Author: judyfairbairns

by

Island Blog – An Overwhelm in Perspective

When an overwhelm crashes in like a tsunami, I notice a shutdown in me. I didn’t expect it, to be honest. I believed I would ride the wave of it with my upbeat and positive attitude to life in general, but I had not considered that a threat to my own little life would feel so, well, overwhelming. The walls closed in, that’s what happened, gradually, once the reality of a cancer threat grew horns and fangs and claws. I still thought I was stronger than any monster, but that is not the truth. I battle with thoughts I don’t want to develop. I win, minute by minute, and it is exhausting. Knocked down, get up again, knock down again, get up. I need all my compromised reserves of energy to simply answer questions or to decide on the simplest of choices. This doesn’t feel like me at all, but I am not me, not the me I was just weeks ago. Did I fall off a cliff, or into a new world full of aliens and dangers unknown? Too quick, too quick for me to gather up my sense of humour, my ability to find my way out of any maze, my self belief, confidence, identity. They look down on me, or over at me, across the divide of space, of water, of air. I call to them, but they are also afraid, unsure of our connection. I am still me, I whisper, but their heads shake, No, you are not. We don’t recognise you down there, over there, a tapselteerie of bones and muddled thoughts.

In and among my children, my family, I feel strangely disconnected. I feel watched. Of course I am watched. I would be watching any one of them in my position. What to say, how to encourage, how to keep momentum going, how to bring forth distractions, how to kill time in the Wait Zone. It is tough for them, too. Am I hungry? I don’t know. Do you fancy going sailing, out for coffee, into the woods for a walk, or, perhaps to a game of Ludo? I don’t know. Is it Monday, Tuesday, Ash Wednesday or Christmas Eve? I don’t know. All I know is that I have to keep my phone charged, on LOUD, and with me at all times in case of a call from the consultant or the breast cancer nurse. I fight, really fight, against the constant rise of disaster thoughts, day by day, hour by hour. I write something down, then score it out. Foolish thoughts, pointless thoughts. What do you see in your future? someone asks me. I almost hoot with laughter, or I would if I could locate my funny bone. I don’t know. Imagine! they urge, meaning well. I poke about in what I know to be a very vivid imagination. It’s hiding, hibernating, on hold, something like that. The effort involved in such a thought process is way too much. I just want to float.

On a cloud. I dreamed, not so long ago, that I was walking in a wilderness, through unknown territory. I often find myself there in dreams. Tumbleweeds tumble by me, dust and sand fly around my ears and face, rocks thrust up wherever I look, but I am not afraid. Somehow I know I must keep walking, keep aware, not for dangers but for opportunities. I walk and walk until, ahead of me, I notice an area of smokey white fluff on the ground. Nearer I come, and nearer, until I recognise a landed cloud. Bizarre, yes, but not in this land. I walk around it, touch its chill, my fingers floating right through until they disappear completely. Barefoot (always) I nudge it with my toes. It lifts ever so slightly at the edge. More solid than my fingers think. Gingerly, I step onto it, moving into the middle. It holds me, easily. Then, a few moments later, and once we have got to accept each other, the cloud begins to lift. Slowly, gently, steadily, no rocking nor threat to unbalance me. Higher and higher we float, until the tumbleweeds look like dust balls, the rocks like pin pricks in a wide open desert. There is no sand in my face, no land to trip me up, no big rocks to halt my traverse. In short, there is a new perspective.

Then I awaken and think. There is what I can see. There is much more I cannot see. And then, there is that place in between where I get to choose how I see what I see, and what I see are my self belief, my confidence and my identity on that cliff edge, right in my flight path. It is easy to grab them as we float by, and I do. Then we all go down to breakfast.

by

Island Blog – Take Another Look

Let us take a look at Olding, from another aspect. Olding can be dire, upsetting, astonishing, in fact, but if we look at it through laughing eyes, it can also be hilarious, not just to those who are nowhere near missing the edge of any pavement, but to we who know how it feels to be anxious about exactly that. Stepping out of a body in some level of decline is to free a mind. It allows a sense of humour to engage with a strong spirit and a still beating heart. Look back, my friend, at what you achieved in your life, how hard you worked to get it right, to BE right for those you loved and whom you still love, here now, or gone too soon. Remember that time you lifted other flagging souls into your arms and carried them over stony ground, through fire, over oceans of shit. You did all of that, we all did all of that, and yet the memories of the times we have faltered or failed, said nothing or said too much, halted instead of running towards justice, fairness and inclusivity always leap to the front of the queue. We judged, yes we did, unfairly. We decided what came next and now we might regret that. We were unkind, dismissive, rude, even. So what? Do those ‘faulty’ memories define us now? I say a bit fat NO to that, even though I can be guilty of such regrets. It thinks me.

