Author: judyfairbairns

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Island Blog – Sense and Sensibility

I know this brings to mind a story, and a film, but it also applies to life and I do that applying thing a lot, because the words are dynamically apposite. You might think they mean the same thing but they do not. Sense is a being thing whereas Sensibility is a doing thing. It requires active response. There is responsibility and it’s all about the ‘ability’ attachment, even if the ‘a’ decided to be an ‘i’ in this case. If I remember my grammar at all, I think that change is acceptable, even though grammar, it appears, is obsolete nowadays. On an official NHS site, re the Covid thing, it boldly announced that the Omicorn Virus is far more contagious than previous variants. I did sigh. I really did.

Moving on and to the point. I have really good friends visiting the island for five minutes and I want to meet them but I am frightened into retreat. Why is that? Is it because something profound has changed? No. The Omicorn Covid threat, in reality, was here last Wednesday and the week before and somewhere between last Wednesday and the week before I did meet with a lovely friend in a hilltop arts cafe to sit with her by the log fire over coffee and we did laugh. Oh, panic. Laughing is like a gale is bursting out of a mouth and we did plenty bursting. I remember thinking this. If our breaths were coloured, her’s pink I think, mine a dark blue grey, we both would have seen where it all went, where it landed, on her over there on table four, the collar of her coat, or him behind me on his greying locks or his beard and we could have dashed over to swat and flap and wipe and apologise, sending both her and him to the toilets for a punch or six of sanitiser. We could have shown sensibility. Let me dictionary you. ‘Sensibility – the quality of being able to appreciate and respond to complex emotional or aesthetic influences’. See? Action!

However, we are in a spin right now with Christmas coming and the wait for a political decision and it dithers us into indecision and indigestion. But if we pull back from that, the waiting thing, and consider from our own sense and sensibility, we can find the power within, the one guide we really need. Christmas is coming. We have made plans. Family, if allowed, are coming. Are we weak on this, or strong? Let’s dig down. Family are coming. If we had no political lead, what would we believe, whom might we trust? It always comes back to one thing. Our own selves. The joy of Christmas is all family, the smiles, the games, the moments and before that, the anticipation, the present wrapping, the secret plans. My belief is that we have bought into the Nanny State, and for many years. We don’t need a nanny. What we need is to take stock of how wise we are; all those years we learned and those years that learned us; all those times we saved the day, found the answer, stood strong and tall. Can you remember those times? Bring them back and study them.

I have in my diary a date next week for a writer’s group, led by an author I really admire. I planned to attend this coming week. I’m remembering the log fire, the great coffee and the sparkly staff. But my inner eejit is freaking out. Woa……..steady……..think……that’s what I do, with my hand up and my feets stopped. You went there last week. Now that sense,sensibility,action,decision is in the whirlwind of a looming political decision, you are slapped to the wall, quite flat and, to be honest, it is not a good look for you. Okay, I say, pushing off said wall, you are right. I must make my own decisions based on my own-ness. My inner eejit slinks off into the shadows and I find light. I find my sense and my sensibility. One is feeling, the twin demands action. I can feel my feets find fire, my head rise, my brain say “About Bloody Time”. I snort at that.

I will go. I will wash my hands, I will mask up. I will banish the indigestion of dither. I will live through this and so will you. Don’t wait for decisions. Make your own. T’is powerful and so freeing.

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Island Blog – Sounds Like a Marriage

This day I decided to upgrade a lampshade. I thought I knew my plan until the logistics of fitting square patches to a conical shape told me I should have paid much more attention in Domestic Science classes. Actually, to my feral and feminist credit, the word Domestic irked me even at 14. I recall struggling with both the dough for bread, the cutting on the cross of materials, the threading of needles and the, wait for it, measuring of stitch uniformity, and the name of the class, not to mention the bosomy matron who thwacked us gels out of giggles and back into the serious of Domestic. I managed to keep giggling and was good enough of an actress not to get caught but I suspect the matron knew fine who the leader was in her class of gels.

