‘Deliverance – the action of being rescued or set free’

Every morning I wake early.  As my little swiss alarm clock froze at 08.23 some weeks back, I am never sure how early, and I no longer mind.  When it first stopped,  confounding all efforts to kick start it, I felt slightly alarmed (sorry) on retiring, because I might wake, and how would I know the hour?  For two nights, I had my mobile on the bedside table, feeling safer for its reasurring presence until I saw myself being fearfully controlled.  Now I just guess, and lie there watching the birds and the sea-loch whilst my thoughts flow softly in and out of my mind.

My thoughts are on my current reading.  At the moment, Alice Miller is telling me that what happened to me in my childhood was not right and that I have spent all my life making a pretty tale of what was not pretty at all.  We all do it to varying degrees.  Although I have no sensational story of cruelty, I know I was misunderstood and dominated and that the wounds inflicted still show as scars.  I consider motherhood, my own mother, my own mothering of five little people.  It’s a huge subject and not one any of us would like to take an exam in.   One day we look large but fetching, struggle a bit to get comfortable or sleep, have a bit of indigestion and some lower back pain.  The next day we are handed a screaming, squirming, sticky infant who never shuts up, and who makes us bleed, cry, despair and fight the urge to run every other moment for years and years.  However, that is the way it is, and always was, and always will be. Perhaps that complete lack of preparation is the best way to undertake the huge responsibility of walking as guide beside an equally unprepared, vulnerable, and easily damaged child.. Note I use the word ‘guide’  A guide is ‘ a person who shows the way to another’.  Unfortunately, and in the main,  we dominate and define a child. How they behave reflects on us, after all.   Mostly we make the child fit into our house of ideas, our shape, our ways of behaviour and, in doing so, we are not listening, not paying attention to the child’s own personality to his development beyond her ability to conform.  Many of us unconsciously play out a re-enactment of our own childhood, which probably didn’t do us any favours, but about which we know a great deal, and about which we rarely ask questions.  Others of us make conscious decisions to parent differently and for all the mistakes we made, it wasn’t not listening to our children.

I read books too on religion – usually quirky ‘out there’ ones that speak with a voice of challenge – challenge of authority, of dogma, of the appalling control religion has applied over the years, the abuse, the outrageous inhumanities in the name of God. I do not believe in that God, nor the one who brings destruction and disaster, nor the pious one who appears only on Sundays, nor the one who says one thing and does another.  My God is sacred, a mystery, avoidance of human definition however much the scholars try.  I don’t need to explain God nor defend Him.  Nor do I need to persuade anyone else to believe in Him.  I just know He is always there and more constant than any other being or non-being for that matter.  However, these books I read are about religion not about God, and there’s a whopping big difference between the two, unfortunately.  Man got in the way, man and his/her need to dominate and control.

The thing about reading over a wide area of subjects, is that my mind is hungry to learn more.  I simply find a book  or a book finds me and I dive in, as I used to as a little girl, immersing myself in a new adventure.  As this little girl, I was ticked off for reading too much.  It was considered an idleness.  I laugh now at such nonsense, but at the time, it stopped me being me.  I made myself conform, run in teams (loathsome) and join in games (even more loathsome) to appear ‘active’ and ‘un-idle’. It was never natural, never comfortable, never fun.  Even through marriage I could hurry to hide a book under a cushion and return to the stewpot if my mother-in-law arrived at the door.  It has taken me years to be openly honest about ‘me’ – even longer to brave reading Alice Miller.  Knowledge requires action and I know this well.  So, avoidance is good until it isn’t, until it needs, demands to be born, comes out screaming for milk and comfort and guidance.

Life is as it is.  It was as it was.  But I know now that painting a pretty picture of childhood doesn’t set me free, doesn’t deliver me at all.  It might look and sound good to the world, to say ‘it didn’t do me any harm’ but it did.   If we invested more time in such idleness as reading, we might just change the world.

Or just the life of one child.  That would be a grand start.

In life we all have things we resist.  If you are like me you can keep up this resistance thing for months, causing yourself no end of lurking doubts and fears.  However, the minute I accept something, something I cannot change, all those lurkers turn to dust and that’s when I know I made them all up.

When any of us need to move into a new place inside our life and we know it has to be however much we don’t want it to, resistance is futile.  We know this, but it doesn’t stop us turning away again and again.  This is not for me, we say, I can change this pumpkin into a coach if I just keep going, keep moving, keep running.  The exhaustion that follows crumples us into a gloomy heap of laundry and we feel defeated and upset.