Why is it that we daft humans can always find and build on, the times we got it wrong? Do we stand as our own judge? I think we do, but we can also judge others wrongly. We can look at how the world is changing, decide we don’t like it, it isn’t familiar, and diss it all, but I can remember my own ancestors doing exactly that when I was young. I laughed at them, behind their backs of course. Old fuddy duddies the lot of them. Young people move too fast, mumble their words, wear extraordinary, or skimpy clothing, and not enough of it to cover an egg, let alone a whole set of buttocks and they speak a language definitely not grounded in the Oxford English Dictionary. We have come full circle, it seems. However, in my observations of self, I can see that, if this Oldies attitude is allowed to surface and thence to take over, like pond weed in an untended body of water, it clouds vision and grows stagnant. Lord save me from stagnant! How will I do this, how will I bring in the light, clear my own weeds, unblock the blockages that prevent a free flow of fresh clean water, bubbling with oxygen and all of life? To embrace the unexpected, to show interest in it and enthusiasm for it, even if I, the Oldie, must only sit on a bench as observer, is to engage with the unfamiliar and to embrace it.

The Oldies I remember first, and with deep affection, are just bones now but the light they brought to my skimpily clad, fast moving, mumbling life, fraught with agonies and doubts and angst, stays with me to this day. They might have been on that bench as life flowed past their rheumy eyes, but the sparkle was there, the stories just waiting to be told, the mischief alive as a pixie in their hearts and minds. Despite their loneliness, sickness or restrictions, these people could still delight, as was their intention. Not for them the moans and groans, not for them the lack and loss they all must know so well, not for them the criticism of a younger world, young and determined to get things right once and for all, in new ways, ways that really will save humankind from the fiery pit.

My granny, who had endless health issues that she never allowed to control her mood, and I sat on a bench once. My legs dangled miles from the ground as I watched my jelly shoes swing back and forth. I was bored and grouchy. What can you see? she asked me. I looked up into her wrinkled and beautiful face, saw the pearls at her neck, the softness of her jumper, the smile on her lips. I turned back to the view of passers by, with shopping trolleys or dogs or husbands at hand. Nothing! I grumped, and swung the jellies some more. Right, she said, now cover your eyes and look again. I covered my eyes. What can you see now? she asked. Oh, Granny, I can see fairies and dragons and there’s Alice in Wonderland, and Pooh and Piglet! I heard her chuckle. Good, she said, me too. Let’s follow them, shall we?

And so we did.

by

Island Blog – Olding, Big Pants and So What

Blimey, life in the city is crazy! I watch the people go by, push by, wander by heading for a collision either with a lamppost or me, busy as they are in multiple worlds, connected to a mobile phone. But everyone seems to know about both lampposts and the folk like me who dither and dance along wide pavements, all rushing us along like those moving floors in airports. Colours brighten the morning, some barely covering bodies, others caping older skeletons, tent-like. And, still an amazement to me, no two people look alike. We have two eyes, two ears, one face with a mouth and a nose and yet, and yet, we are all different. I notice when life has bowed, bent, twisted and sometimes collapsed a face, a body. I notice the focus of traverse and in the shortest possible time. And then, there’s a woman, a man, moving slow as a snail, every footstep considered and, possibly, doubted, the young dividing by like a rush of water around a big old stone. I notice bags and dogs and sticks among the careless swing of young bodies, showing midriffs taut and flat, feet holding the ground as if they believe they always will.

Perhaps I see these images more as I consider what is happening to me, the slow (I am reliably informed) growth of an invader within, an invader with intentions. Not a welcome guest, but one that is here, just the same. My sister and I wander past and through endless shops, all promoting the Beautiful, the Perfect. Faces of models, as my daughter in law was once, teeth white as snow, body perfect, full of a life taken for granted, one without end. After all, old people are not us, they seem to say. We are miles from the collapse of skin, the way a bottom slinks down legs, the way breasts, if you have them, plummet into a waistband, the way feet become unsure on steps or pavements. I was she once. Not the model, no, but nonetheless certain I would never grow old. It just wouldn’t happen. What did actually happen to me was something I gave no thought to. Olding comes suddenly and it came to me after my husband chose to leave this world. Not immediately, not when I experienced the euphoria of my own space, the way I could play music louder than a whisper, when I could crash plates, clatter cutlery, talk on the phone in my own sitting room. But that euphoria didn’t last. Its aftermath was the realisation of Olding. Now, I don’t mind growing old at all, but I wanted to do it without aches or insecurities or self doubts, without pavement angst, without cancer, tiredness, confusion and the faffing. Oh god the faffing. Do I have my specs, where are they, they were here just a minute ago? Do I know my PIN number, the code to unlock my phone (who locked the damn thing anyway?). Did I lock the car? Where IS the car? Did I pay the chimney sweep, the gardener, the window cleaner? I did? Twice? Seriously?

