Author: judyfairbairns

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Island Blog – Still

A word with more than one meaning. This morning I awoke about 5 and thought, rats, but only one, so, rat. I love the dawning mornings even if I am ready for lunch by 10. I came down for coffee, could smell it long before it was brewed, the good strong ground stuff and black as soot. I heard chaos in the skies, gulls in a frenzy. Hallo, I thought, there’s a big predator bothering these noisy sky-jackers. Then I saw them swinging and dinging around a faraway tree across the sea-loch, circling, rising, punching their white bodies into a space between the woodfull banks of the other side. I pulled on the bins, eyes still cloudy with unslept sleep and the lenses kept clouding from the heat of my eyeballs. Ffs, I muttered, wiping again and oh, again, with my wiper thingy until the glass and my eyeballs stopped posturing. Finally I catch them, two huge sea-eagles sitting quite the thing on a branch that already looked exhausted from the weight of their task. I saw the heads of the two, beaks moving langourously from one sky-jacker to the next with a barely visible shift of the neck muscles. Still. They were still in the face of the frenetic. I like that.

The sky was still, the clouds, not bothered, no wind. They sat like fat observers of my village, my home, me, no judgement, just watching. I felt the calm of both the clouds and the eagles move towards me, me in my jim-jams with soot black coffee on my tongue and in a way too early moment. It calmed me, smiled me. I said Thank-you for waking me at just the right moment to see the very perfect thing. I looked again and the eagles were gone. I missed their gone-ing, but here’s a thing – the sky-jackers kept pinging about the tree, squwalking and squealing like unwelcome thoughts. I have these too, I said to no-one there. I might be stilling myself, madly, only to find that, although no human interrupts this stilling process, my sky-jackers are within. Well, blow that.

Let’s take a look. I know I can’t ‘blow that’ because blowing that is what I have done for decades. Now I actually want to notice the interruptions when I am madly being still. I confront them. What do you want? I ask. The minute the voiced out loud question spills from my mouth, they begin to reply. They’re flapping like dingbats in a turmoil. What does this tell me? That they want me to listen to them. Ok, ok, I say, patting down the air around me. Form a queue. And they do. Ok, first…? I hear First. First reminds me that I had decided to check my household bills about 3 weeks ago and procrastinated because the thought of doing that is the ultimate yawn. I write it down and promise I will check that list this very day. Next? Next marches up with yet another thing I knew some while back demanded my attention and action. And so the list goes on. I actively respond to all of the demands. Then I still. I am like the not bothered clouds with no wind. And that is all it takes.

Cousin to this process of sorting out the immediate buzz flies or sky-jackers in my life is to respond to those who sing at me in a lower key. They come from way back. They are the Dodo, the Great Auk, The Tasmanian tiger of my life. They are, so called, extinct, but they are far from that. These other selves, our past selves, are still alive and kicking inside us and longing for love. I know this. My little girl and my teenage self were both angst ridden and for many years. And that is how it is and was. But because of studies into connectivity with our past, and with the exciting knowledge and support we now have access to, to heal our young hurts and breaks, there is the chance to be still again, to be at peace with the strong, bright and beautiful souls we have made of ourselves, no matter our beginnings. And we did, those of us who did the work. Just look at us! We changed neglectful, unthinking parenting into warm protection for our own children. We did that. We became eagles on exhausted branches not fussed by sky-jackers. We decided not to be bothered by old thinking peckers and baiters. We stood strong and our children are free-er than we ever were.

And for those of us who are still working on ourselves, allowing the mistakes we made as innovators of a future we had no manual for, we might like to say to ourselves this:- Well done. You shifted the time belt. You decided, whether consciously or unconsciously, to make a change, to do the old in a new way. To love instead of judge, to let a child think for his or her self. Go you. It isn’t done yet. But it is on its way if (thanks Maya Angelou) Still we rise.

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Island Blog – The Don’ts, The Do’s and a Mountain

I realise something. At the top of my new page for the day, that clean clear line of pad, I begin it with an order. I never noticed before but I notice now. Or, on a good day my sentence, one I make sure elevates into a headline, is an order. Sit up Straight. It is a good one as I have noticed a topline slouch in my bearing. I sit and I slouch. Me… who has perfect dancer posture. And, I know, as I self correct, how much liftier I feel. Hmmm. Nonetheless, this ‘order’ is bugging me. Then comes in a Don’t. Don’t overreact, Don’t respond from your own ego and so on.

