Author: judyfairbairns

by

Island Blog – Conversation

I miss it. Conversation. Talking to myself is all very well but I know what is coming next, in the main. This morning, from 4 am, I soaked some sun-dried tomatoes in fragrant herby oil, washed spinach leaves for later, ironed my latest baby playmat and ate breakfast at 5. This means I feel like lunch by 11 so I asked the clock not to look at me like that and proceeded to fry 3 small slices of Hallumi cheese, adding salad, tomatoes and olives. Lunch done by 11.15. Now what? I’m bored of you, I tell myself. I can sense her behind me. She is a bit huffy at first but she is me and me stands her ground. We face each other. Look, I say, no offence but we have been stuck together since March 14th 2020 and apart from Himself #compromisedandsilent, carers, nurses and doctors, it has been just us. I think we have both aged ten years. It certainly looks like it in those mirrored reflections. We have just run out of interesting things to say to each other. Oh, we can jibber about what to eat for lunch, and jabber about timing for a dog walk or the rain or puddles or the mail arriving or if this tree will finally land on the house having threatened it, noisily, for days now, but it is just is not enough. Not any more. Our thrill today was two phone calls, one to call me in for a covid jag and the second to tell my my application for a postal vote is being considered. The excitement is deafening.

After we have talked awhile, she suggests, as we are both extremely tired, that we watch some TV. TV? Inside the daylight? You are so kidding me, no way. Aw, come on, she soothes. I know that tone and I bristle. We are weary and bored of each other, she reminds me. I feel a bit uncomfortable as I hadn’t considered she was bored of me too, but I got over that quickquick. Stand, ground etc. I capitulate. I don’t want to sew, nor clear the mess in the garden, nor lug in the logs, nor pretty much everything else. Ok, I concede and make tea. Call the Midwife, that will do nicely. I turn my back to the light, to the view, to the window and the rain and slump down in my horrible cream leather armchair with push button leg elevation thing. I bought these horrible cream leather sitapons for easy wiping down when Himself was dropping food like there was no tomorrowland. Anyway, once I have watched one, cried every time a baby was born and moved on to the next, I know she made the right decision for us both. It passed the time for starters and somehow calmed me. Now that thinks me.

Triggers. I was told and in no uncertain terms by my mother-in-law that sitting down in the daytime was unforgivable, as was buying myself flowers or a ring, definitely not that. Watching TV in the daylight was about the worst of them all. It was perfectly fine for men to do that, to watch cricket or football or Parliament in session but not for we women. Good god no. We should be ironing, washing, preparing food, preserving fruits, shelling peas, that sort of thing. We could read a book as long as it was a cookery book or one that guided us through the vast and imprisoning rulebook on wifedom, motherhood and active community engagement. It seems that trigger is alive and kicking for I feel it sharp-toothed and even have to check that my guide on How To Be The Perfect Woman isn’t standing right behind me with that look on her face. Ah. Let us take a look at this. It bizarres me in this considerably more freeing but not finished yet by a long chalk culture around what women should and should not do or be, that the voices of my past still hold sway.

I walk the dog, a bit wearily I must confess and she, the dog, was a tad miffed at the shortness of it, but it was raining and I was weary and just how much do you think I care about that? All over her face, yes, it was. Home, and some exercise for Henry who was surprisingly agile considering all that time he sits on his butt in the cupboard under the stairs with the spiders and the mice and the old photos of people nobody has a clue about. I am glad the gale has blown herself out. She was way too loud for me. I wonder where she is gone? Does a gale dissipate, fliffle away to nothing or does she hit another shore with the same ferocity she brought to bear here? I don’t know. I am just happy to have her gone. I see the branches, limbs, strewn across the track, in my garden. The bird seed is everywhere but on the table. But it is quiet now. There is peace now. And for that I am thankful.

The fire burns merrily. I am safe with myself and she’s a good egg to be honest. I suspect this marriage of minds is complex. We have never had so long together, never. There was always someone else, or someone elses to chip in comment, demand, decide, guide, lead and support. Now it is just us. It may take awhile to learn how to live together.

by

Island Blog – Triggers and Returning.

Last night the gale began. It roared like a lion and punched at the walls of the house. I heard bits of masonry fall onto the conservatory roof which is plastic, and I winced from beneath the warm duvet. Sleep left the room at that. Too many before nights on Tapselteerie with my husband or sons at sea or even just out there on the land. I had trees falling on them, waves swallowing them, wind blowing them off cliffs, all of it, because they loved it, the craziness of a gale, the unpredictability of one, the thrill of being a part of such wild wildness. From my place at the window or in bed in the absolute darkness with those punch fists holding destruction in their grip, I shivered. I shattered. All possible tragedy shivered the bones of my heart, my thoughts rollicking from one disaster to another with no happy ending for me or for them. I am still that way.