Back to the lampshade. Basically I decide, what the heck and just diamond the squares onto the shade. They stick okay but not with a really good stick. The spray glue I have selected from my arts cupboard smells like a holiday high and sticks my fingers together. I prize them apart and keep going with my apple greens, my emerald stripes, my lime spots and my moss green swirly whirlies. Mostly they stay in place even if I do need to curtail a corner from peeling away like a dancer. I feel like the bosomy matron, but without the bosoms. I work away as the morning finally wakes up to join me. It looks good. Overlapping squares even on the conical seems to work. I will have to address the rims but for now me and the material are mates. I pause to find breath outside as the air in here is heady to say the least. I find my specs and check the label, propelled by a little doubt. Is this glue?

No, it isn’t. It is high sheen varnish. Well great! Then I have a wee chat with the material and the shade. We are a triage so I speak freely. Will you stick even though I got this all horribly wrong? I check the dancing corners. They are at peace. Thank you, I say, and I mean it. Later I adorn with flower stick ons, this time with PVA, and it looks pretty fabulous. I consider the process. Me with no specs making an error; the waiting gamers waiting; the way we collaborated and succeeded.

Later I have a delivery. My new hoover. Oh, I still have Henry but he is heavy and smelly and I need someone light and rechargeable. Did I just do a Man/Woman thing there? She is sapphire blue and light as pins. I tried her around my peripheries and into corners, stairs and all the way up to the bathroom, something I would have put off for days thinking Henry. She is cordless and light and working with her is a real pleasure. I may be open to the Domestic thing with her around.

I go to the shop. I’m feeling so chuffed with myself, my triage and my sapphire best mate that I spin on lipstick. I haven’t worn it for decades, it, the lipstick on me, being something that was not welcomed, so I stopped. It takes a while to get the hang of lipstick but I am loving the practise. I set off for my shopping trip, all of half a mile down the road and then I realise, with giggles, that nobody will see my lip art, not with that mask on. However, I know I am wearing it, much like a new bra or lacy underpinnings, like a secret hug to self.

Later, after all this creative excitement, I go for a nap. I don’t nap. I know I won’t even if I sling all the logic in my head to Lady Sleep. Look, I say, finger wagging under her perfect equine nostrils, you let me go at 3 am and I am old and give me a break, but she is gone. I keep my eyes closed and may have slipped off the earth for five or so minutes, in spite of her. As I come slowly back into the room I am aware of my husband sitting beside me in a chair he must have brought with him because there is no chair there. I don’t see him but sense he is warmly there, pre dementia, strong and calm, smiling, waiting for me to awaken.

When I rise with plans for a dog walk and a wood stacking, I check my emails. There are photos of his headstone from the stone mason. The mason came like a whisper in the night, or, maybe he came today or yesterday, but I did not know. He just came. Ah, I smile. That is why you came my husband, for the first time as a strong able man. Are you telling me you are doing fine and that so am I? I decide so. Too many frickin decades together joins lives, the solid shade, conical so as to be as difficult as possible, and the patchwork materials that don’t fit, don’t fit, then do.

Sounds like our marriage.

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Island Blog – Tigger

The trouble with me, or one of the many troubles with me, is my Tigger bounce in the early mornings. It’s ridikkerluss. I must have driven my children mad with all that early bouncing, especially on school days. Waking in this ‘darking’ at 3.30, wide awake, excited about nothing and everything, I have to get out of bed. Thank you bed, I say with a reassuring pat, as it’s a bit startled. Most people, I add, would just turn over but I never believed in turning over anything with the exception of new leaves, naturally. I would be marvellous on early shifts in, say, a hospital. I would burst into the ward, my smile leading the way. Good morning! I would sing, as I reinflate the flagging night watch, flip on the kettle, brew coffee and head off to cheer the post and pre-ops, soothe the sad and weary, have a blether with the janitor and make him laugh but not too loudly, naturally.

By 6 I have cleaned the cobwebs and wiped the walls that have been hidden behind the Family Furniture for decades. The walls look startled too, suddenly aware of their nakedness. The cobwebs are all fluff and dark materials; very dodgy, but easily removed with my eco cleaning spray and a determined scrubber hand. Before I wipe them away for ever, I watch the way the webs float and lift as I pass, like wisps of smoke. I check for lodgers, but they have already scuttled off into a safe corner, probably temporarily blinded. I can see where the painter didn’t paint, couldn’t reach behind the Family Furniture. I pause to wonder who will buy these big pieces, who will thrill at the very sight of them, a must-have for the perfect place inside their home. I wish them and the furniture many blessings and a very happy life together. And, good luck polishing those brass knobs. I am done with brass knob polishing for ever. I have also moved furniture, stacked books and it’s not 7 yet.