Then, one day we wake up to what we have been madly trying to avoid.  This situation is not going away.  Resignedly we turn to face it and there is stands, as strong and as sturdily built as it was the first time it walked right up to us and stood in our path.  Hallo, we say, begrudgingly.  What do you want of me? Shaking and scared we stand there like a child on day one of Big School, our hearts a flutter, our feet glued to the ground.  But, we have turned and that is all we need to do because at that very second, Life sends angels to guide us on.

In the face of this acceptance, a lot of the angst falls away.  We might not like it, this inevitable situation, nor think we need it anywhere near us, but the truth is we do.  What life sends our way is quite specifically ours and there’s a reason for it.  Although that platitude irritates the bejabers out of me, I can think of no other way to put it.  It isn’t that I am required to fix the situation, but that there is something in me that needs to adapt in order to bring a solution, and, in my acceptance and willingness to change,(even if I don’t yet know what into) the situation itself changes.

Well that sounds like pants to me, we protest.   I was fine as I was, getting on with life, managing most of it effectively and with energy and enthusiasm, most of the time.  Aha, says Life, well that’s true, but now I need you to change.  It’s outrageous, I know, but this is what happens for we were never meant to stand still.  Standing still means you miss the bus every time.  Standing still might mean you get a great view but that view will never change.  We pretend we are happy with that, the same old landscape day after day, incorporating our well-planned routines, our habits, our safety and security.  I always do it this way, this routiney thing.  This is why we stamp and rage about roadworks because they mean we have to go a different route to work and that is extremely irritating.  It is why we always expect a call from a foreign child on Sundays and are upset when they miss; why we expect others to be as they always were before; why hormonal teenagers infuriate and upset us. If we are honest, we all fall for these unwelcome differences, and the reason is our own deep need for everything to remain as it was.

It is no way to live, not really for it shows us nothing new and worse, never shows us what we are capable of.  We are dancers, with an innate curiosity for life, however old and infirm we might be.  So why do we feed this illusion that our way is a good one when we are probably already bored to death with it.  We are designed as pilgrims, as travellers and journeymen, versatile and interesting and always open to new adventures?

I am so thankful I met a man who couldn’t stand still for a minute.  Although I raged against each change, he has taught me a lesson of such value that it now runs through my veins like life blood.  It doesn’t mean that I automatically embrace change if it ‘promises’ discomfort and loss, but what it does mean is that the resistance phase is shorter each time.  I know I cannot change this situation, but there are about a thousand ways I can change myself.

It smiles me, the thought.  And, by the way, we can learn a great deal from hormonal teenagers. They aren’t scared to change.

It’s Monday again.  The first day back to school, the first day of the week, a new beginning.  Things start on a Monday but rarely end on one.  We begin diets on a Monday, or bring into force new resolutions. It is a natural first base for so many aspects of our lives.  To some it matters, the name of the day.  To others with no limiting weekly agenda it is just another day.  Just.  Hmmmm.  There is nothing ‘just’ about another day.  To wake up at all is a bonus, for starters.  To have the freedom to move inside that day, making choices and carrying out tasks of value is even better.

Waking early, my thoughts crowd in, as if they have been impatiently waiting to do so for a whole night.  They clamour for positions, shouting at me until I have to shove them out of the bed.  All those self-doubts and deep fears rise from their lurkings and stand full square and tall before me.  If I give one of them so much as a nod, I am in trouble.  So I don’t.  I hum, like Pooh, to myself and I get up quick to wash and dress, lifting myself into the day consciously.  If my conscious mind can quiet my unconscious long enough, then I can get downstairs and into the super juice before those doubts know I’m missing.

I know I am not alone in this.  I know that we all meet ourselves as we awaken and that we all need to put effort into our alignment with the new day.  We need to lift our own spirit until it is fully awake and can lift itself.  But, that spirit needs our help.

Recently our sky reception went down.  We thought it was a sky thing until the nice man came to show us the lead that had fallen out of the sky box.  It took a week for him to come, and so we watched dvd’s instead each evening, good movies that told a story, and all at once, unlike tv dramas that drag on for weeks and, despite watching the ‘earlier’ shots to remind of us of the storyline, both of us have spent an hour wondering who is who and are we sure we saw the last instalment?  And not just that, the dramas have become so gory and so menacing that neither of us want to see them any more.  Give us Downton Abbey or Call the Midwife any day, or documentaries on something interesting and stimulating.  All this obsession with cruelty and torture may well indicate a truth in our world but I don’t want to see it played out, however clever the storyline.