And so on. To be honest, the self-doubt that comes with ‘Olding’ is pants. Big Pants. And it isn’t just me. Others of my age, particularly those widowed after a generation of marital years, compromise, security and dependence to whatever degree, tell me the same story. It is as if we have no idea who the hell we are at this wobbly point in our lives, we who were so certain, so confident, bringing up children or not, working, holding down chaos, fighting fires minute by minute. We could cater for sudden add-ons, taxi every which where, and were still able to dress up for an occasion. Now we just hope no occasion will arise, ever again. We want, or think we want, empty days, a blank calendar, but we don’t really. We probably say NO to everything because we haven’t been outside of the house for weeks, or maybe we just can’t remember how to Small Talk anymore. We think we have nothing to say of interest because our time is in the past. We apologise for ourselves, for our Olding years. We watch young things dance by, remember (vaguely) our own young thing dance, and we turn away.

I think that is a big shame. So what to do? Who can say, who can tell? I take my inspiration from other silver foxes I notice walking by the window, determined to move, regardless of pavement angst, their emptiness in life, their Big Pants questions, all of them coated, booted and sharp looking as if they know just where they are going and are excited about getting there. So, when I breathe deep and set forth of an early morning to visit the swans on the pond, I decide to look the same way as them. I smile, I walk, I greet, I cross roads about 3 times as wide as any road back home with my heart in my mouth, but I feel better about everything once I return. Perhaps this is how to live in the Olding years. Just one thing at a time. Then another.Blimey, life in the city is crazy! I watch the people go by, push by, wander by heading for a collision either with a lamppost or me, busy as they are in multiple worlds, connected to a mobile phone. But everyone seems to know about both lampposts and the folk like me who dither and dance along wide pavements, all rushing us along like those moving floors in airports. Colours brighten the morning, some barely covering bodies, others caping older skeletons, tent-like. And, still an amazement to me, no two people look alike. We have two eyes, two ears, one face with a mouth and a nose and yet, and yet, we are all different. I notice when life has bowed, bent, twisted and sometimes collapsed a face, a body. I notice the focus of traverse and in the shortest possible time. And then, there’s a woman, a man, moving slow as a snail, every footstep considered and, possibly, doubted, the young dividing by like a rush of water around a big old stone. I notice bags and dogs and sticks among the careless swing of young bodies, showing midriffs taut and flat, feet holding the ground as if they believe they always will.

Perhaps I see these images more as I consider what is happening to me, the slow (I am reliably informed) growth of an invader within, an invader with intentions. Not a welcome guest, but one that is here, just the same. My sister and I wander past and through endless shops, all promoting the Beautiful, the Perfect. Faces of models, as my daughter in law was once, teeth white as snow, body perfect, full of a life taken for granted, one without end. After all, old people are not us, they seem to say. We are miles from the collapse of skin, the way a bottom slinks down legs, the way breasts, if you have them, plummet into a waistband, the way feet become unsure on steps or pavements. I was she once. Not the model, no, but nonetheless certain I would never grow old. It just wouldn’t happen. What did actually happen to me was something I gave no thought to. Olding comes suddenly and it came to me after my husband chose to leave this world. Not immediately, not when I experienced the euphoria of my own space, the way I could play music louder than a whisper, when I could crash plates, clatter cutlery, talk on the phone in my own sitting room. But that euphoria didn’t last. Its aftermath was the realisation of Olding. Now, I don’t mind growing old at all, but I wanted to do it without aches or insecurities or self doubts, without pavement angst, without cancer, tiredness, confusion and the faffing. Oh god the faffing. Do I have my specs, where are they, they were here just a minute ago? Do I know my PIN number, the code to unlock my phone (who locked the damn thing anyway?). Did I lock the car? Where IS the car? Did I pay the chimney sweep, the gardener, the window cleaner? I did? Twice? Seriously?

And so on. To be honest, the self-doubt that comes with ‘Olding’ is pants. Big Pants. And it isn’t just me. Others of my age, particularly those widowed after a generation of marital years, compromise, security and dependence to whatever degree, tell me the same story. It is as if we have no idea who the hell we are at this wobbly point in our lives, we who were so certain, so confident, bringing up children or not, working, holding down chaos, fighting fires minute by minute. We could cater for sudden add-ons, taxi every which where, and were still able to dress up for an occasion. Now we just hope no occasion will arise, ever again. We want, or think we want, empty days, a blank calendar, but we don’t really. We probably say NO to everything because we haven’t been outside of the house for weeks, or maybe we just can’t remember how to Small Talk anymore. We think we have nothing to say of interest because our time is in the past. We apologise for ourselves, for our Olding years. We watch young things dance by, remember (vaguely) our own young thing dance, and we turn away.