I believe that a whole load of us spend foreverness in the ‘don’ts. After all, we know them well. There were years of Don’ts from mother, father, aunt, school teacher, peers, la la la. We might consider unlearning the don’ts. Thing is that our brain doesn’t hear Don’t. You say, Don’t fall. Don’t do this. Don’t answer that text. Don’t go there. But what the ‘robot’ brain of ours actually hears is the order. It doesn’t hear the Don’t. Did You know this? T’is the truth. Don’t fall, means fall. Don’t do this means we do. Don’t go there has us pulling on a coat and doing just that. We must present different. I am a yawning lost on the antipathy of either or. You know this already. But, in this spotlight, I have no answer. I might just accept it, as I accept the wiring up of an electrical thing, one that can either light my room or could blow me into the nevernever .

All this said, I believe that each one of us has a Do mountain to climb and it is our own mountain. The Do’s and Don’ts of our past can delude us into believing that we are still restricted, that we don’t have the strength, the knowledge of mountains or the right clothing. Explicit or implicit circumstances or memories can both help and hinder our climb. Many of us, if not all, have grown into adults who lug childhood baggage along with us, thus slowing us down, making us tired, frustrated and sad. We remember the don’ts and they stick us to old ground when the one beneath our feet now, is new, is ours to walk. We can come to believe in the limitations that confined us as children, believe that they will always describe us perfectly. We might feel restless in this state of being. Why can’t I do this? Why do I tell myself I can’t? Where is the Can and the Do? We search around for someone or something to tell us we are pretty fine right through to the bone. We might read one liners that advise us to let go of our past, and believe them to be the new truth, to be the Can and the Do of who we have become. We ‘practice’ this one liner, speak it out to ourselves, write it down on paper and stick it by the kettle for a few days, only to realise that it isn’t working. Nothing has changed. The reason for this is that we don’t actually feel the one liner, cannot relate to it at the level of our wounded hearts. Our heart is not listening, it seems. There must be something wrong with us. Why don’t I ‘get’ it? We might cry into the hours of darkness. Oh, of course, the fact that I am stuck in who ‘they’ said I was is the reason I don’t ‘get’ it. I am a useless person, obviously. Other people, like her over there with her perfect body and excellent dress sense, or him with his high-flying work and his certainty on all aspects of life and how to live it, get it. The difference between them and me is, well, me. I am the idiot, I am the failure, I am just a not-getting-it person and no better than they told me I was.

Rubbish.

The thing I have learned and am still learning is that my mountain is my mountain, the mountain I need to climb in order to find who I really am now. I am not that brat of a child with an over-active imagination. I am not waging a war against the Don’ts. Well, actually, I still am but now that I think for myself and can decide whether I do or whether I don’t from my own viewpoint, not theirs, anything is possible. As I write this I am climbing through the foothills of bereavement with all its associated freedom and loneliness. It makes me double guess myself, question the importance of me, or the lack of it. I was one of two, half of a whole for most of my adult life and now, when I turn around I can do the whole 360 and see not one soul. I am busy filling in the hours, long long hours, particularly when the sun goes down. I have no purpose any more, or so I whine when I am feeling like a pint sized space waster. And yet this is a million miles from the truth. So, I study my condition. I read avidly on the subject, listen to audio books, am curious about other stories of loss, both of a husband and of who I was, and of my bruised and battered heart. When I relate to another’s story I can feel a sudden rise of emotion. Yes, that is me too! And it helps. Being lost, however temporary, is unpleasant and scary and it is too easy to focus on the fear instead of teaching my eyes to adjust and of reminding myself that I am now free and open to adventure.

Our own predicament is always our obsession. We may indeed busy ourselves with a whole gamut of distractions but until we stop inside the fear, discomfort, restlessness or loneliness and teach our eyes to adjust, we will always be unfriending our true self and that becomes exhausting. Instead, we need to befriend ourselves, the parts we like and the parts we don’t. If the top of your mountain seems to disappear into outer space, just know that it is longing for you to begin the climb. The mountain will help. Along the way there will be pockets of rock flowers and spaces to sit and rest. There will be a spring of fresh clear water to revive you and the views will be sudden and breathtaking. I cannot advise another soul on how to begin this climb as I am way too focussed on my own, but I can say, as I have before, READ, STUDY AND BE CURIOUS. Loudly.