Those dramas affected my dreams.  During the week of movies my dreams were delightful and encouraging, funny and uplifting.  It thinked me about what I put in and the direct connection to what comes out.  How could I not be influenced by visions of horror even if I know it’s acting, that the blood is from Heinz, that the people, children and animals are not in pain?

So, this Monday is a new start for me.  No more ghastly dramas.  The world is beautiful and overflowing with goodness. People are inherently good and doing their very best.  I shall put that into my mind from now on.   I know there is sadness and cruelty all around, but if I fill myself up with all that beauty then I will eventually end up with a fat happy Pooh-sized spirit, one that can actually do some active good for others, just by what I say, what I do, how I see life. The macabre fascination with evil is not for me, not if I want my own spirit nourished. I don’t want to know about an eye for an eye, or about a sick mind.  Whether we like it or not, we are deeply affected by what our eyes and ears take in.  If we watch evil, we might be forgiven for thinking that this is the way of the world. And in this, we would be completely wrong.

Our spirit is strong, yet fragile.  We choose how to nourish it.

Last night I listened to the darkness; an owl hooting in the distance made me shiver for the mouse, hiding beneath the skinny branches of last year’s brambles; the cries of an oystercatcher across the sea-loch cut through the black like a white hot blade and, as it grew quiet again, I could hear the little burn mumbling and tumbling its way down to mother sea.  The thoughts that went through my mind at each encounter came randomly, as thoughts always do.  Was this sound the sound of imminent death or just the music of the night?  Did the mouse get away and, if it did, is that a good thing?  Not, I suspect, for the owl.  And oystercatchers always sound like they’ve got their nickers in a twist, whatever it is they might be saying.

I know my thoughts are plentiful and noisy.  I know that my thoughts can be very black or as bright as a summer garden in July, depending on how I feel about life at the time.  Giving credence and an audience to any thought allows it to develop, so it is my choice as to how the next scene is played out.  Before I knew this refreshing and freeing fact, I considered all thoughts to be of value.  They have been sent to me; they are real; they are my fault (if black) and just lucky (if bright).  Now I know this to be just so much nonsense.

If I have control, not over the appearance of a thought, but of its lifespan, then I am truly freed from all that has ‘defined’ me over the years.  I am not my thoughts.  I am, however, the result of any action I may take in response to them. I am my actions, for this is how I show the world who I really am, not who my mother made me, or my gym teacher or my past influencers or even my present ones. It isn’t what I say that shows me as I am, but what I do, and what I do is always influenced by what I think, hence Shakepseare’s mighty wisdom ‘ for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’. Hamlet Act 2 Scene 2.

Most of our day is spent in private thought.  We process and sort these thoughts every second of every waking moment.  The domestic thoughts are generally quite simple to address and to process but the thoughts that cause us to doubt ourselves, to beat ourselves up for not being enough, searching, as we all do for the why is everything, the root, the reason for that thought being there at all are the thoughts we must stop in their tracks.  If thoughts come unbidden and unsought then they are not necessarily welcome.  To allow a thought to grow requires us to give it audience.  If we have a tendency to self-deprecate then we must be mindful of such thoughts.  Chewing them over in search of an answer that will lift us into a smile again has never worked before, so why would it now?

I have learned to acknowledge each thought as just a thought, as if each one is on the wind, blowing at random through my brain.  Over time I can recognise the self-indulgent bad girl thoughts and send them packing, although this does not mean I ignore any thought that might be there to guide me.  I make many mistakes, in what I do and say, and my thoughts help me to put the things right that I have made wrong.  But, after that is done, it is done.  Although attending thoughts like unecessary bridesmaids keep flowing down the aisles of my mind, whispering that ‘sorry is not enough, you have to grovel, you dreadful person, you who keeps on getting it wrong over and over and over again, and at your age, for goodness sake’……………..I let them flow right on out and into the ether for they bring with them the trappings of a false guilt and I have no desire for such trappings. Life is altogether too wonderful for that.

This morning I rose to birdsong and the whoop of a hyena.  I think a local dog has learned to whoop in an hyeniac way because the chances of a hyena in the neighbourhood are slim.  I remember waking in an African night to that call, close by and it thought me of the simplicity and the complexity of what it means to be a wild animal, acting without thought on consequence of action.  I doubt a hyena bothers much with guilt or self-deprecation as we might.

And yet we are never at the mercy of our thoughts, and we are always in control of what happens next.