I think that is a big shame. So what to do? Who can say, who can tell? I take my inspiration from other silver foxes I notice walking by the window, determined to move, regardless of pavement angst, their emptiness in life, their Big Pants questions, all of them coated, booted and sharp looking as if they know just where they are going and are excited about getting there. So, when I breathe deep and set forth of an early morning to visit the swans on the pond, I decide to look the same way as them. I smile, I walk, I greet, I cross roads about 3 times as wide as any road back home with my heart in my mouth, but I feel better about everything once I return. Perhaps this is how to live in the Olding years. Just one thing at a time. Then another.

by

Island Blog – Through the Pond Weed

I am gradually growing used to city life, even as I absolutely do not wish to live in one. So many people, cars, bikes, streets, houses and windows. So much white noise, black noise too, sudden sounds of too many folk living cheek by jowl. A car bump, horns, ambulance alarms, a shouted caution or rebuke. Even the darkness falls with a clunk, although mornings slip quietly through curtains and under doors. I love mornings and today I took off for a walk around Blackford Pond, feeling the harsh resistance of pavements give way to a softer track, muddy around the stones. Benches flank the curve of the pond where I see ducks, moorhens and a family of swans with four healthy looking goslings, velvet grey, necks long, heads proud as they move with grace through the pond weed. Plaques name those long gone, etched in brass. ‘In memory of Jim and Mary, Robert and Matilda, who loved this place’. I remember this pond years ago, the banks less densely covered with spindly trees and ebullient water weeds, the body of water more visible. I exchange Good Mornings with dog walkers and joggers as we pass. each other by. The sky is white with sprachles of grey but no blue. Gulls cut through the white, a single hawk, pigeons. I miss abundant wildlife and must keep my eyes up to see any at all.

I am playing the waiting game, but it doesn’t feel like a game. Some day soon I will receive a letter with a date on it for an MRI scan and the process will nudge forward a few steps. For now, all I can do is to build strength, rest, play and keep my imagination under firm control. If I was at home doing this waiting thing, just me with my thoughts, I doubt I would manage such control. It is good to be here, with family distractions and in a completely different environment, despite the lack of wildlife, of space, and this constant movement of mass humanity. In quiet moments I watch people walk by under the window. Mothers or fathers with wee ones, old grannies, like me, with shopping bags, stout footwear and ice white hair. What is going on in your lives, I wonder, you tiny old woman, you, jogger with a dog, you young families with laughter or angst on your unlined faces? Are you well, happy, frustrated, sad, disappointed or thankful to be upright, well fed, free to walk, supported and loved? I wish you some of your dreams, because nobody gets to live all of them. Life has her own plans, after all. And it isn’t what happens to any of us that matters, but how we deal with it. Thus we make a deal. We say, okay, I didn’t want this, ask for this, even imagine this would happen to me, but it did anyway. How will I accept, with the spirit of fight, whilst concomitantly showing to myself and to the world, that I am bigger than my circumstances, way way bigger?

In my attitude of gratitude, that’s how, my acknowledgement of all that I have, all that love and support and friendship. Priceless gifts and completely free. I hold them close and, in doing so, the waiting loses density and gravitas and I am light as the swans on the surface, effortlessly moving with grace through the pond weed.

by

Island Blog – About Packing

I’m packing, unpacking, packing, unpacking. What is this insecurity when it comes to packing? I know #sensiblehead that I always travel light, cannot be lugging a heavy suitcase, just will not. All I need for this trip are the basics, but which of the basics should I take? What ‘frock’ mood will I be in? Will I feel chilly away from home pre hospital consultation, thus requiring a warm jumper, and which warm jumper? Needless to say this is a ridiculous load of valdaree. My sister will lend. I am away for a few days, not for months. The space between consultation, and whatever surgery is agreed upon, is likely to be weeks, if not months. I can borrow a warm jumper. It thinks me. When I pack for Africa, I barely bother about what to take. This, I decide, is because I am going to a wonderful hot place and for a holiday. Perhaps that’s it, the nail hit on the head. My insecurity may well be more related to the reason for this island parting than it is to the articles of clothing I eventually decide to put into my small suitcase. I decide to walk.

Nature has a way about her, a sort of head clearing re-jig into perspective. She laughs at me, or the trees do as they sway and dance in this big wind. It’s from the South East, I think, and yet warm. The heavy rains of the morning have lowered the boughs and I need to duck my way along the narrow track. I listen to the swish of movement, tut as I notice some fool has hacked off a living branch that bows overhead. Not, obviously, over their head. Hack it off! Why? Just bend your knees and do your body a big favour instead. That’s what I say. The whole shape of this beautiful beech tree is now out of shape, those flowing limbs, the skirt of her frock, perfectly formed like a brilliant green ball gown, now damaged. I harrumph. She, however, still dances on to the melody of the wind and it thinks me, again.