We have this one life within which to make our mark. We have one chance to lift someone fallen with kindness and encouragement and that person is often ourself. We cannot afford to waste time running away once we know we want to feel at peace with who we are. So, maybe you didn’t have loving parents or kind teachers or even a wonderful relationship with a mate, but none of these are who you are. I am thankful deeply for those in my life who challenged me, knocked my heart about and didn’t hear me because I am proud of who I am and who I will become. I still have a mountain to climb, yes. I may not make it to the top, but I am so going to try.

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Island Blog – Dark Woods and Renaissance

Through life and laughter, love and longing, light and loss and lift I become myself.

Who said that? I did.

Many poets and thinking writers have writ of the dark woods, the dark night of the soul, the longing for meaning, the whole point of this life and I am one. I am not afraid, as the world is, of what the world calls the dark side. We all have one, we all know it is there with us even as we run from it. I don’t run. Unless the twin is recognised and acknowledged, the unit will never be complete, never whole and never at peace. Life and death are such twins, one we love and celebrate and repeat stupid platitudes about, the other is whispered and avoided at all cost. I notice it when a blog I write is not about the ice cream and candy side of our human condition. Less comments come through. Nobody wants to think about the pain they all carry, we all carry but cannot quite explain. We wish it away, cover it with sprinkles or ignore it hoping it will give up trying to get our attention. But, like a toddler on a mission, it will never do that. Turn around. Look at it. Say hallo, I see you, shall we talk awhile? It is a rare human who has that level of courage and vulnerability and yet it is the only way to fill the big black hole inside, the one we hope will accept the material wealth we throw at it – the millions of hours we take away from our families in order to climb the social or corporate ladder, in the foolish hope that this will be enough. It isn’t, wasn’t and never will be.

In my life now there is only me here to fill the hours. This means I can read and study, ponder and reflect without interruption. I have never known such a state, interruptions having been the norm for 68 years. I have even been that interruption myself, on occasions. These long stretches of time afford me space and peace within which to pursue whatever I fancy. I can follow the flight of a bumble bee, a dragonfly, a thought. I can read for hours until my bum is numb. I can wear my frocks back to front, inside out, eat banana with marmite on muesli, sing loudly in Portuguese and dance Tango with a chair. I know that the older we get the thinkier we become. It is as if we finally begin to understand the Elusive Puzzle – what the hell am I here for? Yes we work, bring up kids, do our best, learn how not to overcook sprouts and other important things, but even with a socking great list of lifely achievements, that list never really satisfies, never brings the aha we seek.

I spend a great deal of time saying thank you. For pretty much everything, the bad and the good. Why, you ask, are you thankful for the bad? Because the bad, so named, is actually of immense value. It is the shadow side, the dark side of the whole, of life in all her beautiful and mysterious self. To be thankful for all that happens, all that has already happened, warts, whips and wastes is to begin to understand the point of being alive, of being here right now wherever you are. Precious human, pointfull life-liver, valued, important, needed. Every single one of us. The mistake we all make in this life, and I include myself, is that we focus on what we get, or got, wrong. It feels like an impossible flight to make, the one that shows us all we do and have done right, those times we laughed with friends, with family, shared their joys and pain, engaged in a way that held us fully present within the moment. There will be zillions of those times in every single life. Why do we remember the times we ‘failed’? I have no answer but I do know enough now to consciously shift my thought plates into a new dynamic, one that affords my feet purchase on level ground and from where I can still be of good use to others, even at my age. If I am always slipping down my own slippery slope, thinking only of my faults, falls and failings, I am of little use to my own self, never mind that of others. Yet, in our culture of running away from our own darkness in the mistaken belief that we could ever outrun such a sentient presence, we simply exhaust ourselves, and then we slip once more down our own slippery slope.

We all know and remember how quick our primary caregivers were to judge us. To varying degrees, in surprising amounts, we all know. This decides our adult thinking unless we choose to build ourselves anew, once we fly the nest. It is not simples, not at all. It takes a ‘traveller’s’ mindset. We read that anything is possible if we just believe. believe in what? Yes, we can believe in what someone else achieves but in our own self? No, that is never going to happen. As I said before, it takes the willingness to be vulnerable and to find a strong source of courage, in spite of seeing nothing ahead but the dark woods.