This morning I endeavoured for some time to transport some music tracks from my laptop to my phone.  I wanted a simple thing, really.  To be able to listen to my music through headphones whilst out and about.  However, it was not a simple thing at all.  As I tried to understand the goobledegook language, one that changes daily and makes no sense to me at all, I managed to move my music from one file to another file, to dropbox, the cloud, Itunes and something called Groove. Not one of them would sync with my phone, despite the fact that said phone was firmly plugged in and recognised (so the icon said) by my laptop.  It’s been two hours now and I haven’t thrown a hissy fit although the frustration is immense.  It should be so easy.  Young people find it easy and it thinks me.

When I was young, there was no technology beyond electric kettles and big bulky monochrome televisions.  In my lifetime we have moved from slow to superfast and all of us have had to either keep up or be labelled a philistine. I’m not complaining about it in general, for there are a million good and great things we can now achieve in split second time instead of waiting a week for anything to move to stage two of its proceeding.  However, the cultural change is slightly unnerving. This open-ness of life reduces our privacy incrementally, requiring us to protect something that is in effect our identity.  The young, who have learned all this in school, are quite in step with it, whereas I, and, I suspect, others of my generation, am often confounded, lured into communication traps with a well-meaning and trusting heart, and filled with self doubt as a result. We begin to compare ourselves unfavourably to those who don’t make such stupid mistakes. Our confidence is shaken.

Becoming an in-law is one such area; becoming a grandparent, another.  I never thought for one minute it would be complicated at all.  I doubt my own parents did when these changes came knocking at their door.  Life moves on, we move with it naturally, don’t we?

Well no.

I have found myself in a right pickle and more than once.  I moved, spoke, acted as I had always done around my small children, and yet, as they grew to adulthood, I met road blocks.  Overnight, it seemed, I had gone from free flow to awkward stumble.  I had to draw in my head for some BIG thinking.  It was pointless looking back to the days of my parents, when nobody said boo to any goose over the age of 50, especially not if that goose was family.  Back then, old rellies had the voice and anyone younger had to listen to that voice, whether it spoke rainbows or hailstones.  Not nowadays.  Nowadays our children will speak to us in ways we would never have dared to employ.  Nowadays we cannot spout the so-called qualities of old traditions without being questioned, laughed at or shot. Being open, being transparent brings its own set of results and not all are pleasant or comfortable.  I have spent more time considering what comes out of my mouth in the last 10 years than I ever did in the preceeding 30. Not a bad thing at all.

Whilst I was thinking inside my shell, something dawned on me.  We as parents had encouraged our children to be themselves, to speak out, to be individual and independent.  We wanted them to be who they were, who they wanted to be, not what we thought was best with our limited experience of a newly fledging world. We gave them that freedom and they took it.  Most of my generation had no such start in life.  So, it was we who changed the course of things by educating our children in sensibility.  We cannot, now, complain at their sense of self, when we might still be searching for our own.

I was nervous.  I am always nervous before I present to an audience, be it to 10 people or to 100.  Last night in Crieff, we counted 52 good folk who turned out to hear what I had to say.  I think that’s very humbling.  Although many had already read my book, some had not, but they came, intrigued and curious to see in the flesh a woman whose life is either different enough from their own to warrant a peek, or just like their own. To some my life reads like a story, to others an account they relate to, at least in part.

Having been invited to appear on International Women’s Day, I knew how to pitch my talk and worked on it for some time before leaving the island.  As the time grew nearer, the doubts began to rise like chickens in a fright.  Was I focusing too much on women issues within a conventional marriage?  Was what I had to say, with a voice of authority and experience going to shake someone’s foundations?  Was I sounding like a rebel and would someone sniff loudly at my bare-faced honesty and leave, taking others with her?

I am learning (oh boy am I always…..) to notice thoughts that arise in me, the ones planted long ago, in childhood, in early marriage, perhaps, those of the ‘storyteller’, the ‘monkey-mind’, the voice of self-doubt and judgement;  the one that says (smugly) Who wants to listen to your claptrap?  You are just self-indulgent, seeking hero worship, seeking recognition.  I say to them, the chickens, You are just a thought and not the truth.  It works, it really does for they are as insubstantial as a collection of dust motes in a new breeze.  Even more so now that I realise it is I who have fed these flaming chickens and kept them alive when what I should have done is make a lot of chicken stew.

In a world of over-thinking everything from why a child has a tantrum in John Lewis in Manchester to how we can deny ourselves all of life’s pleasures in order to live a long life of denial, I try not to overthink very much at all.  However, the invitation to speak brings in its wake, a wash of responsibility –  to what? I ask myself and to whom?  Well, yes to the audience (obviously) and yet I have no forward knowledge of who will be coming and nor does my inviter.  Yes to the Scottish Book Trust who promote me for public speaking and yes to Kirsty who set the whole thing up and invited me a while back to come, but Yes also to me.  What I decided, this time around, was not to seek approval primarily from my imagined listeners, but, instead, from myself. How arrogant!