I went out to feed the birds and was almost lifted off my feet by one vicious gust. I admit I was compromised at the time. Twisting to check the pantiles on the roof, and in a frock #balloon, I felt my legs buckle. I held my stead. Fast. Staggered and remained upright but only just. Later, as the minutes moved into hours and way too slowly as if Time was playing with my mind, teasing most cruelly, I went out again to sort the ferocious flapping of the tarps on the wood stacks. I held onto the drystone wall for support as I lashed them down with old dog leads. We seem to have an abundance of them. Where once this abundance drove me crazy, I am now glad of them. In the latter stages of dementia Himself would purchase more and more of what was of importance to him, dog leads being just one on a very long list. There are still 6 mobile phones, 4 Notepads, iPads, those things, stacking sealable plastic store boxes, leads for everything from the aforementioned to motor bike chargers (no motorbike) small things for back ups on everything electronic, new hand held landline phones and on and on. They lie here still along with Henry in the quiet of the cupboard under the stairs, waiting to be useful.

All day long I sewed more baby mats, completed one, one of 6 that are also waiting. For babies. Soon I will need to ask for babies because when I work at something, there needs to be a point to aim for and in this case, in this time, it is babies. Do we become thus obsessed as we age I wonder or is this lockdown s s s mentality? The isolation plus grieving, can it turn a mind into something we observers might have laughed about, rolled our eyes at, until we find ourselves in that land, where it is no longer a laughing matter? I listen to an audio book as I work, someone else’s story, any story but my own today. I flinch as another crash tells me more masonry is falling. On checking, this time in trews for safety, I see no evidence of demise in my walls. Do I imagine this sound? Is this a trigger for me, an old memory rising in the today of my life? It thinks me.

As I, with help, navigate my unsteady way through grief and loss, I am beginning to notice my reactions to what happens, even small things. I notice when I flinch. I don’t remember flinching as a young woman. with children around my skirts, even as I know I will have done. But there is a difference when it is I who need to be the strong one, the one who can hide an inner flinch and turn it around, make it okay for the fear around me. Instant solutions spring to mind, fuelled by a surety of strength and a solution. On Tapselteerie we had windows blown out in gales. The noise was terrifying and it was always in dead of night. Calming, reassuring, finding an old door to wedge against the blast of a threat, a broom to support, was what we did. Bringing children in close, into bed, finding stories, teaching laughter in the face of terror was what we did. And we did. So many times. Roofs lifting. It’s ok, just watch, I said, as we all stood there in pyjamas and fleeces and facing a gale that could destroy a home in minutes and without another soul knowing anything till morning at best. My own heart might be shakingly terrified but my protection of my children kept me calm and my husband knew what to do. As teenagers they witnessed a whole 32ft mobile home buck and lift and crash back down whilst their dad fired up his digger and held it down with the bucket and chains as the rain drenched us and the collies squealed and disappeared into the darkness. In that darkness, in the shout and scream of that gale, her punch and release, her volatile craziness, my kids whooped and cheered their dad through the sheeting rain and I shivered and shook and tried to keep calm.

A call to arms. Pre our resident lifeboat he was on call if a sea-goer was in trouble, and he was called many times. There was always a storm and it was always dark. He would go, fired up, excited, ready to challenge and to work with Mother Ocean. It always confounded me how good he was at working with her when he was so lost around me, around his daughter. We were strong women too but obviously not speaking a language he understood. Any kids old enough to go with him would be dressed and ready in minutes. Again I am left with the walls shrieking at the gale and my imagination my only companion. I won’t say Friend.

These memories may be triggers. They probably are. Gales mean destruction and I feel impotent when they come. He knew how to prepare for them, knew they were coming and from what direction. He knew what had to be tied down, secured and what lay safe this time. I will learn my way around them for we have plenty of them and each is capricious at best, lethal at worst. New ground. New learning. I remember the whoops of my children. They love it wild, the wilder the better and they are no fools around the wild. They grew up with it, leaned into it, learned from their dad whilst I stayed home making soup for their returning.

by

Island Blog – Spindrift and Rememberings

The ice is melting though the wind is ferocious cold, swirling with stories from the north, enough to make my eyes water. The ground is hard as iron, water like a stone. Waterfalls are strung with icicles and the rocks coated in ice froth. Inside the car we are warm with our own stories of times long gone, the people too, characters in the theatre of our shared history. We exchange funny tales of this person and that, re-enacting the scene in our minds as we tootle our way over the switchback hill, avoiding great expanses of ice-hold. In the rear view I see the village receding, falling away into the valley, the frozen sea glinting in the lemony sunlight.

We are off to the vet. You would be forgiven for imagining we were headed for outer space because the climb is steep and our craft points skyward for miles. Peaking, we return earthwards, our vista now of outer islands settled in a different tidal flow. They look so close and yet it would take a couple of hours by boat to arrive at the nearest. The sea chops and twists as wind fights tide. I see smoke, no, not smoke, spindrift. Spectacular clouds of it lift like eerie dancers from the waves, rising into the sky. We stop to watch. Well, actually we are stopped. It isn’t a choice for there are big warm bodied highland cows all across the road. I am glad they have such thick gold and chestnut coats. They stand and stare and we stare back into big dark eyes. It seems they hold sway on this single track curl of a road. We inch forward and they pull back. There will be calves this spring, little kick-heel babes and this track will be awash with their leavings. I remember a story. On a frozen snow day many years ago when my children were young, they grabbed our old wooden toboggan and dragged it up a hill. Crowded on its back, they looked like the whole colour wheel. Faster and faster they sped, shrieking with delight, until they met a frozen cow pat. The sled exploded into a thousand splinter shards and the sky was full of flying children. I was glad of their puffy snowsuits and the soft arms of a snow landing. We had kindling for days.