A while back, I was asked a question. What would you be right now, if you could choose your life? No thinking, just a first response, thus not based on your own limited mental DNA, your own experience thus far. I didn’t think. A Tracker, I said. Good lord, where in the heck did that come from? Me, a tracker? I am scared of everything. I would be a terrible tracker, snivelling on the peripheries and wishing I was home by the fire with a cup of rosy. When we are put on the spot like that, no over-thinking-just-respond, we speak our own truth. Having come from a town, known pavements better than I knew any field of wildflowers or expanse of tundra, or wilderness, forget wilderness, this tracker thing is nonsense. I have been watching too many Pixar movies. But, hold. Wait. Why not? I see everything when I walk. I know every track, even the slide of a snake across my path. I see the flattened grass beside a kill and know it is otter or mink. I see spoor and know the night animal who passed this way, and when. I know. I know. I am a tracker. Then I remember how I am curious about how this person got here, how their eyes tell me more than their mouths will ever do. I see what others miss. I am a tracker. And my brain knows this.

Our lives are so much richer and deeper than we realise as we bound away from the shadow self. We are more than we think, more than the tight pants the world has told us are the best fit. The most joyful people I have ever met have done something outrageously courageous at the wrong time in their lives, according to the world. They said a big NO to corporate misery and went across oceans to work with dolphins. They said a big NO to a broken relationship and moved into the dark woods, though the long labour of renaissance and into a new light. They moved from city to wilderness, to a shack without power or running water and opened an orphanage for street kids. Their eyes tell me everything. They found their ‘tracker’ and it is good. Courage. Vulnerability. Are you who you really want to be? If so, I am happy for you. If not, check out the dark woods. the thing about darkness is that, pretty soon, our eyes adapt and the way reveals itself.

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Island Blog – Old yet New

Friends are here. Friends I haven’t seen for decades. One of them was a loyal and constant companion when the whale-watching business first began. Well, it didn’t actually ‘began’ all by itself. It was begun by us, by me and the sea dog who became known as the whale father. I remember a letter arriving back in the day when people actually wrote letters, addressed to ‘The man who looks after the whales, Scotland.’ That was all, and enough it seems to bring it to our door. How extraordinary it is to be old enough to remember a time when such a loose fit proved tailor made.

We have wandered down the lanes of memory together, these friends and I and there is a pride, a joy and a sadness in such wanderings because the whale father is gone. His presence peppers our conversations, our rememberings of old adventures lifted together into the light of the new life we now live. We visit the ‘old’ pier and the ‘new’ pier, both old now, ramshackle and holding on by a woodthread already compromised by the arched back of a repeating tidal march against the land. We stand and look out to where the boat had bobbed on her mooring, both boats, the old and the new, one gone to an old fisherman and northwards, the other to the bottom of the ocean. All our silence is loud. We stand together on the basalt rocks, watching geese, an osprey, oystercatchers, sandpipers and gulls and we remember. The bustle and shout of anticipation as offloaded passengers turn towards the vessel that will, they hope, they dream, encounter them with the shiny blowback of a whale, out there in the wild, working with the flip and toss of another tide, another wind, another sudden calm.

We see lichen on fallen limbs. Good air, I tell them, and they know it. We walk through what was the farmyard and on up to the big house, the one, the Tapselteerie of my life, now restored most beautifully to what she was when first she rose from the ground and on up and up and up. We only see her from a respectful distance. My friend does not remember her that way. In our day she was shabby (chic, I like to think) and mostly in need of a facelift, one she never got when we were her caregivers. I am happy for her now. She is respected and admired in a way the ancients (that’s before my time btw) would nod at, sagely, from behind their pipes and spinning wheels, I feel sure. You are doing the right thing, they might say and I agree with them.

We wander back through the old pines, past Lord and Lady Larch, whose son, I feel certain, has moved yet further away from his parents. About time, I think. You must be almost 100 by now. He doesn’t seem to mind my comment and just rustles a bit as I walk beneath his boyish boughs, as if quite chuffed with himself. Home again and we sit in the garden with cups of tea and chat. It thinks me. Decades since we sat together and yet the words between us flow as they did when we were young. I look into their eyes and see myself. We match as we did back then. The old and the new. How fluid we are, how easy it is to be, not who we were, but who we are now through connection to a time that impacted all our lives in ways we never anticipated. He remembered my sandwiches. I remembered his lion heart. I remembered them camping with their boys but they don’t. Who knows what part memory plays in memories! We laugh and it really doesn’t matter one jot.

Slainte Sea-Dog. We found you today, not that you are lost. It was a day of tide and talk, sea and memories, laughter and sharp poignance and you came too.

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Island Blog – I am Woman

I am woman, my own woman, and yet all women.

I have been broken more times than could be repaired, had I been born a teacup.

I am soft as down and hard as stone.

I have loved with all my beating heart and lost and known it beat again.

I have run over hot coals to protect my children and even with a burned soul I run on.