No, not arrogance.  Go away Chicken.  My book is my truth and I must be true to it.  The dynamics of a conventional marriage are not mine alone to live.  We are many, we conventionally married women; we are legion and I am in the position of privelege.  I have the stage and I can, by speaking out my truth, tell others they can change whatever they want within their lives.  I can’t, nor would I begin to, tell them how because I don’t live that life, but I can tell them it is possible if they grab the chickens and strangle them.

As I read my talk and peppered it with readings from Island Wife, I could feel the audience were with me.  I was talking to women (mostly) about things they knew well, moments highlighted, days of children and feeling overwhelmed and just a bit lost, of lack of communication, loss of confidence, feelings of rebellion and regret and no understanding of how to process them. Of patterns copied and then fixed in place, too complex to break down and to change; of either and of or; of what is and was expected of us by peers, by neighbours, by family and by our own selves.

The questions after were interesting and stimulated good conversations in the little theatre. Even the men, brave souls, engaged with questions.   From behind a jug of tulips, fresh and bright and opening their blooms as the evening moved on, I listened to those questions and answered them honestly.  One in particular stayed with me. ‘Did you know yourself back then when you were young, or do you only now know yourself?’  What a great question!  I had to think.  No, I didn’t know myself at all beyond the reflection I was shown by my elders and betters, that of a rebellious and difficult child/young woman, one that didn’t fit in; one who never settled, never landed, had to keep moving and changing; one who got lost inside her own head, was unfathomable, complex, moody.  This is who I thought I was.  Now I do know myself, and I am still all of those things, bar the moody bit, for that is always a complete waste of energy, and clearly announces to the one who put me in a mood in the first place, that I am expecting them to make it better, to make me better, instead of doing it for myself. And that makes all the difference because now, instead of feeling ashamed of all those labels, I know them to be my labels.  To work with them, to contain or develop them, is entirely and completely in my hands. ‘Difficult’ means I don’t agree with what you want me to do, or to be. ‘Rebellious’ means I am going this way, not that way.  ‘Not fitting in’ makes me unusual and interesting and possibly not invited to sing in the choir. ‘Not settling’ makes me energetic and gone before the dishes need drying. ‘Unfathomable’ works for me because even I can’t fathom me. ‘Complex’ sounds like a Mahler Symphony so that works and ‘Moody’, as aforementioned, has been dismissed without a reference. How wonderful to have learned such a vital lesson about 30 years ago.

As we disbanded, many came to speak, to have a book signed, to talk awhile. I looked into other eyes, bright sparkly eyes dancing with life. I know my story touched their hearts and my hope is that they all left with a seed for change, a seed that will need daily care and attention.

We are all pilgrims.

Today I cleaned the house, Made up my face, cleaned my boots, sorted the washing, planned the evening meal (and thawed it).  I walked the Poppy dog around Tapselteerie, noticing the change in birdsong and feeling the spring of urgency in the air, air that was soft and plump with sunshine, cut by a memoric winter wind.  I was glad of my stout boots, my leg warmers, my soft wool hat with diddles of gold fleck just to keep style about me.  I heard my boots pound the ground and squelch through the mud, mud raised and created by men with trucks and trailers laden with blocks of chainsawed tree – a victim of Harry or Imogen or the one before beginning with G.  I considered the times that a tree falls outside of any gale, named or anonymous.  The tree is never anonymous, standing tall and strong for many years with its own name, growing according to that name, behaving such and blooming when the time for it is right.  If oak comes before ash or ash comes before oak, there is a ‘knowing’ among humans.  Certain birds nest in oak branches, others in the ash.  Rowans are female, as are silver birches, oaks, male.  Who decided all this?  Not I said the sparrow, not those of us who couldn’t give a monkeys about names or species or gender.  We just do what we do when we do it.

