years, that everyone resists it. I can do this all by myself, they say, or indicate with a shovel full of all that they have achieved before this Help thing moved in like a drift of autumn leaves. Not welcome. But we change. Of course we do. I remember himself saying to me, more than once, bless him, that he had never changed, refused to change, would not change. I was too young to see this as a serious condition, latterly I did. We all change because life changes, life changes us. Our power lies in acknowledging this change, this transformation, this dynamic twist and swirl to the person we believe we are, a challenge to transist, new word. Mine, obviously.

I found my hands less able to lift and stack wood. I looked out, asked for help and it came, big time. All wood lifted and stacked and also the joy of half an hour over coffee with a delicious young man, friend of my lads. However, and there is always one of those, as my eyes scan the past, my past, when I was all NO! I can do this all by myself, I can hear the offers of help. So, why did I resist? Why did I do the everything of everything until it made me ill, depressed, anorexic?

I have no answer to that. I also notice that my young, my extended family young, all say the same thing. I can do this, no help required. Perhaps it is a human thing, or, perhaps it is all about our current culture of succeed or fail and the pressure is immense, in a career, in being a mother, a father, there’s no escape from any of it. It’s like a push to your back, a hiding from what is not good, a protection from loved ones, a split from reality. But how can our young see this reality thing, so far from gathering whelks, firewood, fircones for kindling? So very far. In an urban situ, the roads busy, the boss bossy, the troubled teens online upstairs, money the driving force, what hope? Well, I ask this, but don’t you ask this because I believe that a gazillion youngs are working this out. Just be there. Doesn’t matter where you live. Where they live. They are brilliant human beings, loving, caring, watching, learning. And, here’s Granny……

Ask for help, for guidance, if that works better. We are a human team. Find your guide, for now.

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Island Blog – I Need Help

Today I loved the crispy cold, the conversation between ice and sunfire,walking out into the woods, the sky gathering clouds like a coverlet. They would disperse, I saw that, as did the sky. These are days and night I remember, expected, in the olden days. Frost snaps and traps, cold folds and colds, stars rise and hold, moon calls like a loon, or a luna. She woke me, the starry tramp, swirly, twirly, but it’s ok. Ok because it tells me I am here, I’m alive, pissed off and thankful.

Today I received a ton of wood. In a bag. In the cold, dry, welcome of an afternoon, I barrowed out myself behind the barrow, to bring in the wood. Gloved up, to avoid the splinter attack, I managed three loads, my hands not obeying me, my fingers weaker, my back shouting, and knew I should stop. That whole stopping thing arises the feisty in me. I could do all of this and more. I could deliver lambs, feed guests, manage children. work with anything, anything.

Not so, now. And, it is up to me to accept this. And I do. I was who I was. I am who I am. The only one who will ever make this messy, is me. I have offers of help, many and random. We are a team, people. And there is so much thankfulness in saying this.

I need help.

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Island Blog – Indigo and Goose Shit

I’ve been blue for a few days, I admit, and blue is my favourite colour, but not my favourite way to feel. Although I don’t show it outerly, this feeling, I still feel it. It’s like a trudge in my heart, filtering down to my legs and up to my thinking. And I did trudge, all of me did this trudging thing. Each task felt like a frickin bore and a half, more. I kept going, automaton switch on, but felt almost absent from proceedings, even if I did proceed. Sleep was bumpy and ebullient with odd images and chilly moments. But, now I have moved on to green. I also love green, the growth colour, the one that heralds change and the promise of astonishing colour. I went to church today in astonishing colours, my boots and one of my layered frocks, the colour of goose shit after a korma, and my underfrock green with white flowers and yellow interiors, the teeshirt below a washed out blue, a concession and a wink to the blue of late. My socks were wildly striped, my coat blue/grey with red hearts. Nothing matched but I read the lesson quite the thing, acting it all out in my voice. A definite improvement.