The fairy woods are quiet in between the showers, and the woodland floor, a carpet of needles and fallen leaves, is almost dry, such is the protection of the canopy. Three oak seedlings nestle at the foot of a huge fir tree, over two hundred years of huge fir tree, its girth one I am happy not to have myself. I doubt the oaks will grow much, not in that shade, not without some life-giving light. I look up through the boughs to see speckles of sky, a bit of blue, yes, but mostly careening clouds that don’t stay long enough to give me their shape. The oaks will have passed through a Jay. I didn’t know that until I did. A Jay will bury an acorn in a safe place, aka, in the lap of a huge fir tree, and inside the fairy woods, and then forget where it hid said acorn. Thus, the acorn grows in quite the wrong place. I decide that I am allowing the insecurity in me to grow in quite the wrong place. I move it to the light on the other side of the woods and watch it whipped away by the wind.

All the trees are waving, shedding leaves already, for Autumn begins early on the island. I crush sycamore leaves underfoot and think of seasons, how they keep coming, and going, allowing each other to take the stage, sometimes after strong resistance. Winter is the best at resistance, the grumpy sh*t, holding tight with an icy grip, thwacking us with the blast of a wind that obviously got expelled for bad behaviour and which now sells its strength to the highest bidder, like a vigilante. But we are not there yet and Winter is asleep so don’t make a noise in case you stir it from slumber. For now, it is tempest and calm, suddenly hot and suddenly cold, soaking wet or burning dry, an island usual. And there is something so real about it, the changes we humans need to adapt to, and quickquick, because our world is changing faster than many of us are prepared to accept. Turbulence is to be expected.

Makes me feel a whole lot better about packing.

by

Island Blog – Walking On

I was supposed to have my shingles jag today, but the nurse said I was too run down. I know it. So tired all the time. Part recovery from being nearly dead and the long climb back up from the mud and sludge of that Old Gripper, part fear of what may lie ahead. This is a time I could wish, as I did way back in school, for a less brilliant and inventive imagination. ‘Judith (cringe) has too much imagination’. Quote from a school report. And it wasn’t just once. It seemed to me that an imagination was something to be deeply ashamed of, something, perhaps, that might require surgery or therapy long term, at the very least. It got me into no end of scrapes, and, I might add, out of them too. An imagination is, by its very nature, flexi-intelligent, dynamic, able to work both ways on most things and in most situations, and two faced. There is the light side, the fun side and there is the dark side, the backside, the backslide. However, I am in control, mostly, of this imagination of mine, even though right now it is showing way too much sass. I suspect this is because it is also an opportunist and in the face of my looking smaller, aka, run down, it is rising above it’s pay grade. Well Hoo and Ha to that! We need to work together, I tell it, not against each other. When you show me dark, let the fear of wotwot court a dalliance with said dark, I go off you. We have worked together for decades, you and I, much as in a long term and bumpy marriage, agreed, but we did find a synergy of sorts and it benefitted us both. I got to keep the mischief and the inventive thinking and you got to keep me. Actually, I think you owe me. Without me, you would be foof in the wind.

Although I didn’t have the jag, I had the nurse, the one who flagged up a few weeks ago that I was looking like the nearly dead. She told the doctor and I had the chance to thank her, the nurse. She, Cara, has bright eyes, a beautiful and unlined face and looks about 16. She isn’t. Then I got to see the doctor to thank her for her quick and intelligent decision to send me off to hospital. She, Dr Jackie, is a lovely woman. I thanked her and we hugged. The new doctors on the island, this end of it, are a warm and welcoming couple and we are so very lucky to have them now. Actually the whole staff are so friendly, efficient and intelligent, I wonder how we islanders came to be that lucky. I am only thankful.

I came home with the damn imagination. I need distractions. Radio Four Extra is a wonderful discovery. I am knitting something. For now it is a long line of knit-ness. It entertains my fingers which is enough in small doses. I walk the wee dog but oh my, how wearily i walk, how weak I feel! I can do little and often. It’s the same with gardening jobs. A wee bit of weeding, a little pruning of the currant bush which isn’t/ wasn’t a bush but more a blanking out of the sky. It looks a bit weedy now, but I encouraged it to stop whining and to get back its mojo for next Spring, as I intend to do. I gave it a backward glance, having hefted huge long branches into the neighbours garden (she won’t notice). Stop focussing on what’s gone, I said. Look at the opportunity. I swear she quipped ‘Right back at you, lady’. Maybe I imagined that.