I have faltered, failed and fallen more times than rain, have dawned and dusked, ebbed and flowed, waxed and waned a million times and I will do it all again.

I have drawn my sword and I have sheathed it.

I have been actively, consistently kind to those I didn’t like and don’t relate to.

I have welcomed my child’s choice of partner, not because I attended the selection process, but because I did not. They have taught me new lessons and I have learned to love them all.

I have read more books than Finland on self-development and applied that learning to my daily life.

I have run into walls, tripped over rocks, fallen off see-saws, swings and roundabouts and may well do so again.

I have fallen in love and out again.

I have nursed, nurtured, carried and cared for children, adults, days, months and years and they all got better.

I have cried ugly and alone for nights and with another until the smile came back to my face.

I have looked in the mirror and felt sick, delighted, upset and happy.

I have given away my last bite as my stomach rumbled.

I have run too fast and reached too high.

I have lived my life.

I am Woman, I am myself, and I am Every Woman. I don’t need to know the details of your life, nor hear your voice for Every Woman knows exactly what it is like to be one.

I honour every one of you.

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Island Blog – This Goodly Day (even if it is Monday)

A bit sleepless for no good reason. I wasn’t bothered, nor troubled. I just experienced awokeness. When dawn tiptoed in around my blackout curtains I decided up was for me, so I upped accordingly. Coffee and a watch for the rise of light, the lift of garden birds, the backdrop of accompanying sounds. I heard the trickle of the burn. Trickle for now but in the Autumn its voice is wild with flood, catapulting over rocks and plummeting into the pool, then under the track and offski to the sea. The eternal flow. Rain falls, burns erupt in noisy excitement and then spend days splashing everyone on their way to join Mother. It is indeed a joyous sound.

I hear the tap tap of my complication of creepers, wisteria, jasmine, clematis as their floating fingers try to gain some sort of purchase. Might need help, I tell them, and they waggle at me. I see an otter fishing in the sea-loch, flipping silver fish against the morning light, the darkling hills. Geese set forth and fifth and sixth, in fact, make that double figures, across the flat water with goslings in tow. One parent leading (guess that’s himself), then babies, then mother. A line, no ten, twelve lines crossing together as the black backed gulls circle. I watch them. The airborne predators lift, and lower, tip and flip and by golly if I see just one of them pick off a babe, I swear I will finally wild swim. They all arrive safely and now, my coffee cold, I can draw breath once more. It is quite a wide loch and I am, on reflection, rather proud of my ability to hold my breath. I remember trying it in a bath as a girl and exploding back into the air after about 60 seconds in a state of snot and sneeze. Not something I put on my CV.

I weeded a bit and discovered a tiny clematis creeper (who planted that?). I madly cleared the grass and such like around it to give it space. The flowers are huge and magenta. So brave. Not just the colour, nor the size of the flowers but all that struggle beneath Aquilegia, and other tall things I cannot name. I affixed the stems to the structure that upholds the original clematis which is 30 years old and not flowering quite as much as she once did. I know that state. Then I remember who planted the wee magenta thing. It was I some 3 years ago and I allow myself the forgetness of such a birthing because I was thwack in the thick of caring during that year. Nonetheless it is such a relief to solve such a question, I find. Reminds me I am not losing any plot.

I walk beneath brilliant green boughs, dappled sunlit tracks and take myself, slightly resistantly, to the old pier. The pier that Popz built and from where he ran the whale-watching trips for many years. Latterly, when the trips no longer left from that pier and he was no longer captain of the ship, he took down a plank of wood to make a sitting bench. Using old stones to form the elevation, he laid the plank and many many times we went there. First, he walked, his little Poppy dog beside him barking at pretty much everything, and latterly, driving on his quad. Sometimes he could get off the bike and sit with me on the bench, sometimes he could not. We would take tea in a flask and biscuits and just sit, often in companionable silence whilst we listened to the geese, the oystercatchers, the curlews, the gulls, seals and herons, marvelling at dragonflies of electric colours, butterflies and various buzzing thingies. We talked over that explosion of Thrift (Sea Pinks) that fanned out from the rocks, the bloom of downy feathers here, the way the seagrass chooses where it wants to grow, the slip and slide of the tide. I sat there in the sunshine for a while and took it all in. I am glad I went today. I could see his smile, the Old Impossible, and we walked back together, even if I cannot remember him walking in my memory.

T’was a goodly day.

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Island Blog – If This Life

I love audio books. While I sew or cook or fanny about, I listen to those who know a deal more than I. If I run water for washing dishes or flip the electric kettle on to boil I must needs whack up the volume or hold my phone to my ear, but you could never say I am not committed. Is that a double negative…….?