I blame my mother. She was just the same. I remember us going to visit when the kids were young. I was up early, but himself, who could sleep all night and longer, remained in bed. Mum wasn’t having any of that nonsense and she wheeched off the duvet revealing his naked splendour and tickled his toes whilst singing something nobody recognised. He never got over it, not for years and years. Ah, well, I told him. You are not alone in this. Most people never get over my mother. So thanks Mum for the Tigger in me, the mischief, the fun and the way you were the most impossible woman who ever lived and probably always will be.

Unless I take over that role, of course.

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Island Blog – Self Assemble and Family Furniture

I’m here listening to Cat Stevens and buying a self-assemble white bookcase. The Cat Stevens bit just means his song happens to be on right now from a list of my top played tunes in 2021. Apparently. The self assemble thingy does bother me somewhat, me being a woman who never has the right specs on to read instructions, and even if she did she probably wouldn’t. No matter, I can fret about that when the flat pack arrives. And, why is it arriving at all? Ah, good question.

Today, after decades of longing to be rid of ‘Family Furniture Angst’ my antiques whiz came to the island. He has been before, many times, with his fabulous sidekick, straight from the Barras in Glasgow, a man I miss for all his stories, his deals in wild island. places where the pickings were always good. Sadly, that wheeler dealer is dead now and very probably confusing God with his eagle eye and his sharp wit. RIP Peter. Anyway, back to this day. Well I was all of a confucious. I could not settle from 5 am onforth. I had to find all the things this trusted valuer would want to see, the bits, the endless religious bits and the bobs that have travelled through the generations of my husband’s family since Queen Victoria reigned in her starchy widow weeds. And, the big ass mahogany trip ups, such as an escritoire (?) and a something else wood replica Queen Anne dresser which took my antiques whizz and the welcoming help of my neighbour to harrumph down the winding stairs, avoiding the fixation of a chairlift, one, it seems, I am obliged to retain for 7 years after the death of the dead one.

He arrived in the onset of rain, which, just to say, is most of the time. You have to love West Island life or you drown, and if you do, chances are you will wash up in the outer isles somewhere Middlemarch and in February when no-one’s looking so don’t bother. Way too wet and cold. I remember him, the way he dresses, the flamboyance, no matter the rain. His smile went right through me. What on the earthly earth was I fretting about? Not him, no. It was, it was, my need to be perfect, not to hold anyone up, not to be lacking. Good lord! Hallo Me. Moving on, he came, his eye sharp and seeing. He has many many years around antiques, or anything of value. As I showed him the Family Antique Angst pieces, he nodded. I know them, he said, and, of course, he did but I was not able to move them on until the man was dead.

It felt like a betrayal, over a poached egg breakfast, in the dark, waiting for the light, looking for it. It’s late again. Light is always late in the winter. As the morning rolled out like a geriatric snail, I went from room to room, touching, moving, packing, lifting, learning my limitations and ps btw I am so not into them. I used to be jaunty on stairs, even with fifteen children hanging on to me. I was all deer legs and gymnast. Something changed and that something, if I ever find it, might just regret messing with me. Moving on. My neighbour, strong young man, helped with the big stuff and we did the rest. I see the cobwebs, decades old, hovering like stories all told out. I see the space created. Space. I always longed for it but the Family Antiques Angst is like a corralling of generations, or it was., blocking out space, confining it, darkening it. I know that he who is dead had no information at all about these big dark crow threatening pieces. So why are we keeping them? He shrugged but held firm. Hence my breakfast sense of betrayal. I honour it, that feeling. It is respect for the the respect of he who is dead.

But now, I am working beyond cobwebs, through space and into a white self assemble bookcase. God help me.

