November 12, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 111 Love Defiant

‘Love is giving someone the power to break your heart, and trusting them not to’. Some wise soul said that, and I pinched it.

When we fall in love, we fall into infatuation at first. We can think of nobody else all day. Their face and voice lift us up to heights we never knew before. Every time.

When I looked up Love on the interweb as my old ma calls it, every link on the first page and beyond guided me towards young love. Now, young love is not just for the young. The ‘young’ adjective describes Love, not the people feeling it. We can fall in love at any age, and thankfully, we do or the world would be chock full of lonely old people, who have loved and lost and find they can love again. But love is not just a feeling. It’s a verb. In order to maintain a love between two people, both have to work, sometimes, very hard and over long periods of time.

So what is love, the verb?

Well, after the first overwhelment of love, hitting us right in the heart like a meteor has landed there, things slowly change. Is this, we ask ourselves, the death of love? Did I make a huge mistake? Is the ‘honeymoon’ period over? Hopefully, yes. Now we are getting real.

You may have made a mistake in your choice of lover, but you also may not, for at this point comes commitment, a cementing of a love, a choice to grow it into something long term, something that will sustain both people for the rest of their lives. Ok, so we ‘commit’ whatever shape that takes and on we go. At first we can allow things to irritate, because we are still floating on cloud nine and, as we know Love is blind. But, when those things that irritate don’t disappear, we begin to wonder, because our initial plan to make the other person into a carbon copy of ourselves, isn’t working.

This is the uncomfortable bit.

‘Vive la Difference!’ is something we can laugh about and nod our heads to, but can we actually live with it?

There is another saying, that ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry’. Well bin that one. I believe that saying sorry and taking appropriate action thereafter is precisely what Love is. Otherwise we can just go on with our irritating habits, expecting the other person to get over themselves without considering their feelings and that is not ‘love’.

‘Don’t sweat the small stuff’ is another. However, the small stuff grows into big stuff if left unattended and, by the way, the small stuff is in the way every hour of every day is it not? Dropping socks on the floor, nagging about who does what, harping on about slamming the car door, not helping with the shopping/kids/accounts etc.

So how do we un-sweat it?

Honestly, I can’t answer any of it, for this subject is one discussed to death all over the world in many languages. What I can say is that Love is a journey, not just a feeling. Beyond the chemstry, the longing to get home to a loved one, the daily joy, is a great depth of other things, essential things that, if applied with patience, will grow into a lifetime love.

But what about all that small stuff? Does he/she get away with it all? Hmmmm. Jury is out on that. I have made all the mistakes, harping, nagging, moaning about my lot, and you already know that, if you’ve read Island Wife. But, what I have learned, thankfully, is that love is not about getting my own way in everything. It is not about a clear stage, just for me, with himself prancing about like a dancer in tights, to lift me up every time I feel like a pirouette.

No, love is about Compassion. Kindness. Loyalty. Friendship. Affection. And each one of these is a choice, NOT a feeling. In fact, feeling them is unlikely at first, given the small stuff sweats. These depths of love are something to do, to work on, to write down as reminders. It’s like going back to school.

Goodness…… that sounds old and boring, even to me who knows all this first hand. But, as nobody can explain the truest, deepest meaning of Love, its high price and its long term rewards, then we just have to believe in it, even though, as a rule, we really only believe in that which we can explain through logic.

Love is not just about those first fiery weeks/months or even years. It’s not about agreeing on everything (which is fortunate as we hardly agree on anything)……nor is it something to be taken lightly, thrown away without deep consideration and every effort made to find it again should it appear lost. It’s not real in movies or romance novels. It’s not just for Christmas or for days when I feel good about myself. You won’t find it winning the lottery, or being promoted or writing a bestseller. You find it by making daily commitment to it’s development and growth.

And my last word, learned through experience, is this.

Forgive, even if nobody says sorry.

November 7, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 110 Love and Syrup

The cake is dry. What do I do with a dry cake, a dry fruit cake even? It’s not really a question I expect answered as I know fine what to do with a dry fruit cake, after I have recovered from the mild tantrum (well, a couple of mild tantrums) the remorse at the waste of raisins that said they were sultanas on the packet and the sultanas that were sultanas…so a LOT of sultanas to feel remorse for. Add to that all the other bits that went in, the time it took and, worst of all that argument with my new whizzer which cackles like an old witch with loose bones so that I have to stand well back in case she breaks her moorings and takes me out.

I googled my question. It doesn’t matter how stupid my question is, somebody has asked it before, because the internet has an answer. This is both alarming – I fear the world is slowly losing any purchase on Common Sense – and, reassuring, at least momentarily.