It thinks me. Sometimes, actually many times, when I remember the gazillions of counsellor guides who have gifted wisdom, revelations and inspiration over most of my adult life, there has oftentimes been the invitation to colour a feeling, or a state of being. As I am me, with my instantly curious mind, I wanted to know ‘which shade of this colour would you like me to name?’ There was a silence after that until, I’m guessing, strength was gathered along with an eye roll, pre responding. If asked, I might explain the difference between shade and hue, between the wisdom of naming a colour as a single thing instead of the many, many hues and shades of that particular colour, depending, naturally, on what other colour/solution/medium was added, and in what proportion. Have I lost you?

I walked today in the wild place. It is right outside my gate, a few steps, slew right, and I am on the right track. Always the right track. The air was a gasp of what might have been a snow warning, had the clouds told me so, but no. Damp held in fists as I breathed in the smell of Autumn’s stand against the Winter King. He’s a bugger, so he is, arrogant and confident and blowing early shards of ice at people when they’ve only just got the hang of those awful wooly stockings, only just thought about packing away all their summer kit. The trees wave at me, spindly now, ghost trees, sap sinking into roots. The snipe are in, the hedgehogs snuffling about for a place to hibernate, the stags are silent, dead, or triumphant, but wary. Grass is held in stasis and will soon be dead, but the moss and the fungi still stand tall, an arrogance in their standup. Thats an island word.

So, if asked the question today, What colour are you? I would grin, avoid doing the shade, hue thing, and answer, still blue, but with green. Blue but with a touch of rose madder = indigo. Green with a touch of cadmium yellow = goose shit.

Sounds like confusion. That’ll do.

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Island Blog – I Can Do This

I heard from the surgeon and all is gone, for now. No chemo, just radiotherapy in the new year. The three cancer buggers, all small, have been removed plus three lymph nodes, all of those free of cancer. A precautionary tale. My African son flew over to be with me for the aftermath, which wasn’t ‘math’ at all, and we were cavorted back to the island by my eldest. Prior to that I was with my sister who made me feel important and loved, as we went for pre op needlepoint and an information overload, well, for me, with my head tucked under my wings and my brain like spaghetti, but not for her.

Then, home, back to my beloved island. Not mine, of course, but this wild place homes me, grounds me, safes me. However, for over two weeks I was not alone. Africa was here, and the sharing, the kitchen dances inside his arms, loved me up. I don’t know how long it has been since I felt that warmth, enjoyed that spontaneity. In a loooooooong marriage, things get boring, disappointing and, although the light of love can spark, it is just now and then, or even just then.

So, he is gone. Back home now with his lovely wife and animals and into 35 degrees just like that. I spoke with him today. Too hot, he says. I cloak up to walk the four legs, blustering on, like Winnie the Pooh, beneath wind-creaked limbs, big enough to take out a whole mansion, the leaves flipping around my face, and with mud underfoot. And I snort at the ‘too hot’ thing.

I miss him. I miss hearing his footfall as he rises from sleep. I miss his voice, the sight of him filling a doorway, our shared laughter, the play of words between us over a scatter of candles. I miss the feeling of complete safety because he was here.

I am here. I am alone. It is winter. I am IT. And I can do this.

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Island Blog – The Jousting Woman

Women used to joust, you know, back in the jousting days. Needless to say, they had to look like men, breasts bound. But, coated in gmail, no, chainmail, sorry, all they needed were huge biceps, strong thighs for clamping a horse, hands free, great eye-arm precision and bloody mindedness; a Boudicca sort of attitude and a kick ass determination to be a fighter, regardless of their sex. Altough jousting was fast and furious, it rarely ended in tragedy, but only in collapsed pride. Women, wiry and flexible are less rigid, less stuck in the ways of men and, more importantly, less encumbered by ego and swagger. In fact, swaggering is not what we bother with at all. Wrong shape for starters.

I will get the call tomorrow, the one from my wonderful surgeon, the one who will tell me the wotwot of my nexting. I will hear that only radiotherapy is next, after Christmas, and for one week. Or, I will hear that more surgery is required and, then, the radiotherapy. I have said I refuse chemo. I’ve seen too many of my community go for it, only to lose a year, at least, in sickness and pale-faceless and loss of self-confidence, and then, for some, to fade away anyway. No bloody thanks. However, if I was 40 (loved that birthday) I might have chosen differently, but I am not, I am 70 and that’s a fricken long life. I have lived like nobody else has lived. I have adventured every single day, dealt with chaos, damage, disaster and celebrations which everyone who came would agree were the best. Me and the old bugger were excellent party hosts. Just saying.