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Island Blog – More than fixers

Yesterday I was smote down by some tummy bug. It made itself known mid-darkness and remained for the day. Although I am a welcomer of all things, including side-swipers knowing, as I do that life will bring them in whether I want them or not, I did find my welcome note was definitely off key. We were never going to sing our time in harmony. Okay, let’s find another way to deal with this. I accept you have invaded my body, my thoughts and my equilibrium, so I will go with you this day. Ultimately it will be you who leaves, not me. I am more than you, trust me on that.

I slept a lot in between chilly forays down the stairs to re-jig the logs into merry fire, sipped water and listened to an audio book. I watched the rain turn to soggy snow, whirling like smoke passed my big bedroom window. I saw gulls fighting for balance in the gusts of cold and wet and I felt my thankfulness muscle flex. I might be sick for a day, but out there are people who are really sick, really cold with little hope of any warmth and really alone in their lives. There are those doubting the point of their existence. Although I am fortunate enough to be loved, warmable and certain of a return to ebullient health, I am aware that my assertion of strength comes from the confidence of a woman who knows she is safe. Urging someone to see the bright side of a dire situation is not helpful. In fact, it can affirm their worst fears. What they need is understanding and empathy, a hand held out, a smile, soft words of genuine affection and care.

I know how it feels to be very depressed. I looked out at the world through blind eyes and anybody who shone a beam of light in my face would be swatted away. I wanted the world to stop spinning, so utterly pointless everything seemed. It was a long time ago, yes, but something so dark and huge makes an imprint on my heart, a big fat one. Eventually, over a long time, I found my way back, accepting help eventually, from guides who shone no beam at me. They just held out a warm hand, smiled and said Shall we walk together awhile? It took me through hestiational defences before I could trust that these guides were not out to fix me, to shape me back into the woman I was before when that woman very obviously felt she did not fit. I knew I was not prepared to oblige in such a way and what I needed was for someone to see beyond my act. We begin these acts in childhood. They are our way of coping, of fitting in, of receiving the love we crave. But, at some point, the spirit will out and shout and spill things and cause considerable harrumphing from those who think they know us. It is discombobulating for all concerned but not a condition, a scream from the inner wild, to be ignored because ignoring such blatancy leads to a long lonely walk into the abyss.

Perhaps this is why I treasure life in my older years. Perhaps, having been that lonely walker, finding empathetic guides to walk with me out of it, I have raised up my inner child, my true spirit, as my own. As I pondered all this from my sick bed, I felt a song of thankfulness ring in my ears. Now I can say I am more than this, more than this bug, more than those old conditions and rules, and how is that?

I have learned to love myself, the woman I am. I have learned, after fighting for her in all the wrong ways at all the wrong times, that she is a strong and beautiful soul and so very deserving of my full attention. Nobody else gave her that, but I can and I do. If you know what I am writing about here, or know of someone who would, please forward this on. Lonely is okay in bits, now and then but it can consume a person, swallow them up and disappear them for ever.

Let’s be guides, not fixers.

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Island Blog – Dawn and Wings

Sleep left the room at 4 am. It’s a bit rude to be honest and unfair that she gets to choose when to unwind herself from me and to rise into what is absolutely not dawn. It was the nightmare she didn’t like, I’m guessing, and nor did I, but that’s no excuse to abandon ship. Nonetheless, with her gone somewhere less scary, I knew I wasn’t going to sink back into slumber. Rats. I pull back the covers, fire up the bedside lamp and swing out of bed with reluctance and determination. This will not decide the quality of my day ahead, whatever it may bring. I have practised this art for many years now and have discovered that I am in control of my attitude, no matter what.

I wander downstairs to make coffee. I switch on Christmas and smile at the twinkly winkly lights on the tree that I am certain has shrunk since last year. It’s cute, though, sitting in the corner with an overload of fairy. She, unlike the tree, has grown inside the box in the dark of a cupboard and her frock flares like a cloud. Her wings are a bit wonky chops so I wonder if she might be preparing to fly off somewhere. We have a conversation about that. I notice that I pruned the big geraniums in my warm sunroom. The cut offs are in a pile on the ground. It did need doing and I did wait until all the blooms had gone crunchy before what looks like murder. It’s for your own good, I tell the skinny mother plants. I will add compost if this day ever decides to wake up and then water you. You need to sleep for a few months. So do I, but that is not my path, apparently.