I feed the birds. We have swarms of sparrows here, unlike many other places, Englandshire in particular, and I have masterminded my feeders beyond the dive of our prolific sparrowhawk population. There’s a fence in the way, three wheelies and a mini. It seems to work. I watch the tidal dance, listen to the gulls screeching at the sea-eagles and hear their yipping response. It floats across the sea-loch as something unseen yet believed. I know the sea-eagles are there. I cannot see them. That doesn’t mean they aren’t there. A lesson in that, for the learning.

I fanny about with what to take when I leave this beloved home on Monday and head into the unknown. A couple of frocks, a jumper, cardy, (tweezers this time), nighties, leggings, a jacket, my purse, phone, laptop, chargers, underpinnings. How long will I be away? Will the consultation lead straight into surgery, or will there be weeks of waiting? Will I come home or stay away with my very limited clothing options? What surgery do I face? Lumpectomy (day job) or a single or double mastectomy? I don’t know yet but my imagination is already having a field day, whatever that means. Because I am high risk, many in my family having had breast cancer and with my great grandmother coming from Orkney, I may opt for those breasts to go. They fed five children and not many can say that. I thank them. Sometimes I look at them, old now, paps really, and marvel at the work they have done, the lives they have sustained. I can let them go, if that is what I and the consultant decide. To think I may leave with breasts and return with none is quite a thought. Some might say, Don’t talk that one up! I ask Why Not? I am a realist, a woman of age, a strong and vital life force and honest and open to a fault. (why is is called a fault? Does it refer to a fault line or is it a somebody’s ‘fault’? It thinks me)

I will keep writing. I will keep blogging although my arms might feel a bit dodge for a while after surgery. But we are not at that point yet. This is just the beginning. Rather exciting when you look at it that way, don’t you think? A world I have never walked in before, a newbie, wide eyed, scared, yes, but walking on. Always walking on.

by

Island Blog – I Still Am

Well, who would have thought this? Not me. How can one day feel like a funeral march and the next as a beautiful thing, a day awakening after a long sleep. Nothing has changed, the circumstances are just the same, the day just another dawning. I still face surgery, a lumpectomy, a full mastectomy, I don’t know. And, yet, not the same at all.

I woke once in the night, ignored the dog bounce, chances are, at my peril, and re-awoke at 6.45. A lie in for me. And the day just kept her colour, her bright shining. I just flowed free, happy, light and full of ideas. I will knit. Who said that? Not me. I have wools, I have paints and texture ideas for a canvas. I have wires for stringing beads, I have the wisdom of a textural artist. Well, I did, ten years ago. I looked around me. The birds, the sparrows, flutter like gorgeous all around my feeders. They have learned, even with their fat beaks, to grab nuts from the feeder, and I do help them a bit with seed in a carefully placed place, limiting (no offence) the dives of sparrowhawk and goshawk. I just want to watch them, not offer them as prey. It has taken me years to work out the best location for feeders.

I wander through my day. I found Radio 4 Extra, plays and series. I listen as I knit nothing, just knit. I watch the New Moon finally give way to the Ordinary, that space between Tricksy New and then the even more so Full Moon, when the tides are slow to lift, slow to rise, kind of flat a lot. The big ass full is coming, but we, up here, the fishermen, the island women, and some of the men, enjoy a reprieve in that ‘slow’. I walk my small four legs twice around the short loop. We have ‘The loop’ one most people walk without thought. I used to do that. The weakness from being nearly dead has changed that for me. I know my footing here. I love it, the every step of it. I never thought about my steps before. Now I do, so I walk the short, twice a day. I am not afraid.

When i leave my beloved home, dog, island, on Monday to go to Edinburgh and then to the Western General for my consultation, for the decisions on surgery, on the next bit, I feel some fear, of course I do, but the NHS up here is fantastic and the things they have learned and perfected over just the last ten years is so encouraging. i don’t have the mind that knows everything about everything, nor about anything much, but I know I am supported by those who do, family included.

I remember a day in Barcelona, my tiny granddaughter fearful because her mum left her to go for a pee. She clung to me. She is now ten and quite the thing. But I remember that moment and how valuable I was in the moment.

And still am.

by

Island Blog – Hallo and Thank you

Today I woke too early, my head full of monsters. Will I have major or minor surgery? Will I be strong enough to deal with it all? What will be the treatment after? Will I forget my headphones? (locate my headphones), or miss the ferry because the milk lorry has capsized in the Glen? Will I arrive, as I did for the Nearly Dead hospital visit, with one nightie, no cardy and no tweezers? Tweezers? Seriously? Will my little beloved dog fall ill when I’m away, and how long will I be away? Will the chimney sweep come, will the garden go to riot because I’m not watching it? Okay, you get the monsters. They all say YES, to all of the above, of course they do, the negative bastards.