My books could be scientific, factual or fictional fairyness. I love love both. This began during covid and isolation even before himself left the planet. I love to read an actual book and do so at night, pre sleep, but the thing about an audio book, if I like the reader voice, is that my brain absorbs it in a different way. I couldn’t tell you in what way different, but I am aware that the information I can take in from a very factual book is something I could never cope with as an eye reader.

So and thus, I can listen to some tricky stuff on audible. In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Gabor Mate. Why Love Matters, Sue Gerhardt. Eish I could never read than stuff in a book, stuff I want to hear because even at my age, I am curious and keen to understand and to learn. The former book is on addictions stemming from childhood abuse or neglect. The latter on the effect of parenting on children and its subsequent manifestations. Yes, I know, tough, and most of us won’t go there because we can’t face the guilt, but what I am discovering is not what I feared. We do the best we can, clueless like every new parents are, as they always have been and always will be. I have felt sharp heart bites and warm yesses. I have remembered being present yet absent (aka distracted with guests, husband etc) and that hurts, but I hope I gave the warmth and love and attention to my children at the times they most needed that from me. We mothers are so quick to take the blame, the blood red tsunami of it, upon ourselves. I know this.

With my own mother and many of her generation, there was no desire to look back over the child rearing years. What happened happened. What was done or said was done or said, belonging only in the past and the past is dead as a dodo. My own generation initiated a change in that thinking, deciding to do things differently because we knew we were damaged by a Victorian-ish upbringing to some degree or another, and wanted our own children to feel more obviously loved. Although that old nonsense of ‘this will hurt but it’s for your own good’ still came into my head when some sort of retribution for a crime committed was required, I remember thinking long and hard about a kinder way of getting the same message across. I wasn’t always so clever. Kids drive you bonkers and always at times when your own chips are down. I lashed out in anger at times and the regret and shame consumed me. I learned to say I Am Sorry, something my parents never said. Keeping that regret and shame quiet is very damaging to the self, to both selves in fact.

Listening to these audio books and more besides is not doing me any harm at all. When I relate to something the writer says, something either painful in recollection or uplifting and empathetic, I have the choice to take any action required. The intelligence, backed up by scientific research on children (and I was one once) helps me to smile at myself as a faulty mother. It also kinds me towards my own self as a little girl who believed in fairies and happiness and who was astonished and hurt to discover that her own mother was also faulty and broken. I now know why but I didn’t back then. She, who never got from her own mother the love she needed, did not have the benefit of information available to me and to future mothers and fathers. Knowing this as I do now, affords me the chance to empathise with her, to understand why she was who she was and to love and appreciate her backwards.

It does take courage and the willingness to be vulnerable to read or listen to such information, but if this life is the only one I get, then I want to get to the end of it knowing I have understood myself to a high degree, to have made amends wherever I could and to have learned that we are all broken humans with a huge capacity for loving and understanding others and ourselves. And it is never too late to learn something new.

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Island Blog – The lift of memories

This needs saying too.

Although we would never have spoken this way when you were here, I am free now (and independent!) to say whatever I like to say.

I remember you, strong and lean, tanned and muscular. I do. I really do. Although for a long time I have only seen you as a difficult, sick and compromised old man, this was not always the you I remember now. You could flip my heart with just one loving look. You could melt me into soft putty. I would have fought all those who said you were no good for me and with all my weaponry. I would. I did. Even when you upset door knockerers, random visitors, anyone really who came without an invitation to our huge and freezing mansion house, even then. When I challenged your attitude later, you could turn it all around and bring me into your arms. I miss that.

Since you have left the planet, it seems that freedom is allowing my mind to open and my earlier memories to float in. They come unbidden and randomly and often very inconveniently. I suddenly find myself tearful and having to pull in when a song comes on that reconnects me with the you who, in truth, died years ago. Not that you ever went with lyrics. To hell with the lyrics, you said, batting them away like a buzz of bluebottles, I just hear the music. And you did. That is how you managed to balance so artfully the depth and dimensions of many musical instruments in the way you did. There are bands who honoured you for that skill. But me? I am a lyricist, through and through, although I do need good music behind those lyrics. If the words are great and evocative and the backing music skinny and full of electronic bips and clatters, music so obviously not composed by those who know how to physically play an instrument, then the words lose gravitas, at best and are quickly forgot.