Not that I am going under. Whatever my results are, I am ready and peaceful. I cannot control the most of it, but I can control me and my attitude and. my thankfulness and my humour and that mischievous imp behind my eyes and in my throat. I can do that because life is the most wonderful thing. My life is the most wonderful thing. So, btw, is yours because without it, there is nothing much.

So, although I began with jousting, I still like the thought of Joan of Arc-ing myself up to meet the stranger which is Cancer. I doubt I could hold the chainmail, nor clamp the horse, hands free, but there is something about flying there, about letting go, and not just of the joust pole; like a spirited game-on thingy, the pounding of hooves, the tension, the timing, the invisibility.

Whatever I hear tomorrow will take me forward, and forward is the only way for a jousting woman.

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Island Blog – Ouches

Ouches. I’m unsure there is a plural for an Ouch, but it can so feel like there is, or are, at times when one just doesn’t cut it. Well, it does ‘cut it’ but in multiple directions, like fissures. Too many esses in that word methinks. Backing to the point……

This morning he left, my big African son. He came to be with me after surgery and stayed just over two weeks of big son in doorways, that smile as wide as a continent, those big warm arms, that massive heart, that love in his eyes. We are so easy together. He worked with his coaching clients, stacked my load of wood, repaired a collapso chairo, went through the Spider Darkness of the dodgy understair cupboard, which, back in the yore of yore was a corridor, and they are always dodgy. I remember, as a little boots, on my tricycle, scooting a corridor in a big house/boy’s school and it was miles, and there were rats (yes, there were) and I was there pinging away on my bell and heading for Cook in the huge steamy kitchen with her buns and her smiles and her bosomy welcome. I pedalled like a dingblast. You never saw such footwork. It was darkling, old place, old lighting, possible rat attack, always a thingy. Parents were well into gins and fizz and nonsense and there was me, or I, on my tricycle. I was a brave one, even then, or was I just after Cook’s buns. They were spectacular, but you decide.

He left in the beginning. Morning was pushing Night away with her flaming torch, the sky flipping fire. I was in ma goonie and with coffee to hand. I am fine with this, I can do this, I can let him go off and up into his own life, I said to myself and she, as usual, did this folded arms thing and smirked. And, the daylight was light enough for me. I cleared old clothes, tidied the Spider Darkness and found a few things I had thought swallowed up by the Mouthie past. That chattering reminder of all we failed at, didn’t say, did say, wish we had done, wish we hadn’t done.

But as light concedes to dark, day to night, I miss him, our sundowners, flicking on the twinkly winkly lights, the jacking up of the wood burner, the shared tunes, the dances. And we did it all. And I am so thankful. Although there are many ouches, there is a fricken wealth of memories and I have them all, right here beside me, inside my heart. I can go there any time I feel an ouch.

As I walked today, knowing I would return to the alone of my life, I looked up at the leaves still falling from the beech trees, the caper of their float down, like dancers, a capricious play with the breeze, and I thought, there is so much pain in our broken world, and so much beauty, in loss, in struggle, in play, in dance, in moments shared, even in the ouches. We grow from all of it, even the shit of of it. Have a wonderful weekend. I will. There will be ouches. There always are.

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Island Blog – The Irks

You know those days when everything irks you, things that did no such irking yesterday and probably won’t tomorrow? I’m having one, or I had one until just now when I reminded myself that such minutiae only ever believes in itself. It has no gravitas, no longevity. I know this. We know this. However this irking thing has a spread and a power and cannot be allowed to become aloud. My mum wasn’t good at an irking attack. She had that face on, you know the one, when absolutely nothing is okay no matter what you do or don’t do. She was just plain irked and nobody was going to get away with not recognising her irk. She would seek out opportunities to demonstrate how irked she was, well, until the milkman came or Jeff with the eggs, or a call came through from someone who wasn’t her husband or children. Then, the sun would come out banishing all irks into the shadows. Anyway, enough of her, bless her old dead heart and back to me and mine.