Returning a different way we snake past farmhouses, cottages, empty self-catering bothies, a castle and the carved out bay with the machair now protected, erosion held at bay for a while and then the curl of silver white sand. I remember all our visits here over the last 43 years. Children, visitors, dogs, barbecues, picnics, games and swimming. I remember boats and play, football, cricket, sandcastles and moats. I remember him. He loved walking here even when he could barely move far and not without a stick for support. I wonder how he felt then, once he realised this decline was no longer to be held at bay like the erosion of this beach. He would never be drawn into such a conversation so I can only guess. His attitude was always that his life had been magical; he had nothing to complain about. I can see him down there as we round the bay. Hallo you, I whisper. You won’t see the machair wildflowers this summer. You won’t walk here again, nor lick your lips at the thought of Charlie’s ice creams or a cup and cake in the cosy cafe atop the hill. You won’t laugh at the dog biting the waves or watch grandchildren dig holes to bury each other.

It’s ok. I’ll come and remember for both of us.

by

Island Blog – Mythbusters

First I listened to Brene Brown on Vulnerability and Shame on audio whilst I sewed a baby play mat in colours of unicorn, fairies, stars and, bizarrely, dinosaurs in peplum frocks. Next, a recommendation from my little sister, It’s Ok that You’re not Ok by Megan Devine. Another mythbuster, refreshing, raw, a real approach to grief and loss. They both speak my truth, one I can now know for myself instead of all the other ‘truths’ that have no idea. Actually, it isn’t that they have no idea. Not that. It is more that they had no way of connecting with anyone who spoke out their shame, their vulnerability, their grief or loss. Some truth talker throwing their pain into the air confounded me and I did what most of us do. I searched my brain for fixatives. Time will tell. Things will get better. He/she is safe now, home with God, in the Elysium fields. Or, No! you are not weak, not guilty, have no need for shame, self blame, fear. Now, all I feel in the blast of these good intentions, is irritation, anger even. I want to run, to yell at them but I don’t and I won’t because now I get it. Our culture has no coping mechanisms for such a meet. We don’t want it. We hate it. We wish we had never met this messy person and we long to make it better. So, wait, what can I say? I know……Time will heal, things will get better, are you busy, are you eating, sleeping, exercising, enjoying nature? Maybe you should look for another man, way of living, place to live, job, passion? All upturned as querulous questions and there’s me behind them hoping I just said the perfect thing.

I find my home through the myth busters. Politely I always did in song lyrics (acceptable) or books parked in genres, equally politely, in book stores. You don’t have to go that way if it isn’t your thing after all. I always did. The ridiculously trapped genre of Self Help covers a million issues and is the most shelf dusty. I noticed that. Fiction, that’s what we want, diversion, distraction, and for the kids, we want pretty pink unicorns, tutu-ed fairies, equally pinked up, and stars, oh stars, all bright and not dying, no way, and then those dinosaurs in peplum. Happiness. Don’t knock it. It is what we are all seeking, after all and yet who has really found it in its entirety? Nobody, that’s who. Those childhood hopes must be dashed, eventually and yet I can see how it would never work to teach them Grimm, as I was taught. Fairy tales in my day were dark but when I read those tales again I just know I would never put a little hopeful face before those words. But what happens when we hit the adult world of super tough? We are not prepared and maybe that is how life works. Our culture is all about fixing. I feel low Doctor. Here are some pills that will help, just for a little while, until you get back on your feet. And, they do, but the core changeth not, the core that is my pain. The caring professions seek to wrench us from our self-destruct and to point us to our own star. Of course they do. Who wants yet another collapso?

And it doesn’t have to be bereavement, this awkward and uncomfortable truth that walks around with a person. It can be any pain at all. There is no competition. Every one of us who knows how it feels to be abandoned, lost, angry, vulnerable, knows this awkward and uncomfortable truth. It is our truth and not something to be flapped away or fixed. We are not fixable. We are in this for as long as it takes and that is that. However, we will put on a good face for that is what we are taught. Responding to someone who benignly and lovingly asks, How Are You with an honest response is not allowed. We just won’t answer honestly because why? Because we are taught to think of others and this Other who stands before might well fall like a tree if I told her my truth. Awful. Can’t sleep. Am never hungry. Don’t care if I don’t wake up. Feel like a yoyo. Anxious, fearful, afraid, lost, crazy at times. I won’t say any of that. I. Am. Fine. That’s what I will say and always say no matter how much that someone asks. And, the truth of it is this. I am. Fine. Because what I want, what someone navigating the void of pain wants is time and space to get on with this. I won’t even say ‘through this’ because I have no idea there is a ‘through’ at all. ‘Through’ suggests an end result.