I wheech out the ironing board. Yesterday I pulled off the cushion covers and bashed a year’s worth of dust and feathers out of the inserts, washing the covers until the colours brightened into smiles. Then I ironed each one and, when this day wakes up, I will fill their bellies once again. I search for some good tunes, discovering that Spotify has assembled my favourites for 2021. Well, how thoughtful! Each tune, each song is just perfect for an insomniac at the ironing board with at least four hours to go till morning rises in the east. I love that first glimpse of natural light, can feel the relief of it run through me. Now I can see.

I have forgotten the nightmare. I don’t often have them any more, thankfully. They used to stalk me every night and Madam Sleep was barely beside me for more than an hour or two at the most. I have tried to explain to her that she needs to brave up, to stick with me so that together we can banish the images, have a chat or a midnight feast and then return to slumber, but she is not a dependable friend. So, all on my own, I choose not to revisit the mare. Instead, I consciously turn to think on happy thoughts, like my children, my frocks, my day ahead. I wash in cold water because the warm is still asleep, dress, and put away the ironed clothes. I light my big candle in a jar and smile at its warm glow. I sit for a moment to consider others who find sleep a fickle friend. Hallo you all. I encourage you to learn how to change mares or sleeplessness into happy thoughts. We can all do it. The darkness can be a friend if we decide so. We can choose not to align ourselves to thoughts that tell us we are anything less than a wonderful, strong, powerful, beautiful human being, which we all are, every one of us.

And, there’s a day ahead, a new one, an adventure just waiting in the wings.

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Island Blog – Thing with a Point, Small Whispers

Have you ever said, or asked yourself – What’s the point in me doing this thing? I certainly have and still do, only now I understand that even the smallest step is always worth taking even when I can see no end result, no point that brings me the whole Something; that Something that would show me the point of my pointless steps and would surely confirm that I was actually prophetically brilliant without realising it.

Every single day proffers opportunities and we evaluate each one. What is the point in me sweeping the kitchen floor when nobody but me will see it today? What is the point in my adding a few more stitches to my latest fantasy landscape tapestry when I make no effort to market them? What is the point in applying loud makeup? For the sheep to ‘baa’ at or for the birds to tweet to their own Twitter mates? Why am I considering hoicking out that lithograph of an ancient stuffy old ancestor I never ever met, just to add ink and make a print? For whom? Whom cares?

Chances are, nobody. Not a who nor a whom; not at step one, nor two or even ten, but when a body remains committed to the small steptasks, something wonderful joins that bodymind on the long and winding road. As I make myself perform these, frankly ridiculously ridiculous, tasks that have popped into my intelligent head only to be sideswiped by my intelligent head, I feel a sense of achievement in my soul. Now, the soul is powerful and it has a voice. I turn to address the cynic in me and hold up my hand. Stop right there. I am doing this ‘pointless’ thing because something way bigger than you or me sent me a whisper. Through a word, a song, a looking, a noticing and I am tired of being so grounded in earthly limitations. I have wings and you, Mrs Cynic, do not. You are not spiritually wealthy. I can tell by the tight purse of your mouth.

So I do all the pointless things because every one of them has a point, in itself, its own point and who doesn’t want one of those? If I honour the whisper as the one who can make this thing a better thing then, what is not to like? In my long life, I have found that the end game is often imagined. The success story we read, the achiever, the award winner, the one who won Strictly. We are fools to aspire to such ‘success’ unless we are prepared to swallow the bitter pill of the millions of small steps that would make that success possible. I don’t want awards, nor to win Strictly, but I do want that sense of warm pleasure that comes from any job well done, no matter how pointless it felt at first. It doesn’t matter if nobody sees because I do and I am my finest seer. We all are. I wonder sometimes that we teach our children shortcuts, to run fast and not to stop for anything, resulting in hollow hearts. Taking the fast route can work at times but not all the time. There are small whispers being missed at a cost.