So, images of you, bringing in the cattle, driving the sheep, recording behind your desk, all concentration and frowns, or smiling at me as we begin our escape for a break away, are coming to me now. I never thought they would. I never thought at all. We began our adventure as adventurers. Then we met Life and she tripped us up, she confounded our plans, she altered us, divided us. She didn’t mean to. We were just unprepared, two dreamers without feet on the ground that claimed us. Thus we lived on and we never ever talked about who we were in our shared past. Not once. But I can do it now and, oddly, there is a freedom without you because you would have flapped it, bluebottle style, away. I know you would. In my new life, my life without you, I am good to go, free to wander back, free to cry new tears in passing places (lay-bys for you non-islanders)for an old life so very far back in the past and yet somehow so close by now.

I am glad of it.

“Who am I, you ask?

I am made from all the people I’ve encountered and all the things I have experienced. Inside I hold the laughter of my friends, the arguments with my parents, the chattering of young children, the warmth of kind strangers. Inside there are stitches from cracked hearts, bitter words from heated arguments, music that gets me through and emotions I cannot convey. I am made from all these people and moments.

That is who I am.”

Ming Di Liu

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Island Blog – I would tell you

This is for you my one and only husband. As you know (I am sure the angels will have reminded you) today is our 49th wedding anniversary. I can barely believe either of us stuck it out for so many years. I see you smile at that. Neither of us had a scooby about such an intensely complex relationship, speaking out the vows with all that enthusiasm and emotion and blissfully unaware that things would change. That we would change, not at the same time, which was always deeply inconvenient, but singularly and fully expectant of the other to adapt immediately, without a cross word spoken. How naive we were, how trusting in our own set of plans, dreams and expectations. We said we would do it different, remember that? We would never alienate each other, never endure long periods of stony silence, never break apart, never run away, and yet we did all those things. And we survived it all. Did our children, I wonder? Do any children? They are so aware of parental strife, of tension within mother, within father, it cannot leave them undamaged. I suspect we are all damaged, bringing into all our relationships the breaks and black holes from our pasts. As much as I look for the ‘perfect’, there is none.

I would tell you these things. Today I walked beneath the rain-heavy boughs and caught the raindrops, the water from heaven. I cupped them in my hand from a delicate larch limb and drank in the rain. I watched the grey above me, saw the light over the Isle of Coll, open as a window into the sky beyond. A beckoning of light. Look, I said to you, can you see? I wonder how it looks from wherever you are now. How I look, a pinprick dodging puddles in my favourite boots. Did I tell you how hard I have looked for a repeat pair? I find them nowhere. I found five orchids beside the track, no idea what sort of orchids but that doesn’t matter to me. Pink and sudden, for they weren’t there just yesterday and to see an orchid is to find myself in some foreign land. The walk today was the short one. I find walking in the rain jacket a cumbersome sort of walk. My frocks are curtailed from their desire to swish and they mutter beneath the waxed waterproof coat thing that weighs a ton and is far from a pleasant covering. As you know, my slim puffa jacket is as ready to absorb the rain as a sponge might be, although I have donned it pre a rainy walk purely out of vanity and respect for the swish of my frocks, returning drenched.

Then I showered and changed. In other times, this would have been in anticipation of an evening out to celebrate. Not this year. I walked barefoot through the garden to pick myself some flowers and you would not believe the rose you planted some years back, the one called Wedding Anniversary, the one that has heretofore only ever produced 4 or 5 buds. This year it is heavy with blooms and I hope you can see them. And I have been remembering past anniversaries, even as I do have to dig my way back before dementia to find the happier ones. I remember you saying, we are going out at 7. I held the excitement all day long, thinking about what I would wear, what we would talk about, where we would go. You were always the best at celebrations, thinking of everything. Even during dementia years, when you could barely eat, let alone drive me somewhere, let alone walk, you could still smile up at me and I would smile back, so much said, so much unsaid.

I want to tell you I am ok. Better than that, I am doing well. I am learning how to let go and how to make myself into a whole me. I am supported, safe and warm. I am also, finally independent. I know you hated that word, fought like mad against it, but it means something different to me. Independence does not mean a person needs nobody. Oh no. We all need somebody or we die of loneliness. What I mean by that word now is that I have confidence in myself, in my choices, my actions. I take full responsibility for everything in my life and I lay no blame, not even on myself. Although there are things I would have done differently given the chance, I am proud of who I am. And I am thankful. Thankful to you for being my broken rock, for protecting me and our children in the only way you knew; for loving and living as you did and you did your best. I can see that now, for all the squawking I did along the way.