Syrup, they told me, warmed and drizzled in small amounts over a period of time. Well, I rarely have one of them anymore so I poured over half a slightly warmed can and it sits there still, sticky enough to keep everyone away and even more unuseable than it was before. So, I put the lid back on, bash it down (as punishment) and shall ignore it until the storm abates and I get over myself.

But, it got me thinking. You see, the cake, through the oven doors and outside of them looked perfect. Lightly bronzed on top and decorated with a festoonery of almonds, it promised moist mouthfuls of yummy rich fruit captured and held in a sensitive cakely hug. We would all love it, because of how it looked.

Some people are one thing on the outside and dried up prunes on the inside. Some of us actually believe that if we look right, we will be right, but what is more frightening and always was to me, is that we can open doors by presenting an acceptable outside. We are believed, credible, trustworthy, one of the Right Sort of People.

I love to turn up in the wrong trousers, because I must challenge this worldly nonsense. People should look into eyes, not take a mental picture of clothing, one that tells them just who they think I am.

At 60 I can do what I like, wear what I like, but I still can find myself lost in the dark folds of various items of clothing, just to get it right for the occasion. In the past, I have gotten myself upset enough to stay at home, for fear of being judged, pidgeon-holed, typecast, rejected.

Nowadays, if I see someone, anywhere, who arrives in the wrong trousers, then I just know we are both the full fruit cake, with no need of any syrup at all, and, that I am going to love them.

November 3, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 109 Beep and Battery

This morning, early, I come down to a beep.

It isn’t a consistent beep, but intermittent enough for me to wonder if I heard it at all. It is one of those beeps that turns my head every so often, for my ears to attempt location, and to fail. It’s irritating. Distant. The smooth whirr of the wind through the holes in the window frame is interrupted. The musical phrasing of birdsong is spiked with a false note, in the wrong key. The rise of kettle steam is not allowed it’s natural span without interruption and it doesn’t matter where I stand, I cannot pinpoint the sound. I narrow my eyes and sharpen my ears and stand quite still in each space, turning my head this way, and that to better establish it’s whereabouts.

Coffee tastes fine.

beep

Washing machine whirrs.

beep

I scuddle the ash from the fire and carry it carefully out to the garage.

beep

I feed the birds and chop the kindling.

beep

Ok now I am rising as Boudicca, with murder on my mind, but I must be a quiet Boudicca or I won’t hear this soft… intermittent…. infuriating…….

beep!

I stand quite still.

beep

Aha! It’s the washing machine.

beep

No, it isn’t the washing machine.

It’s the microwave, the fridge, the torch charger, although none of these have ever beeped before.

beep.

No it isn’t any of the above. In fact, it is coming from the big dresser, the one full of tea towels, materials, cloths and painting equipment.

beep

Now I am very intrigued. I might be the first Boudicca ever to have a beeping tea towel, although I do realise that in putting Boudicca and tea towels together, I make nonsense.

I rummage through a few things and hold my breath.

beep

Nearer and nearer, but not yet……

beep

Right at the very back-back is a box. The very back-back of this dresser has not seen light of day, nor felt the touch of human fingers, for a very long time, so I bring an element of surprise, which could be to my advantage.

beep

Found you!

It’s a fire alarm.

What on earth is it doing in here, all batteried up and ready to scream FIRE? Did somebody think the tallboy might spontanously combust?

I remove the battery and consider. I have lived as a firefighter myself. Most women live that way. Reacting positively to each familial disturbance, coming up with bright positive alternatives, keeping everyone and everything safe, and sometimes to feel very much at the dark back-back of an Imposing Tallboy.

But, I can beep – out of key perhaps and intermittently, just enough to make it irritatingly clear that I need a new battery.

October 27, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 108 Left Over Right

Last night we had Leftovers for supper. Actually, to be honest, we often do. I have never been that sort of a cook who follows recipes, noting down what I might need in order to cook a certain dish and then trotting off to buy it.

Is this, I wonder, because I am too lazy/impatient to don my prescription specs and follow a recipe?

Could be. I remember once thinking I was dutifully following one cake recipe when I was,in fact, following two. I did wonder at the imbalance and curio-factor of blending two unlikely bed mates into one cake, but the wild and colourful in me rose to the occasion with a skip of excitment. The cake, or cakes, arrived as one rather wonky lump, listing dangerously to one side and quite impossible to present on any level surface. I make up my own recipes now.

Back to last night. Well, first I must open the fridge. I creep up on the door and swoosh it open suddenly. This is an old tactic and can often prevent anything escaping.