So, I would say this. When a small task whispers in, take action and value that connection. You never know what will come in to help and to guide. Don’t give up and don’t give in to old Purse Lips. What does she know, she who never partied till she lost a shoe? Live wild, people, no matter how old or young you are. Adventurize your life right now. Otherwise that life, our only one, is nothing at all.

And nothing is pointless, at best.

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Island Blog – A Bluebottle

It was behind something. When I wheeched out the riser recliner chair in order to move it on, there was this low buzzing like the dying sound of a motor. I watched it lift, just, into the room as if suddenly awoken and a tad unsure about the whole wing working thing. Oh, hallo, I said, as it almost took me out in its faulty rise and watched it carry on across the room towards the dim winter windowlight. You poor thing, left behind by all your mates, your tribe, all of whom, to my knowledge became a robin’s lunch some time ago. I am not sure your fate holds a better ending, but I won’t kill you, so fly on my friend. That was two days ago and it is still here. I notice it doesn’t do what it would have done in the summer, pinging itself against windows in a desperate fight to get outside of the inside and leaving black stuff on the frames that is frickin hard to wipe off.

The next day it swings into my bedroom, does a couple of loops, checks out the lamp just in case this light is the right light leading to freedom, the chance to soar into the sky, into danger, but to soar, nonetheless. I quite fancy soaring. I haven’t heard it today but, unless it grabbed the short chance of my sorties to the wood pile when the back door is wide open, it is still on the inside of out. I don’t look for it. Its presence bothers me not. Perhaps, by now, my lodgers have caught it, for they are always hungry and quick off the mark. Their webs are stronger this time of year. I sort of miss it. It was a living thing with sound effects inside the complete quiet of a solitary life. It thinks me, not the me part but the bluebottle part, that deep inner need to escape the inside, to find an outside full of perceived promise. I notice my thoughts. I can’t tell you how fascinating that process is. To stop and to study, then to question what I was thinking, or why that thought came at me slam dunk and out of the blue. A first reaction to an uncomfortable thought is to push it away and to ‘get busy’ with an ordinary task. In other words, to deny its existence. But it did exist. It came to me, the thought and then the feeling and the feeling was not one I wanted, so I denied it. In my past, but not now that I am wiser on such matters. Now I let all thoughts in without fear or denial. Discomfort or the skittles of fear I can bowl down with a good eye whilst still hearing the Bluebottle buzz. You are here. I see you. I hear you. You are no match for me, more, I am not your enemy and you are not mine. We just co-exist.

As I consider the outside of inside, I could in my past, and did, have to run, to get out, to be faster than my thoughts, to dam the flow that sounded like a river in flood or a thousand bluebottles coming for me. Not this day. This day, feeling floaty after my booster and flu jabs, I smile and settle. I light the fire and find a film to watch. I lift into the storyline. My thoughts settle beside me. We like this one, they say. A gentle sweet story and well acted.

Me too, I say. Me too.

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Island Blog – Forward to go

Today I drove the hill road into the harbour town to meet a friend. I was early and picked the sofa and the comfy armchair beside a warm open fire. The buzz was…..theatrical. I think I say this because the welcoming staff were all dressed in colours, with rings and tattoos and artistically coloured hair. Smiles wide, looking at me. I get it. An old woman in a big frock with bare legs and short boots and a home-fashioned jacket, seeded once in an old cardigan that freaked out when I washed it on ‘Too Warm’. I had thought at first, dog blanket, then I heard the story in it. My feisty impossible mother-in-law had knitted this thing, and for me. That had to have been days of knitting; days of love and commitment. No, I will lift this hunched and crunched woollen thing into my life, breathe my breath into it. Okay, great big respect. Now what? It thought me. I decide to wheech out the material drawer. I find velvet, or something that thinks it’s velvet and it is not for me to disappoint it as I finger the hold of it, the depth and then bring my own knowing into this I am Velvet thing. I am quiet on the subject, lifting out the deep colours, just knowing that this Not Velvet will be a right bugger to shape. It won’t shape. It yawls like sails in a slack-flack wind somewhere off Cherbourg. Hmmm.