After walking I cleared some old raggedy stalks in the garden, noticed the chipped paint around the window, noticed the windows (there are no window cleaners any more) and the clouds full shout beyond the glass, moving as they do, changing, catching light, making shapes to enchant me, full of rain or hail, every colour of the palette, and then, gone.  I added to a painting, one of jaunty boats and not much talent, but bright and attractive.  I made lunch, which means lighting toast and adding toppings.  I worked on editing two pieces of script for others who value my grammatical critique and I opened mail, jumped on the paper bin which is always overfull and managed to shut the lid.  I washed a jumper, folded sheets, wrote a thankyou card, paid two bills, charge my phone and lit a scented candle. I texted some of my kids, dealt with some admin, cleaned my car and oiled the door hinges.  I worked out a fence adaption to stop the Poppy dog jumping over it, lit the fire, brought in wood and ordered more for next week. I cleaned out the hoover, ordered some Spike Lavender, sorted out the cutlery drawer and shredded courgettes.  I emptied the compost, picked up litter, went to the shop for some groceries.

Okay, I am not a broker, nor a vet, nor a TV presenter..  I am no neuro-surgeon, no map maker, no dentist or mountaineer.  I am not a book binder, a celebrity, an actress or counsellor.  I could list a million professions and come up with a ‘No, not me’.  And yet, all this day I have achieved  a great deal that matters.

In my life I have met folk who ask me what I do.  Now I can say I am a writer and yet that irks me, the fact that I need to put myself within any such confines, allowing the askee to nod and say Ah, as if being anything they can Ah about makes me great (or great for the moment).  I practised once as a young, irked, woman saying ‘ I am a mother and wife’, because to me that meant I was more brilliant that any of those aforementioned professions, in that I had to be as dextrous as an acrobat, 24/7 for the rest of my life.  I could not come home tired and sit down because everyone needs an evening meal.  I could not say I was bored with feeding babies, or welcoming guests with cake and a loving ear. I could not abandon the housework when 24 dogs or fifteen children or one husband had turned the carpet into a mud bath. I could not lie in, play hookie, turn my face to the wall, not once, not ever.

The person who received my Wife and Mother response, drifted away like a wave on its way down the coast.  To be ‘just’ a wife and mother is so not enough for this patriarchal world.  The little woman back home is just that.  Little.  And yet she is far from that.  She will hold together a life, a family, a community.  She will learn and become adept at a thousand tasks most professional folk would marvel at and run from.  She may sit quiet  but her quiet is her knowing, like the tree, like the bird.  She does what she does when she does it.

If nobody else honours her, I do, right here and right now.

Nobody knows what a life and the living of it feels like but the person living it.  Experience is everything.  Although we are all writing a memoir as we work out the how-tos of each day, we often get ourselves fankled up in the tapestry of what A. N Other prepares beneath our feet.  Finding our voice and then using it to speak out is not always easy.  children have no such qualms, but somehow that confidence dissipates in the winds of time. We learn to conform for the sake of peace, the wrong sort of peace.

When a person decides to share this life, a whole load of stuff has to go.  Singular decisions, for one.  I becomes ‘We’ overnight.  We like to do this, we like red furnishings, woodburners, pasta and pesto, dogs, hamsters, walking in the rain, burgundy,bouncing on a trampoline, and so on.  I recall well that moment when ‘We’ anounced we didn’t like going to parties.  I remember my eyeballs wide, my surprise complete.  This ‘We’ thing tiptoed into life and the way it landed, the certainty with which it became a family member, rendered me wordless.

I suspect I am not alone.  Morphing two into one is what all the love songs and poems and romantic stories are all about, after all.  We can’t live without the other, we need to be ‘always by your side’, never alone, never singular again, for singledom means loveless, lonely, sad.  Well isn’t that what they want us to believe?

Over time I have fought off ‘We’ but it is a persistent little so-and-so, especially as it moves in so quietly, weaving its tentacles around a shared life, hardly noticeable as it’s roots burrow in silence to a very great depth.   It also offers security and the chance not to think at all about what I want in any given situation.  So easy to be lazy, to be unsure enough not to challenge a ‘we’ moment when it just doesn’t fit.  If a person has gone along with everything decided by one half of the ‘we’ for years and years, and never once considered rising up to make an ‘I’ choice, or too scared to even consider it, then why bother now?  After all, hasn’t ‘we’ sort of worked till now?

The trouble is we are bigger than half of a whole.  We are whole all by ourselves, or ourself. The trouble is that if it does limit our personal freedom of choice, of speech, of direction, we are never going to know who we really are, what our purpose is in this one life.  What dreams we have can stay in dreamland if we refuse to bring them into the daylight, but they will not let us go; they will keep coming, nudging, whispering to us and it will sound like rebellion, red and fiery, dangerous, destructive.

Of course, it is none of those things in reality.  It is simply a matter of challenging a ‘we’ when it feels wrong.  It might have felt right, once, but not now, not now, because we all change all of the time, growing and learning, turning to face a new direction.  Challenging a ‘we’ that was acceptable once, is enough to panic anyone.  The other half might be upset.  Will be upset.  Expect it and keep going, gently, firmly, lovingly.  None of us really welcome change and yet change is necessary or we just go backwards.