I awoke at 0200 with anxieties galore. Did I say that? Did I commit to something huge and impossible? (typical me) Did I offer to fund a new project? Did I charge the hoover, let the dog out, balance my account? I got up, wandered down the stairs in the dark, counting the steps. There are 12. Please remind me. I recall missing the last one, only once, but only once was enough to freak me out. Thankfully, there was a soft landing. I made tea, marvelled at the starry starry night, and returned to read till 03.30, whence I dozed. Not enough sleeps. My anxieties stood up straight once I did, and I knocked them down like tin soldiers.

However, the morning shift was uncomfortable. I dressed, made coffee, did my chores, let the dog out and the irks in. The washing machine hadn’t spun enough. It took strong glasses to work out that someone, probably Son One, had changed the wotwot on the dial. Then the coffee shot out of the cafetière all over the counter top. I sighed and mopped and settled to Wordle and then to continue play with my scrabble friends. Here’s another irk. Not them, no way, but the adverts in between are currently all about boob jobs, boob uplifts, saucy bras and boyfriends with their hands down said saucy bras. The women are girls, all pert, Kardashianley made-up, and quite impossible. I cannot see a single one of them working for a living. But, before you tell me I could pay for ad disposal, I will not pay that money out, knowing that yesterday it didn’t irk me, and it probably won’t tomorrow. Today it does, it just does. Plus, my own breast is tender. It was yesterday too, but without an irk in sight.

I try to rest early afternoon, but the damn dog doesn’t agree with this resting thing as she wants a walk. She squeaks, jumps around my bed, makes sounds that would make great backing vocals and I have to get up. I am resentful and that irks me. I, unlike my mum, don’t want to show my irkness. So, we set off. A few yards in, she, the dog, clocks the rain and dawdles. It laughs me. I am going on, beyond the rain, beyond my irks and she, well she can just walk it out too. Those raindrops falling all about me are cleansing. I am cleansed of irks.

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Island Blog – Revenance

It’s been a while, awhile. Interesting, is it not, how words play with our brains? Two words mean one thing and when conjoined, another, pulling me in to play their game, feeling me free to challenge the shapeshifters, as I oftentimes do.

I am a revenant. One who has returned, and I quote from the dictionary, ‘especially supposedly (no commas, I notice) from the dead’. I recall meeting no dead folk during the process of being nearly dead, although my day and night visions were somewhat weird. It was all cat. A cat curled into my suitcase in broad daylight as I slapped ice packs on my swollen body, hearing the fizz like a water drop on fire. Another two cats, differently coloured, walking through my hospital room, reassuring. The End. Or so I thought with the whole cat thing, fever, sick, one of the nearly dead.

Now, and now, here I am back home to the island with two big sons. One breast is, like (!) what’s the fuss all about? T’other looks like the surface of the moon. The op was a ‘wide excision’, in other words the spider legs were a distance apart. A scoop was required, and the wotwot pulled together, hence the strange shape. The old girl has the usual sag. The new girl on the block sings a different song. I wonder how she will look once she gets over this puffed up, bruised, attention-seeking thing? I smile.

I do my exercises. I am tired, rest often, keep doing what I can do which is mostly hanging my twinkly winkly lights now that the sun goes down like a crashbang. I can reconnect with my frock stash. It’s like meeting old friends and we all love the Autumn and Winter, my frocks and me. The cold brings out our colours, layers and revenance. We can carefully layer, we who refuse to go un-barefoot, always bare legged and feeling, really feeling the seasonal change. No protection. It is a choice and one I made a thousand years ago. I need to feel it, feel all of the all of it, of everything. Wild, yes, but not to me. To me it is a rising into whatever comes next.

This life with all her fears and worries, her slapdash, her punches and losses, her sharp cuts and traumas, all give us a wild card. (I have no idea what a wild card is, but ‘wild’ works for me). I will always play mine. It doesn’t matter what a soul has had to face, has come through. There is no competition. We all face shit. We all have the rising in us. All of us.

We are revenants. All of us. And, ‘Revenance’, the process, will be a word in the dictionary one day, telling out that all of us have, and still are, rising from whatever became dead to us, another, a thing, an understanding, a relationship, a valuable something. I have not met another soul who hasn’t lost something, someone, an heretofore (!) understanding. We are so shit at taking this out into the world.