I brought down my ridiculously pink tailors dummy on a white stick. I laid the compromised cardigan around her perfect pink shoulders, marvelling, with a snort, at her perfect pink breasts. I tell her this. I am amazed that anything I make for me, knowing my own body and using you as a caption of what I never was can ever fit, not with those pointy things almost taking my eye out each time I move around to pin or tuck, or wheech. But I, we, move on. She stands quiet whilst I pin and sew, pin and sew and then it is done, this bejewelled jacket that can only come out for air on dry winter days. Two, maybe three. Today was one so there won’t be many more.

We ordered soup. It’s always home made and so is the bread, so are the scones and the sweet baking. The fire was tended by a smiling young man. I hailed an artist I know well, one who has got his work into the online Saatchi gallery, and congratulated him as he passed by. There was a writing group just finishing up on a table nearby and I hailed the leader and signed myself up. So cosy in there, so easy, so fine-art. After lunch we visited the new exhibition, all local artists. I was enthralled at the work. I knew most of the artists just from their work. Many had sold and I was not surprised. I talked with my friend, an art therapist working with textiles, and we laughed and shared and quite forgot our old caring roles as we became two women in a space, with nothing but forward to go.

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Island Blog – I hold the balance

I watch the rain. A constant, a steadying. I am not overly fond of endless rain but there is little I can do about that. There is also little I can do about long evening darkness, one that holds on like a black fist for way too long, well into what laughingly is called My Morning. Sleep is a friend, yes, but fickle. She soothes me for a few short hours but she allows in dreams, nightmares, startlements that shock me into waking and leave me still shocked even as the dream evaporates. I am not good at ‘still shocked’, won’t stand for it, get up, go downstairs to watch the darkness, try to love it at 4 am. I remember trying to love something when it defies the rules and it was never easy, my skin prickling, my mouth empty of words, my body longing to run, but if I could do it once, I can do it again. Let it be.

But. When someone who has no idea about widowness, my widowness, says something that doesn’t even come close to the depth of my feelings, I snort. I hear all the advice, the platitudinal fiction that spills from lips and eyes and I want to roar like Aslan. I don’t, naturally, but that roar held in my small body is wild and dangerous. I smile and thank them, the grief counsellors, the Facebook lovers, the ‘friends’ who write another supportive line pinched from a book they’ve read, but the within of me belies the without. Thank God for skin and good manners! Deep down I am grateful for kindness, nonetheless and all those words of uplift and encouragement come from good warm hearts. I know this and it thinks me into a questioning.

What is it that bothers me when I hear or read words that are just birds around my head? I consider the question and it comes to me as a flash of light. It is my inner speke that needs my attention, not the words I hear, the intention behind them. Oh dear, that can feel so impossible at times when I am busy doubting and fearing and self punishing, even as I know the truth of mind control. I decide to step into my own head and there they are, standing like sentry guards at the door. We can’t let any positive stuff in, they tell me as I confront them, not when you are busy nourishing us in our negative space. I sit down to consider the situation. Ah, so it is up to me to select my thinks? They nod. Are you telling me, I continue, that I am not at the mercy of negativity, regardless of my loneliness, my fears around Covid, my lack of confidence without my husband around to confidence me up? Again they nod. So, I fake it, pretend, kid myself on? Yes, they say. You keep feeding the uplifting words, the light bright beautiful birds. You receive all of them both from outside and those of your own making and you catch every one, lifting them gently into your mind and your heart. They are all light and flight. They lift your spirits into a positive orbit. They are all true and they are so much stronger than the loneliness, the fears and the self doubt. They are your true power, and we are tired of sentry duty. It’s time to change the guard.

I begin with ‘I am strong, happy, powerful and all light.’ I hold back the guffaw and the candle burns bright. The sentries fall, one by one and the door opens wide. Welcome holds out her hands, pulling me into a warm, light room, one I recognise. What on earth made me walk away from this! Well, says Welcome, life is not a straight path. The path winds every which way and everyone can get lost from time to time. I make a list so that every time the negative looms, I can hold it back with my own light. I might feel I am at the mercy of negative thoughts but it takes just one candle to illuminate a darkened room. Just one. It doesn’t matter that the doubts are there, the fears and the regrets. They are there to guide me, I know that.

But it is I who hold the balance.