We are taught so much about how not to upset another human being.  We bend over backwards to avoid it, paint ourselves into the background, accommodate and serve and there is everything wonderful about that, at times.  But, must it deny a singular freedom whilst remaining one half of a whole?  I say No, and No is a complete sentence.  Finding a good way to untangle from an uncomfortable ‘we’ might not be achieved overnight, but if we are consistent and gentle and determined, it will, eventually, be accepted as the new norm.

I am often teased about being ornary and cussed as I challenge a ‘we’ but it is just teasing and not the end of the world.  I found that facing down a fear, always imagined, led me to a singular freedom and yet I am not single.  I am part of a ‘we’, but more, I am I.

I leave you with a wisdom.

‘If I am me because of who I am, then I am me.  If you are you because of who you are, then you are you.  But if I am me because of who you are, or you are you because of who I am, then I am not me, and you are not you.’

When you turn 37 and suddenly discover you need glasses, it can come as a shock.  You thought you would never get to this time in your life, never have to use glass to see the world clearly.  You probably fended off those who suggested you might need a little help, because, in truth, you don’t want a little help in any area of your life.  You are fine on your own two feet thank you very much and this niggling soul, often someone close, is turning the mirror around so that you can see who you have become…….or not quite see who you have become, for this slightly blurry person is so not you. You are on the outside of the looking glass.  I remember being there and all sorts of thoughts and feelings rose to the surface of me, bubbling me into new rooms where I found my old mother and other ancient animals.  I blamed my busy life, my husband for wearing me out, my work load and so on.  The consideration that I, of all people, was victim to the aging process, was one I was not prepared to face.

Children run without a care.  They burst through gates and leap over rocks and not for one minute do they consider falling.  They may well fall but they don’t worry about it ahead of time, so caught up are they in following each other, of being the leader, of getting from here to there as quickly as possible, of laughing into the sky, of being one with the moment.

I remember being like that even as a young woman, an older young woman.  When did I get caught up in the idea of falling?  I have to tell myself, firmly and often, whilst facing the rocks in between me and the curled lip of a wave, to forget myself, forget my feet, just go!  After all, I have done this a hundred times and never once planted my face in the kelp.  But no matter how much talkback I give the monkey, the monkey confounds me, arrests my itchy feet, cautions me to slow, to consider, to walk the run.  Am I alone in this?

When I sit down to paint on my face for the day, I am cautious about the application of each product.  I have seen orange old ladies many times, or those with the scooped line of the wrong colour foundation dancing around their chins as they talk.  I have seen lipstick bleed and spiders legs sticking out like fencing around receding eyeballs and I have thought to myself, Well, when that is me I shall make certain I look hilarious.  What I don’t want is to lay too much store by the falsehood of ‘better not tell her and upset her’, and that process begins with me.  I will laugh at myself, I will, I will, and that will then free others to feel okay about pointing out that my lip liner is green when it is green, and the red around my eyes makes me look like a hamster.  It is easily done, and although I haven’t done it myself on those early dark mornings when specs and mascara will not mix and I have had to take especial care in my colour selection, a friend has.  She pulled into a layby to touch up her face before arriving at a party, and in the gloom of an interior car light, surrounded her mouth with green eye liner.  Actually, it looked rather swish and she may well have influenced others to try it out next time they went dancing.  She looked stylish and different and I like stylish and different.  Her sense of humour is always Head Girl in her life, and once she realised what she had done, she did not rush to the bathroom for a scrub, nor ask the floor to open wide, oh no indeed.  She remained for the evening, engaged in animated conversation, all the while just knowing that the person opposite was doing everything possible to avoid staring at her mouth.

Although some of the quick moving things in life can still be quickly moved, many cannot.  But boundaries must always be pushed out a bit, for they do tend to move in, ever so quietly, and probably at dead of night.  If we must do something that makes us uncomfortable every day, then I am onto a winning streak, for the questions and the emotions that float up to the surface as life takes what she needs from each one of us challenge me to remember who I am, not who I was.  This who I am thingy means I must be still and in the moment, like children are, although children are rarely still.  And, what is more, it isn’t just one decision.  It requires consistent focus and attention.  It is all too easy to join the sick queue, not even realising we are in it.  In order not to buy in to what all the young people fear, ie old age, we must work like never before.  Where life was effortless, no moisturiser required, it now requires effort and moisturiser.  I see so many folk by the side of the wrinkly road and they make me sad.  Talking about ‘how it was in my day’ is lovely if the children or grandchildren want a jolly good laugh, but that is where it stops.  If we allow ourselves to recede, the path is an easy one, but if we rage against the dying of the light, we can have specs in every room, we can sit on them, lose them, laugh at them and make others laugh too.  We can reach the sea however long it may take.  The mistake is not to bother going at all simply because it takes longer to pull on boots, because we have a sore back, because we might get cold.  What we will miss is this:-