In the breast cancer ward, giggling with the surgeon about a load of wotwot, pre-op, I watched a cat, white and grey, move easy away through the doorway. I don’t have a cat. Or, maybe I have four.

Let us rise. We are revenants.

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Island Blog – Tidal Curve

Such days of glorious Autumn, dry, sunny, coloured up like blood, gold, emeralds and fox. Folk wander, stop to watch a silken swirl of thrushes, Mistle, Song and Fieldfares, all dinging about the blue in search of berries. They can strip a tree in 20 minutes, working as a team, even though they don’t gather like this at any other time of the year. There appears no discord, no fighting, no chest bumping, just a ribbony swirl like the wash of a boat, lifting over treetops, diving into branches, all a-twitter. I walk out into this, into the fairy woods, under a shelter of trees hundreds of years old. What stories they could tell me, if only I spoke ‘tree’. The sealoch is speckled with diamonds, stealers of sunlight, reflectors, the surface broken by the rise of an otter, busy with the salmon run and mighty with cubs to feed and protect. Herons bicker and shriek, divers fly in silent until they settle on the surface and call out in ‘loon’, their velvet voices schmoozing the air, and me.

I watch Arctic Swans, various of them, push past the wind and into the lee of the loch, where the tidal flow comes smack bang up against a right bloody push of rainwater. The flood against the tide. I go out to watch the meeting. It’s like a Scot meeting an Englishman. The rise of wild bubbles tells me much. There is no way out of this. I know it, as do they. I watch them curve away from each other but there is no escape, not with those damn hills and rocks and wotwot hemming them in. They have to bond. It thinks me.

Not of cabbages and kings, nor of how to service a chainsaw, nor, even, whether or not I ought to deal with the extraordinary wonderfulness of spider spin that fills most of my corners. In this sunlight, they look like hope, connection, determination and strength. I watch them rainbow, lift and move with any breeze, almost breathing. In my before cancer life, around this time of year, I would be flapping a cloth or cobweb thingy through these webs and strings and connections, always very cautious not to hurt the spider. Sometimes, if I reckoned the spider to be a very tiny one, or couldn’t see it with the naked eye, I would employ binoculars. No. I am not anal. This is when they’re ‘in’, and they are my friends. Now that I know my cancer is, colloquially, known as The Spider, for it does not pronounce itself in a lump, more a spread, I feel a kind of safety, as if all those gazillions of spiders I have saved and relocated and freed, have returned to me. This reads bonkers, is bonkers, but allow me please, for it helps me to find the positive in all this interminable waiting, in the sleepless weeks, the slash of early waking fears, the exhaustion of keeping myself upright, fed, excercised and washed. That’s on the bright side. On the other side, I feel scared and lost and exhausted. I might tell you this and I bet, I absolutely bet, that you, like so many others, will respond with a ‘but’ and place a lovely new Patch on the coverlet of my life, a glorious one with no fraying and with colours that will last for ever and ever, Amen. Don’t do this. Not to anyone. If I could, personally, remove the word ‘But’ from the dictionary, trust me, I would. It is a fixer, like the freshwater is to the tidal flow and yet, which is the wild one, at the beck and call of the moon and the four winds, the storms, the violence of volcanic eruption, the dying of an iceberg the size of Brazil?

Feelings come unbidden, unasked for, unsought. They just come, like a tidal flow. We attempt, because, (if we don’t we are counted weird, odd, unmanageable (?) and ‘difficult’), to process our feelings into a palatable presentation, delivered over the phone, on the street, at work, in a relationship, among family members. I have not learned, yet, to butt against the ‘buts’, and, maybe like the tidal flow, a pisces me, I can just curve. Maybe bending to the butt of the world is exactly the way to continue a flow. That thinks me too. And, to be honest, I am weary of being a standup in my life. Perhaps this cancer is proffering me a curve, the layback into the care of others, short term, and, perhaps, there is a sweetness therein, like the ribbony flow of the thrush family, who only conjoin at a time when the collective brings power and success. I can go with that.