Right, you lot, I said, startling the small dog into barks and a leap from her bed. Right! No, Wrong! You is NOT getting me in a right fankle at 04.30 whilst still inside my nightie (take 3, maybe four, do I have four?) and with my eyes barely focussed, you is not. We all rose from the tangle of duvet and I did try to leave them upstairs but they had a different plan. We watched the early birds, the light spreading over the sea-loch, over my garden, over the land, like a new story. Heretofore, this has given me a new vision, a new day, a new dawn, but this morning, no. The damn monsters of fear and anxiety, of a still resident exhaustion in my battle to be undead, kept up their clatter-chatter. It is a longtime since I had to fight them in this way. I tell myself, it is okay to feel these feelings, but it isn’t okay at all because they give me indigestion and backache and a squiffy head and no inner peace. I tell myself that anyone else would feel this way, but that doesn’t help either.

Do I not appreciate the support and love from my family, friends and blog readers? Yes, I do very much. So, why isn’t that enough? It thinks me, a lot and those thinks lead me to the (possible) conclusion that, no matter how many are around us, surround us, we ultimately sail alone. We need to manage our own craft across all sorts of dodgy oceans. In the knowing of that, I managed the hours of today, just. I rested a lot, read a whole book, walked into Tapselteerie and met not one soul, something that would normally delight me, but not today. Today I wished for an encounter, just a wee hallo and a passing chat. I went to the shop for a few bits now that my ‘recovery’ and ‘preparation’ demands a whole load of dark green vegetables, pulses, seeds and probiotics. I didn’t even know what that meant before now. I just cooked and ate.

I have decided that this living alone thing is not much fun, not when you want a Resident Familiar to proffer balance in the face of inner monsters. That smile, that joke, that ‘come on, let’s go out for coffee’, or to the beach, or something. Although my Resident Familiar left the relationship a long time ago when dementia arrived to take up residence, he was still here, a sometimes warm, living Familiar. I don’t want him back, but that is not the point. When a girl is swept off her feet at just 18 when she still has no idea about life beyond the parental home, she can be forgiven for feeling somewhat lost after 50 bonkers years of marriage to a dominant male and on the adventure of a lifetime. Being alone means I have to instigate everything and others, who have a Resident Familiar, are, well, busy until next Tuesday. I get that. I was always busy till next Tuesday, and for decades. But, on the other side of that, being alone is marvellous, so freeing, so uplifting, so damn new. How bizarre.

I am not moaning. Tomorrow will come and will proffer a new set of ideas, new feelings. Today is just today. So why do I write a blog? Should I not, instead, keep all of this to myself so as to spare whoever reads these words? Possibly, but I have been a polite girl/woman for a very long time and right now I feel raw and bloody and honest and congruent. I don’t want phone chats, don’t want visitors, don’t want anything at all, in truth, other than for these feelings to melt away. I am effortlessly positive as a rule because that is how I see this gift of a life. Perhaps, then, I am simply in a place I do not recognise, one that upskittles me, tries to trip me right over. Yes, that’s it. I don’t know this terrain and it is hostile. Simples. And it really helps to write and to post. Really, it does. In writing out my feelings about whatever is going on, and to send it into the ether, whatever that is, my spirits lift into a reassurance, that no face to face contact can give me. I think of you all, in Canada, In the States, in Englandshire, in Scotland, on islands across the world, and I reach out, saying, through my own stories, Hallo and Thank you for being there, for clicking on the ‘follow’ link to my blog, for reading my words. I also imagine your lives, tough at times, maybe many many times, easy here and there, the infuriations, the lifts, the shocks, the abundance and the lack. The bones of a life, the flesh and the guts of an ordinary/extraordinary time on this goodly earth. Life, I love you. I truly do.

See? I feel better now, just writing this. Hallo you all. And Thankyou.

by

Island Blog – Thanks to a Horsefly

I’m here, back home and in the wealth of warmth. Well, warm, eventually, as the mornings can be sharp and bitey, requiring jumpers and leg coverings and a very good attitude to the shivers that challenge a mug of hot coffee. The afternoons sprawl wealthy on the bed of confidence, no leg coverings required, in fact, bring on the fans please. T’is weird and the way it is. By noon, I am overly clad and fighting my morning garb for the sudden, and somewhat desperate freedom from all that morning hoo-ha, which I abandon on the stairs. Jumper, leg cladding, even wrist warmers for the day is in pieces up here. Where once, we knew how the day would be, might be, the wise cautionaries telling us to keep our semets (vests with buttons and much restriction) on for months to come, now there is disarray and not only in the vest, leg cladding, jumper department. Weather steers moods. Cold rain, warm rain, just rain. Promise of sun, hope of sun, arrival of sun. It all guides us from pissed off to delighted, from a confirmed ‘there’s no hope’ to the one who is alert and watching the cloud shift, is accepting climate change, is actually the one in the game. And the game is more than weather. The game is one we play together and alone. Many of us have been assaulted by massive loss, like a sudden death. I almost cannot follow that sentence. It is too catastrophic. Too alone.