Today the ice is wild and spectacular. The sea-loch shoreline is capped with rainbows. No unicorns. As the sun hits the smokey ice cover, it flashes back at me, colour shift and then flat grey again, in a nanosecond. I live in those nanoseconds so I get to see. Other walkers might miss it but not me for I am greedy for it all and I am always watching change. A lone woodcock lifts from the bracken and flies right over my head, her wings speckled, spectacular, her flight unmistakeable, her aloneness palpable. Did you see her? I ask two walkers deep in conversation. See what? they smiled. I just smile back. This is my life and yours looks like this. Cosy, designing supper for two, a warm fire, sharing, plans for tomorrow, next week, next birthday. On the track I see dichotomy. On the north side the granite is cold and dark, ice-sheered, silent. On the other side, snowdrops respond to the sun warmth and open like hope. Icicles as long as a spear head and too fat for my fingers to encircle hang northly. Across the track, sun dapples the plane tree bark, warms the new buds, smiles me. I feel at home as I always do when I am alone. One side of me is frozen. One sun warmed and beginning new life.

I am fine. I want solitary. I have no idea half the time how to get through a minute, an hour, a night, a day, but I will not tell you that because you, as I once had, have no idea what to do with such a raw and bloody truth. However, with these brilliant myth busting women and their courage to speak out, I finally, finally, find a path I can walk that is ok with me.

by

Island Blog – Grief, Music and Cooking

I miss him. It’s like I am forgetting the last ten years of caring and remembering the before times, the good times. I wake at 2 am, cold, and turn to borrow his warmth. It really shakes me at first until I remember where his body now lies, in the frozen ground. I feel the warmth of his hand in mine, that I Am Safe Now feeling. I never slept well, unlike him but he always woke enough to calm whatever storm was going on inside me. I miss him. I wish I had told him he was my everything but I did not. The way we changed, the children who came and whose needs became our modus operandi and our division bell, the way life upped and downed us, all stopped my mouth. Why didn’t I say it? I just don’t know. My deep need for independence was of such importance to me that I forgot to remember the basics. Ah, regrets! All I can do now is to talk to him as I move alone through my days. I am thankful for the rise of good memories even as they do not come without guilt and regret. This is grieving.

Downstairs I flip on the radio. The Living Years by Mike and the Mechanics. A tad cruel. I think back on Mike, Angie and their two sons in our big kitchen at Tapselteerie. We are sharing tea and cake and Mike is telling my kids, whose eyes are on stalks before this celebrity visitor, that he had never had a guitar lesson in his life, that he taught himself in his bedroom. It is just what they needed to hear. it doesn’t matter how you develop your passion, he says, just as long as you do develop it. Remember that. When I look at my five children now, as adults, passionate about their work and with barely a qualification between them, I know they took Mike’s words to heart.

I empty the fridge drawers of veg. Onion, garlic, butternut squash, sun-dried tomatoes, apple, ginger, lime, red pepper, leek and kalamata olives. Add honey, balsamic vinegar, tinned tomatoes, white wine, herbs and seasoning. It simmers now on the range and will last me days. I always cook for a platoon. Old habits die hard. I make a flavoured olive oil (extra virgin) mix and pour it into one of those sealable jars. I soak more sun-dried tomatoes for a little, chop them and add them to the oil mix, for later, for lunch perhaps, in a tortilla wrap, not that I have ever worked out how to fold those damn things effectively. I always need a shower after a tortilla wrap. The music plays on.

Poppy dog comes downstairs. She doesn’t mind that it is still night time for most people; she just works with my wakefulness and if I am up then it must be breakfast time. I boot her out into minus 2 degrees for a quick pee and prepare her food. Dried kibble topped with raw carrot slices and a few bits of chopped chicken to draw her in. Kibble, after all, is a bit dull on its own. I order a small extending lead for our daily walks for she is going deaf and no longer hears my callback should we meet another dog. Although she is all bark and no bite, or all fur coat and no nickers, it can alarm folk, the noise and the rush of her. I think of how it is these days without tourists and of how all that will change when they return to walk around Tapselteerie, to lose themselves inside her wild beauty. We islanders have enjoyed a year now of peaceful bliss even as we need visitors and their cash. One side of the coin and the other. It thinks me.