My baby boy, well over 6 feet of him, is flying over from SA to bring me home. Number OneSon will drive us to a ferry which may, or may not, run for a load of reasons, not many of which make sense. We will home ourselves, and we will celebrate when we do. It is always a birdlift of relief when we do, when I do, when anyone does, cross the water, and land. At times, oftentimes, we have to curve, are stuck in the wrong place, no toothbrush, no jamas. This is when we might(y) take on the curve, if we decide to.

I am one, no matter the buts. I am afraid, moving into a space on which I have spare intel. It feels as if I am shoved into a time I do not recognise. I will, after.

Here comes the curve.

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Island Blog – The Rickle of Me

Well, well, well. Who’d have thought it? I wouldn’t, not never, the I who held each member of my family every time they faced something very scary, from first day of school, to delivering a first baby, through accident emergencies, breakdowns, woundings, emotional traumas and a close-knit dying. But I am here now, a rickle of things, as they were back then. Although I am not abandoned at all but beautifully supported by all whom I lifted up and encouraged down the years, I feel very alone. Distant support is not the same as holding hands with a real warm human being, one who cares, and a lot, one who will notice a daily change and respond, who will initiate and lead at times of complete flop, one who will just sit beside me, breathing, and I can hear that breathing as a reassurance. I don’t have that, nor could I in this time of my life, of their lives. I know the logic of it all, by rote, but it doesn’t address the emotional aspect. Maybe that sounds ungrateful, but, I assure you, I am very, very grateful for the support they bring. The shoring up of the walls against the storms, however, is my job, and I am so very tired and afraid.

I bought quorn mince. It’s ok. Rising, as usual, around 1 am, with, I confess, a big blue sigh, I made tea, lit my twinkly winkly lights and had a think. I had to rise, because the anxieties flood my mind on waking. There is no logic to any of the awful images, no history, no reality, but that doesn’t stem the flood of them. They are random, weird, unreal and poisonous. And, so, I rise, telling myself they are nothing to do with me, not mine, not helpful, not, not, a lot of nots going on as I pull on my warm dressing gown (ghastly thing, but cosy) and descend the winding staircase, rounding down into a pitch that might be the bowels of a mine. Well, it is mine, after all. There is one star and I look long at it, lovingly. I tell myself I am not mad, not that myself believes it, and that all will be well. A whole generation could birth, develop and die in the long hours before any light pushes up the dark, hefting it on shoulders strong and decisive. Off you go, Night. My turn now, and she, down there, can you see her in that ghastly, but cosy dressing gown, is in need of me.

At 0500 I prepare said mince. Loads of onion, garlic, tomatoes and quorn. I bring it to the boil, then simmer. For a very long time, until the colour turns towards purple, as if a whole bottle of port is in there sharing the simmering event, which it isn’t. I wonder if my neighbours can smell this at a time which will make no sense to them. I whizz up my Pond Juice, a concoction of spinach, celery, carrot, ginger and apple, divide it into Today and place Tomorrow in the fridge. It is still pitch out there and clouds have swallowed the star. I won’t let the fears in.

But, and let me admit it, they are constantly there. The internal fight is exhausting but I refuse to back down, to let them plant any flag on my ground. I am so very tired but, like a Jack-in-the-box, I keep bouncing up, even though my legs hurt, my costume hurts, my brain is mince (or quorn) and every choice faces a wall of Don’t Bother. I WILL bother. It wonders me. Is this what it was like, is like, for anyone facing any sort of war ‘against’ a force that threatens to overturn all that was normal, all that was, heretofore, taken for granted? I suspect so.

I leave the island on Wednesday 25th, for surgery on the 30th. I can feel the cancer now, as I never had before, as if it is rising up to meet my fingers. It isn’t a lump, more a small mass. Actually, that is an oxymoron, because it is either a mass (definition – a very big thing) or it isn’t. Let us go with mound. I like mounds. All across this beautiful West Coast land there are mounds, and a mound is about all I can manage these days #short term.

I might have a spot of bother with my right arm for a bit after surgery, but, as soon as I can, trust me, I will be diddling and a-fiddling about with words and dingles and thinks and rickles, and music and chuckles and and nonsense. However, I am not gone yet.