I find this next bit quite hard to say, as if I feel that what is going on with me palls by comparison to the catastrophic and sudden loss, one I have been close to this last week, and a timeline I can never be a part of, beyond the paltry can give.

But I am saying it. My time in hospital, whilst I fought to be not dead, has thrown up something important. With Cellulitis, there is a lot of swelling and one lymph gland remaind high despite the massive doses of antibiotics that saved my life, and after which, my consultant, Isobel, God bless her, sent me for a mammogram and biopsy and ultra sound. She was right. I have breast cancer, an unusual one, called Invasive Lobular Cancer. She, the cancer, is quiet, not necessarily presenting in lumps, although they did, eventually find one, the half size of a frozen pea. She appears in the right breast for the first time, as I have had at least five no problem lumps in the left.

What I feel is scared, unsure, and thankful for a horsefly bite. Beyond all those intitial feelings I am unsure about being in the garden. Thankyou friend Winnie for guiding me to big ass protection. Thank you to my ex breast cancer sisters who guide me to probiotics and dark green veg. I will leave island in a week for consultation and biopsy and mammogram and MRI and a whole load of questions and decisions. I don’t know whether it will be a lumpectomy or a complete wheech off of breasts. But what I do know is the strength of my family, my siblings.

I am suddenly cautious coming downstairs, cautious about walking out without a kick ass protection slathered over me. I am aware of my age, and that seemed to come overnight. Slower to move, all of that shit. But, for now I am watching eider duck on the sealoch, divers, geese, and the sun is creating diamonds on the salty surface.

And I am eternally grateful to a horsefly.

by

Island Blog – There is no Silence

I walk after the rain and into the silence. But it isn’t silent at all, not once I move further in, because, although the pitter and the patter has stopped, there is an aftermath and that is where I am, me and my wee dog on an empty track, which also isn’t empty. How strange it is to discover a new depth of understanding, new ears for listening, new eyes for seeing, but only when a curious person moves deeper into an experience. At first sight, on first hearing, something is an absolute. It has stopped raining. There is quiet out there. The track is empty of people, there is just me here. Then the absolute begins to dissolve, to reshape, to sharpen my wits and my awareness, becoming something unending, evolving and wide open to change. Within this dissolving absolute, I move on, wide-eyed, open eared, listening, looking, feeling, using all my senses. I am not powerful here, not the only ‘It’ in the situation, just a small part of something magical.

A drip falls on my head, a fat drip, one that has gathered other drips into its belly whilst hanging from a leaf, one I didn’t notice at all, what with that massive canopy above me. It is heavy, a kerplunk of a thing. It lands like timpani on the sound box of my skull, a beat, just one. I feel it break, travel down my neck, a tiny river, down and down until the small of my back tingles and I shudder. It is warm now, courtesy of my faithful skin cover, and it disappears into the cotton of my knickers and is no more. But I felt it, I noticed it and we, for just a moment or two, were together on this wander. The rain has left rivulets along the track, tiny lifted ridges awaiting a squash from heavy boots. Beetles wander, indigo blue and quite unable to remain upright, it seems. I right a few. Puddles reflect the lowering sky, the complication of clouds, stratus, cumulous, thisicus and. thatitcus, the nauties not visible and I long to see the nauties. High, they fly, way way up there, but this sky, this fluff of cloud mates are busy taking the stage for now. The sun peeks through in a spreadlight, slices of glare, pushing through the skinny fluff, determined to shine, much like me.

The floor of the fairy woods are dry, the ground bouncy beneath my feet. Mosses, wild green, almost luminous, abound in the dark which isn’t dark once you walk into it, and I do. I pause and look around. How many people over hundreds of years have paused here, right here, with a story to tell, a heart full of joy or pain, a thousand questions unasked, unanswered? How many decision made and what was the aftermath, how wide the ripples? What trysts were sealed, what lives begun or ended on this beautiful Tapselteerie land? I will never know, nor does it matter. T’is enough to wonder.

Lont-tailed tits work the trees way above me. A heron flaps lazily overhead and a sea-eagle yips from far across the loch, yelling abuse at an irritation of gulls. Wild grasses tip into seed, no less beautiful in their dying. A single hind across the sealoch mounts a rock in order to browse the leaves of a tree whilst her faun curls snugly inside a bed of bracken. The wind is soft on my skin, the cloud-sun warming to my bones, the birdsong elevated after the rain. There is no silence in nature, only a shapeshift, for one who is alert and aware. And, in the melee of a human life with its troubles and wotwots, nature keeps a conversation going, one soft voiced, uplifting and always ready for whatever comes.