I touch your face in a photograph and remember the feel of your skin. I remember your hands, strong, warm. I remember your smile and the ice blue of your eyes, a gift to our daughter.

These are what I would tell you this day, my husband.

Maybe I just did.

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Island Blog – The Options Option

I never like being told what to do. Receiving that Tolding, I feel trapped. Trapped with No Options. This Tolding person is not asking me if I want to or even can do the thing he or she just barfed out and I am required to catch it whether I like the shape, smell, story or point of it. I am forcibly contained within four walls, either of the home, the relationship, the school, the playground or the workspace. Limited, big time. No, not limited, because limited suggests an option, even if that option option is as thin as web or as elusive as a down feather in the wind. Trapped describes more accurately.

As children we are required to cope with a deal of confusion when someone at least 4 feet taller than we are tells us what to do. It’s like smoke, pervasive and choking and equally confounding. We cannot see our way through this confusive smoke. We want to run, but to where? We are confounded, surprised, upset and paralised. But we move, we go, we do, because we trust the Tolding person and we do not, yet, trust our young selves. As we grow to adulthood, we may believe we can now, at last, decide for ourselves as to whether or not we obey like slaves. Bizarrely, a great many of us do not grab that option of independent thinking, nor do we grow appropriate courage nor the legs to stand firm when we do not agree with an order. How come? We saw our own parents barking orders quite the thing for a whole childhood and we are now old enough to be parents ourselves. But infuriatingly still we find ourselves running to obey doctors, accountants, lawyers, people-behind-desks, ministers, husbands, wives, teachers, and many many more. We might even obey without realising we obey. What I mean by that is when we find ourselves in a situation wherein we feel obliged to someone, duty bound to someone, owing a debt to someone; guilty around someone. and we do their bidding regardless of how it makes us feel. I could go on, but I won’t.

Options, that’s the ideal. And to know that we have options. Okay, so let’s pretend we know we have options, anywhere, everywhere, with anyone, anywhere, anytime. I like that. But if I am not prepared, and a trigger authoritarian figure commands the daylight, throwing me into shade, I will perform as an automaton. I will react as I have always reacted, confounded, blinded by their command of smoke, puzzled and wanting to run but stuck to the ground. So what is this ‘know’ thing, the one that sings us options? Perhaps she comes all angel like, winged up and offering freedom and and acceptable refusal to comply. Well, she might. But I cannot get a hold of her.

I am learning, through intensive study and research that the most influential mind control is birthed in childhood. And, I get it. These imprints on my mind will always be there and, unless I bother my butt to look at them, allow them and then release them, they will always and forever influence my behaviour and my knee-jerk reaction to current triggers. I may not remember each incident in childhood when I had to obey or face dire consequences, as fact, but I will always remember how those times made me feel, and at that time when I had no voice/no choice I remember feeling hurt, lost, dismissed, rejected, ignored and judged.

Well who didn’t! Maybe that should have been a question, but trauma in childhood, no matter how we brush it away in comparison to someone else’s appalling abuse and cruelty, is real, hence the lack of a question mark. The good news is that options are an option. Just ten years ago, depression was ‘all in your mind’. Now we know different. So many of our ‘now’ behaviours and reactions to others stem from those early days, not because they remind us of the actual events, but because we remember how we felt. So what to do? I believe there is only one way if anyone wants to stop feeling judged, criticised, put down, rejected or mocked. And it is simply Research. There are a zillion books out there now, penned by those who have found a way to shake off their past. We also know now that trauma does not just relate to soldiers coming back from war, or abused children, women, men. You don’t have to have witnessed something terrible. What was once brushed off as nothing much, or all in your mind, now has a spotlight on it. It could be a fear of being alone in the dark, a cold mother, a derisive grandmother or primary school teacher. It could be bullying, marginalisation because you had to wear specs aged 4 and everyone laughed at you. It could be you took ages making a gift for a mother who laughed and handed it back. Do Better. It could be anything. It is, without question, trauma for a child, and the feelings of shame, rejection, hurt and judgement will never leave no matter how long a life you live. What happens is that when someone meets the same feelings as a result of an encounter in the adult world, the welter of emotions is overwhelming. It seems bizarre. We talk it down and scurry on in the same old shoes. But if we want something to change then that change is not external. It is within.

And this is why it is so vital to prepare. preparation is everything. It isn’t about a clever rebuttal, nor a running away, and all about doing the inner work. I know it. I do it. It is the only road to the Options Option.

Trust me.