Ten years of caring and I am glad it is over. 49 years of marriage and I miss him. How tricky it is to find perspective in those two opposing thoughts. How fine it will be when I do. When he was declining, I became practical and cool. I stayed that way right up to his dying. Perhaps I became what was necessary and productive for the times but now, as I begin to soften, I have regrets. Can anyone hold balance when facing the appalling horrors of dementia? Perhaps not. One day I will write on this, but not yet. My inner writer tells me there are many miles to go yet. Many miles too, till morning.

by

Island Blog – Season Shift – Resist or Lift

I always do this, although I only noticed the ‘this’ that I do quite recently. As Summer gives way to Autumn I continue to wear bare legs and feet for as long as I can outrun chilblains. Once into Autumn, I find ways to layer up without ballooning and look forward to each morning, even planning my layers whilst still beneath the covers. As Winter sinks in her teeth I find it progressively harder not to balloon, but I am on a roll here and the cold comes incrementally, in the main. But when Winter begins to concede to Spring I am oft confounded. I have become used to my layers, ones that used to fit me the whole day long. Now they only suit me up to midday and from then on become a massive irritation. I feel as if I might combust, but it is still not yet warm enough to leap out of a vest. I open doors and wonder where on earth my shades are. I sit in the glare of Father Sun and feel cross. Go Away, I want to say, even as I don’t. The fire still burns and I will need it in about an hour when the Old Man is taken down by the forever hills, but it makes the room stuffy. I open windows and in whoopees a freezing draught full of chilblains and icicles. Jersey on, jersey off. It’s a ridiculous day and not the first, nor will it be the last. Perhaps, I tell myself, it is so much more natural to layer up than it ever is to brave off the layers of comfort, layers that have become my friends and protectors for months now. Is Winter the longest season? I always said so in my talk with tourists who decided on a happy holiday whim to buy a plot and build a home. Don’t. I said. Do Not. Not until you have spent a winter or two here. Why is that? they quizzed. Because winters here begin in October and hold fast till Mid May, that’s why. Not with frost and clean clear icy, shiny, sunny days but with wet, wet and more wet and when the wet thinks we need a change, it turns to ice and sleet in an annual battle against the rise of a Spring sun. Just in time for lambing.

I walk in the slipslide of ice meets sun and marvel at the blue of the sky. Hallo Mr Blue Sky, I sing to myself without the backing group and I search for buds and studs of green on trees. It is pointless. These studs and buds know jolly fine about winters up here. I hear them snigger from the safety of their twiggy nests. You think this sudden sun will fool us? It only happens once, after all. It is, this time, a holding time, a waiting. And yet it is we or is it just me who is longing for warmth and the chance to open doors to let out the stuffy, even if I might have to de-balloon. Is Winter the longest season, and what does that mean for the inside life?

First off I can see the dust. Blimey, it is legion. Although I say I don’t believe in dusting, I am glad there is no chance of visitors. My dust is remarkable. Not quite an inch thick, because I move about within these walls at speed, but almost. I don’t notice it on grey days, normal days, but when this lunatic sun decides to shine like a beacon into the future, lighting the way for all but the blind, I find him invasive. Shine out there, I tell him, and not in here. Don’t bother flagging up my smeary windows or my table tops that once were oak and shiny. You make me feel like I will never win a good housekeeping award. The dust is on every single surface. I sit and watch it, the way it sparkles in the sunlight; diamonds and pearls, rubies too and emeralds. Are there stories to tell in that dust? Is there history? There must be. My cleaners have not been here since just after Himself breathed his last. Almost six months. I have hoovered and wiped, a bit, but dust and I will not meet. Clearing dust, in my opinion, is not for me anymore. I have shared my life with too much dust for decades and the clearing of it, if indeed that is ever possible, is no longer for me. But I can smell it. I can see it, lit up like it was a celebrity, glinting, sure of itself, holding ground.

It is this time of the year that I find hardest. Not only is the dust shouting out her stories and memories, but the sun is taunting me, offering light and bright but not enough warmth for me to shed a layer. Getting dressed in the morning is just confusion. 5 layers till midday and then what? Upstairs to take it all off and start again? This, this, is the winter and it is the one season that fights like hell to hold on. And it is the only one that makes me cross, even as I love it. What dichotomy. At Tapselteerie, I remember hoping winter would never end, that the new season would just forget to arrive along with all the tourists and the work, even if I did have chilblains on my chilblains. But once that season began I felt a lift and a joy. Life was living again and so was I. Momentum creates momentum, at least it does for me. Having to bare my wintry arms and legs and to see my body after months of concealment under layers might give me an awkward moment but perhaps this is the gift winter leaves behind her. You have rested, she says. You have covered and concealed but now is the time for joy and lift. Take my gift and rise with the buds and studs.

You are stuck with me. Deal with it.

by

Island Blog – Fair Warning

Yesterday was dire, the whole way through to evening, when everything lifted. Sometimes I wake beneath a cloud, heavy like a cloak or a shroud that pushes me floorwards, or tries to. However, being a woman of Lift and Light by nature, I tolerate this not, even if it is a big struggle to reach my full height. I have flexible knees, strong limbs and eyes that look out, although it feels almost impossible to keep those eyes from flipping inwards. When they succeed they peer into all my private corners like snoopers in the attic, opening this old box and that in search of treasure. In other words, Reasons To Prove I’m Not Good Enough, Not Coping. Believe me, there are billions up there, in those old boxes. I know this because I lugged them up there myself. I don’t need you anymore, thanks very much for nothing. That’s what I said. I should have burned them, I know it now, but I always thought, and still do, that the old beratements have a purpose and need acknowledgement and recognition. On most days I can do this. And then yesterday comes at me full face and loaded with power.