The seabirds dipping and soaring above the salt; the colour of the sand, the squelch of kelp; granite, orange with lichen, white with fungus,sharp-edged or rolled into soft by endless tidal flow; the sound of children laughing into the breeze, the puddles along the track, the spring birdsong, a sudden wren singing aria atop a fallen branch; new shoots on winter trees, a chance meeting with others who also chose to seize the day; rain, sudden and heavy, and the merry dash for shelter; the feel of boots, their crunch and squish and squeak as they carry us along; a small cold hand in yours, the gift of a shell, a hazelnut, a pebble; the crazy barking dance of a happy dog.

Perhaps we can change the fear of aging if we do bother, if we do teach ourselves how to inhabit the moment, forgetting the past, forgetting the future.  We can do nothing about either, but, right here, right now, well………there be dragons and magic and anything is possible.

Put your specs on and take a look.  It’s a fairyland out there.

The days are now lengthening which sounds very positive, but with this lengthening thingy comes the cold.  The winter sets in, into our lives, our very bones.  We have months yet before we can go back to lightweight cardies and no socks and I can feel my gears changing.  Up to Christmas nothing matters much beyond Christmas, but, after that it seems we are faced with self-control and diets and bare trees and winds with teeth, floodings and the very real chance of arriving at playgroup, work, the supermarket or school soaked to the skin.

I remember standing at a bus stop out in the open (bus shelters were yet to be invented) with my toes turning to wood, and painfully.   My mother fixed me into clod-hopping, steel hard lace-ups with round toes and room for growth, as there was in my regulation coat, closely resembling a small and chilly gnome, standing there, waiting for the school bus.  I remember my toes remained frozen for most of the day so that if I ran along with the others whose mothers chose softer and warmer footwear I invariably made a great impression on the gritty scree of the courtyard, and little on my classmates.

I recognise a gear shift when it comes.  It’s the same when the weather warms up in late Spring, which for us is May at the earliest, more likely well into June.  I am way too hot and yet unwilling, it seems to bring out the thinner tops.  I resist the change initially until the very real threat of internally combusting forces me to adapt, and I must needs peel back multi-layers and expose my ashen and unwilling skin to the shock of sunlight  It thinks me about change.  I say that I welcome it, but I now think that I welcome change that suits me, and am as resistant as the next woman when it does not.  Change seems to sneak up and bite my bum and I will do anything to fend off what niggles and bothers me for as long as possible.

What I seem to want is no change at all once I’m in step with life.  I like routine, even though I say I don’t.  What I know is what I want, not that other uncomfortable thing about which I know nothing, or can remember little, and which looms like a spectre with dark shadows and siren threats and a change of clothing.  And yet, Life herself changes daily, so why the resistance when I know it to be true?

I don’t need routine to keep me upright and smiling, I need change.  I don’t need routine to give me a sense of self or of place, for I am complete all by myself. Nor do I need to control any change when it requires something of me, although it might be nice to get a warning email a month or so before it arrives.  What I need is an open mind, an ability to move quickquick if I need to or slowslow if that is a better option.  I need to loosen up my grip on what I know, ready to let go, ready to grab on to the next set of circumstances, for it is the truth that most change comes unbidden and unsought.

My own little world is very small.  And yet the world itself is huge, littered with people and homes and lives.  Looking out of my window, stepping out of my world and learning more about others, talking, sharing, helping…..these are the ways I learn to accept change in my own life. This is the way I stop thinking about myself, and, as I step out more, my own world expands.  Conversations lift me, I learn new truths, and I find things I can alter or accept inside my own little world.  None of that happens if I stay home, boiling or freezing in my stubborn resistance to change.

This is the season for visits and laughs about runny noses and frozen toes.  This is the time to work together, to pick each other up, to slog through the mud and cold of it all, for we need each other in order to understand who we are.  This is how we define ourselves with stories and songs and cheer-ups and cough drops, and, in defining ourselves we can work more flexibly with change when it comes, sans warning email.

In short, we remember how to laugh and mostly, at ourselves.