This, apparently, is grief. It makes me furious. Why on earth am I gifted days, weeks, even, of feeling the healing, only to be cloud dumped and snooped on and to know that I have just landed on a snake and slidded back to square one? How completely cruel is that! Not only do I plod like an old cow through the minutes, which is so unlike me with my quickquick scurryings, but this cloud fills my mind too and it doesn’t have a single positive thing to say about me. A double attack. It is, was, tempting to believe the lies in my yesterday state, the criticisms and judgements in old voices and to lose sight completely of tomorrow, of hope, a future, freedom and the Springtime. I felt like Miss Haversham, even finding the cobwebs and dust and fluff to complete the scene. You should hoover, dust, clean, sneered the attic snoopers. I ignored them.

Now it is today and you would be forgiven in thinking there is a new woman in this dusty, fluffy, needing cleaned house. I had to check in the mirror myself. What changed? I have one idea. In the soggy black of yesterday I was invited to supper with my bubble family. I didn’t want to go. Wasn’t hungry. Wanted to melt into the evening with my cloud wrap and my snoopers, all chuckle and blame, the judgements and criticisms, fear, sadness, self-pity and Miss Haversham-ness. However I did go and as I walked in the door I was hit by light, music, granddaughters, the warm arms of son and daughter-in-law and the delicious smells of roast pork with all the trimmings. As I sipped the wine and crunched the crackling I looked back on the day. It was just a day, that’s all, part of the process. Perhaps the snoopers were also cold, lonely, longing for connection and interaction. Perhaps the cloud helped me allow myself to rest. Perhaps the silence, the no contact with the outside world was just what I needed. Perhaps.

I can accept that, from where I am now, inside my bouncy-happy new morning. However, I have one demand. The next time you decide to come, Heavy Cloud and Chuckling Snooping Judgemental Critics, please email me first. I want plenty of warning so that I can be out when you come.

by

Island Blog – No Crime

I am working on myself. T’is no surprise, really, considering I am now popped out like a cork and into a lone life. Not lonely, well, sometimes, but not all times. Just lone. I like the word. It thinks me of a wolf or an explorer nobody believes in. It speaks of courage, determination, vulnerability and faith, regardless of any worldly snorts of derision, a great number of which come from all those voices inside my head, the ones who, for decades, kept me ‘safe’ and away from prying eyes and dream-promoters. I would be a dancer. Not safe, no future. I would be an actress. Ditto. I would sing in a band. Okay but not after 11 pm and I’ll collect you then as it will be dark and dark is laden with no-goods and false promises. I would wear these crazy boots, this hat, that flamboyant frock. On a Monday morning? And so on. Although those voices belong to bodies long gone, I can still work them like puppets on my hand. I can speak for them, and I do. Did.

I say ‘did, because I am learning to unprotect myself from these controllers. To be honest, I didn’t actually realise I could change them for ever simply by acknowledging their existence. I thought to turn them off, madly fumbling for the switch. I thought to turn my back, to ignore them, to yell at them to SHUT UP! It never worked and now with the help of a therapist I am discovering a new way, the way of gratitude and acknowledgment, of respect proffered to those who did protect me out of love back then when I could easily have thought to exercise my wings on a high clifftop just to know what it might be like to really fly. They, the old protectors I have conjoined into one voice. It makes sense to me as they all said the same thing, held me back in the same way, had me believing that being a woman meant fragility, foolishness and the inability to lead; a woman with too many feet off the ground; one that required renovation, a new construction according to the laws of man, mother, mother-in-law etc. You should wear a nice tweed skirt for this, not a lemon tutu, and sensible shoes, not those elvish boots, and gloves sans sequins, ditto hat, and those bare legs……no. Here are some 20 denier tights, nice caramel coloured ones, with a seam to keep you straight. Less eye make-up too so they don’t mistake you for a panda. Etc.

Obviously I laugh at this now for these are mere trivia in the work of controllers. The real harm that can be done by those who, lovingly, seek to dominate and guide, is much more subversive. It is a gradual denial of self that leads to inner doubt and ditherment. What do I feel? Oh, I don’t know. Could somebody tell me please? What do I think about this? Erm……….(look to husband), He will tell you what I think. So much easier as I have not a scooby anymore. But the other side of this protection is very welcome indeed. I did need looking after for sure. I was lost and young and clueless about the dastardly workings of a dangerous world, and I needed guidance. However, in buying in to this comfortable protection, I lost myself. Now, cork-popped into my new life, I am seeking her, that girl/woman who has lived long and prospered; whose God given gifts are manifold and whose heart is warm, loving and still beating away behind her scraggy chest.

And this is not just about me. I know thousands of women (and men) who will relate to my experience. I know how life works now. There is a time when a person will, perhaps unconsciously, gravitate towards another within whom she sees just what she needs to feel safe. There is no crime in that. We all do it. However, as the world moves around the sun, tilting more each day, we change as we grow. In that bubble of confidence that comes from feeling safe, we grow braver and that ‘brave’ builds self-confidence and assertiveness, something that makes life a bit bumpy for the protector. I get that. Unless that protector is able to change accordingly, there will be war because once a wimp finds courage he or she holds on to it with both hands. It felt heady, exciting and burgeoning with opportunities. I could do this! No, you can’t. I could speak out my opinion amongst a group of men. What???? You have to be joking. I could sing in a band past 11pm and walk home. Ridiculous! Get back to the dishes and the children, Woman, and maybe go see the doctor for a stronger dose of anti-depressant.

For years I have sat in blame and in shame. I don’t need either any more, but those protectors, whilst curtailing my various lunacies and sending me for more meds, still live on inside me. Ignoring them is futile. Blaming them even more so. They were more than good to me. Without them and their protection, I could well have flown off that cliff and what a waste that would have been. So, this new way, this way of grouping them together and giving them a name means I am acknowledging their work on my behalf. I can ask this multi-personed protector to protect me in a different way. Hey, Tinkerbell, I say (my favourite feisty fairy) I want to thank you for all the wonderful ways you kept me here, moderately sane and breathing; the way you saved me from myself and other animals; the way you kept me alight with flame and warmth; the way you guided me through hardships, children rearing and tough days. I honour you. However I am now asking for your loyal protection in a different way. I no longer need to numb nor to hide in the briar patch. Will you stand beside me with all your experiential wisdom and your exclusive knowledge of who I am and walk with me into the rest of my glorious life? She’s here. I can feel her, hear her. For the first time ever I can see the possibility of walking and waulking with this guide, this protector who never did really want to hold me back, who loved me, loves me, who just did what I asked her to do. And all I had to do was to acknowledge her as I had longed to be acknowledged, for who she is, for who I asked her to be way back when.

Although neither of us know where we are going, we are new friends in old bodies and that is enough for now. First off, there is a briar patch from which to extricate ourselves and beyond those sharp-toothed tangles I can see dappled light, new green shoots and over there, waving trees. When I twist my neck and look skyward I can see a new moon-bride, her accompaniment of stars, patterns of lace in a rising dawn. The glorious cycle of life, death and rebirth.

by

Island Blog – Finish the Line

I remember at art school being taught a valuable lesson. I was the only abstract artist in the class but I still needed to learn it. When painting a landscape, townscape, seascape, the observer knows where the horizon should be, unlike in an abstract piece. The land or sea ends and the sky begins. A cathedral will be taller than Mrs Jenkins semi. A child is smaller than an adult, in the main. We know without the need for over-explaining and if the stop/start thingy is penned in sharp black, it irritates us. It is telling us what we already understand and does not respect our intelligence at all. Let the eye finish the line. That is the lesson. It is no different when writing or speaking. How often do you roll your eyes as someone says to you, having already said the sentence once, As I Already Said…….to then repeat exactly what you took in first off? Glory it drives me wild. I have to stand there and hear it all again feeling like a struggling kid in Primary One. I hear that repetition is important but it still drives me distracted. I take great care not to fall into repeating myself, even as I know I sometimes do and particularly with my own grown children as if they might have nodded off at some point and thus need mummy to resurrect that vital bit of advice. I can feel the silent sigh through the phone line and it blushes me.

Being too wordy comes from passion. Whatever I am feeling passionate about, albeit momentarily, rises in me like a lift of startled chickens, all flap and feathers and squawk. I must get this across to you and the only way I feel I can do this is through over-explanation and repetition. Why? Are you not an adult who has gone through endless situations, scenarios and experiences wherein you gathered a world of information, assessed it, filtered it, checked it through your own lens and then let it settle within? Of course you are. I wonder if this need to over explain is birthed and rooted in our innate need for connection, the need to be seen and to be valued in someone else’s eyes. Short sentences, after all, can sound clipped and nobody wants to be unkind. Certainly I don’t. So, when someone starts to explain on repeat, I may lose interest, but this must not show for I am compassionate and authentic. I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable around me. But what about me in this situation, pinned to the wall? If I stop your babble, will this feel like criticism to you? Will you turn to go berating yourself for being a chatterbox and hating me for flagging it up? I suspect so. I recall Himself saying, just after I burst in with a story to tell, Can You Please Get to the Point? In his lack of interest in detail, I lost my own.

Allowing you to finish the line is all about respect – for you, for your intelligence but also for myself. I don’t need to explain everything. I don’t need to repeat my story. I trust that both of us will see what we see and hear what we hear. The need to explain or justify is really just insecurity. Perhaps, I say to myself as I stand in the blast of explanation, one already aptly explained some moments back, this person knows what it feels like not to be listened to respectfully. Perhaps he or she longs for compassionate, interested audience. Now I am back down on my heels and calm, leaning into it, into you, as the welter of words crowd my ears, even if the rhubarb has boiled dry and the smallest child is feeding muesli to the calf who, on finding the kitchen door open and it being cold outside, has wandered in for a warm up. It takes me no time at all to finish the line. This person is cold at night and needs more blankets. That’s it. However I now know that Grandad is arthritic and Gemma is frightened of the dark so she stayed home with Granny Music and that this person lives in Leamington Spa, well, just outside, but Granny Music lives right in the town where there are street lights right outside her home and Sandra has just passed her A levels, well, most of them, not maths, she’s not good at maths even with a private tutor who has awful breath and lives with 20 cats and it’s a long drive in the dark to get Sandra mathed up and it was a waste of money after all, not Sandra, though, she’s not a waste of money, of course not, she’s 17 now and very pretty and we are getting the early ferry next Saturday I hope that’s ok for you and where can we see otters?

I let the calf back out, muesli powder on her black snout. My visitor walks away armed with blankets and a couple of hot water bottles, feeling heard and respected. I just know it. The rhubarb is beyond hope now but that’s ok. There’s plenty of time to make an alternative crumble. I look at the clock. Fifteen minutes, that’s all this visit took and yet I have seen a whole lifescape in that time, one I will think about all day. I look out at the wide sky and the tall trees and find a warmth inside me. What came to me sharp and infuriating and with dreadful timing for the rhubarb at least, now feels like a soft line, a link between me and my visitor. I could feel her anxiety, touch her loving mother heart, see the care lines around her eyes and feel a deep respect for who she is.

I wonder how Granny Music got her name? I will never know but that’s ok. My own eye can finish the line.

by

Island Blog – A Vulnerable Courage

Chilly today even as the temperature rises a degree or two. It’s the wind and rain that do it. Although I light the fire early, I keep moving on principle and to keep my blood, bones and muscles believing they are yet miles from turning 68. It’s not easy in four frocks. It’s funny how warm frocks can be and how much heavier four are than one. It took me a while to layer correctly, allowing each hem to show itself just a peep and the process was very artfully managed, even if I do say so myself.

I lift the tarp from the outside Woodstock and fill the barrow enough times to bring the spirit level up on the inside wood box. We are both jolly now, both spirit levels high. I return the tarp, fixing it down at the corners with old dog leads and determination. Come Gale, come Rain, Come Sleet and do your worst! Me and the outside Woodstock are more than prepared for your incoming insults, that skirt-lifting ‘wheech’ that can render light dry logs to dark mush in a surprisingly short time. I walk with the same attitude. I know it is possible to buy little weights to hold a frock down, which sounds like a real faff, but if I choose the right outwear for the weather I am not usually de-frocked, nor even mildly embarrassed. I have my crimson long johns on anyway so there would be no chance for any walker or wood sprite to glimpse my never-to-be-seen-agains.

I sew some more patches for another baby playmat. These playmats have gainfully employed my fingers and my brain for most of lockdown, all the lockdowns, and it is my greatest pleasure to assemble the patches, six wide, 8 long, to measure (usually wrongly) the padding and the backing material to fit, in theory, and thence to sit before my trusty and uncomplaining sewing machine who will chatter away as she transforms the parts into a whole. My stitching is always wonky chops and the machine will growl at corners where the padding is likely to bunch somewhat. But, generally speaking, we succeed and the completed mat, jaunty with unicorns, daisies, stripes, dots and fairies in blues, greens, pinks, reds and yellows is a treat to the eyes. Then I wash the quilt/playmat, dry and iron it. I fashion a cloth bag with drawstring and the gift is complete. Now I must needs locate a baby. This could get me into trouble if I pick the wrong words. It isn’t, I explain, as I sense or see hesitation, that I want a baby, nor to steal someone else’s, no, no, not at all. It can take a few minutes to reassure. Fortunately there seem to be plenty of babies due in Feb, March, April, May and June, and I am ready for each one.

I listen to a TED talk on vulnerability. I love these talks and this one by Brene Brown is excellent. I have learned as I pad slowly away from bereavement that grief can come in disguise. I am not crying after all. My pillow is not soaked every night and I don’t see Himself in ghostly form along corridors nor hear his voice. I am not sentimental about the things he liked or kept about his person. I feel no nostalgia, no sharp of pain as a letter arrives addressed to him. So you are not grieving you weirdo? Ah, not quite true. There are things I am more aware of now such as fear of being able to cope alone, of lonely times, boredom and a sense of loss; a where am I going sort of awareness. I reply to How Are You with I’m Doing Well. And I am. I have no intention of describing the terrain in which I now find myself, lost upon hundreds of miles of wasteland, sky-tipping mountains, glacial tundra, burning desert, cold dark streets in the wrong part of town at 3 am mid-winter. All of these apply and more, but none of them all of the time. They are just glimpses, coming suddenly from behind or meeting me head on in a doorway. This is normal, I tell myself. You are on the way to somewhere you have never been, never seen before. How could you possibly know either the way or what the destination will look like? There is no brochure for this, no pretty pictures. You have to trust and to keep going, keep frocking up, keep laughing, keep believing, learning, questing. Be curious, eat and sleep well, read good books, listen to music, that sort of thing. Be Vulnerable, for vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage. Thank you Brene Brown for that firework of wisdom.

It has fair lit up my sky this day.