Aha! I say with a cook’s gleam in my eye. Opportunity presents itself and I grab it quick and hold on tight.

Next, onions. I always need onions and garlic and I rarely run out of them because they lie artfully arranged in a nice basket from Portugal and in full view. Any old vegetables, chopped, julienned, grated, diced, depending on what lies floppily inside the salad drawers. Olive oil, infused with whatever I can more-or-less identify as herbs in the herb garden. I know I should know which is which, but the voles have shifted the labels around. Big pan, light on, favourite wooden spoon ( I never cook with metal weapons) and off we go, but to where is quite another thing.

As each ingredient is added, the house fills with tempting aromas that join together in a rising sound wave until I turn down the heat. As one animal now, it simmers and softens into a harmonious chorus. Now, what would lift this dish? I taste a little and let my instinct guide me.

What? Mint you say, and dark chocolate and fresh nutmeg?

Never doubt that voice. It’s not a left brain thing. This could be casserole or cake. Just don’t argue.

I comply and taste again. Delicious.

I notice 3 old bananas hanging on the banana hook, all in a big brown huff. What can I do with you I wonder? I check the fridge – a tub of elderly natural yoghourt, lemon juice, and in the drinks cupboard which is still called that even though it isn’t any more, I find a teaspoonful of banana liqueur.

I chop the bananas and fry them in butter, adding a spoonful of wild honey and the liquer. Whizzed up in the whizzer to a fine puree, I add three serving spoons of yoghourt. Meanwhile some almonds have been toasting in the oven. I pour the mixture into two glasses, top with toasted almonds and pop them in the fridge, which is empty again.

Or is it? One woman’s empty fridge is that same woman’s chance to shine. It’s all about self belief and no 24 hour shop down the road.

In that famous parting line from Fanny Cradock’s tv series, spoken with such confidence and encouragement into a thousand homes by her husband and assistant, Johnnie…..

May all your doughnuts look like Fanny’s.

October 25, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 107 A Change in Time

Well here we are on a Friday again and it seems like yesterday is was last Friday.

I know that as we get older we find time passing more quickly, but even young and sprightly things tell me they find it’s the same for them. We have endless encouragement through the wise sayings of Deep Thinkers to make the very most of every minute, and we all nod, because we believe in such a truth and then carry on rushing past precious moments and precious people.

As a young mother I would decline all offers of a ‘quick cup of tea’ because I always had to be somewhere ten minutes ago, and calmly so. I left, rushed, arriving way too early in a bright pink fluster, having no doubt remonstrated with one, or a few, of my children at the top of my tension, parked badly and banged my knee as I cornered too fast.

Why did I do that? And worse, why did I keep doing it? To arrive anywhere with my chest calm, my heart softly beating, my blood moving steadily and freely was a very rare and tea-less occurrence.

I can still say no to a cuppa and leave wondering why. If I have said yes, and sat my butt on a stranger’s chair, patted another person’s dog, looked around another’s room, I have come away, not necessarily with the best cup of tea ever slopping inside my belly, but with my heart and head completely changed. It was the encounter that mattered and the pleasure I gave and received by just saying yes, and giving myself to another soul.

The conversation can be wild, can be funny, can be informative and is sometimes astonishing. The things on the inside of us never see the light of day in a shopping queue. It is only when we sit and share something as ordinary as a cup of tea, that a person opens their heart.

‘Life is short’ is one of those immensely irritating cliches that makes me want to scream. The reason I want to, but don’t, of course, is that saying these well known throwaway words make absolutely no difference to either the person saying it, or the person hearing it, for all the smiling and nodding that goes on. However, it is the truth. Over one single day, I know of people fighting for their very lives, when last Friday they were full of healthy bounce. When they recover, they will truly know that Life is Short and both will change their lives, and the one area that will enjoy their total focus will be that of relationships.

All those terribly worldy concerns will melt away into a dirty puddle. Suddenly, and it is sudden, the choice of family over work is easy. Suddenly, it no longer matters if there is an immovable stain on the carpet, or the cooker stops working. It no longer matters that our mother/sister/neighbour/cousin said something or did something to let us down, either yesterday or when we were six. The familial baggage we lug through our healthy years, we can lay down and walk beyond. Just like that.

What matters is the happiness within the home, the smiles we can bring to the faces of our loved ones, by forgetting Things and putting Them first. There will never again be a chance that we would say yes to the boss, and call to cancel dinner out.

Nothing travels beyond the coffin, but the spirit of a person. All else becomes dust.

We, who are still bouncing this Friday and not fighting for a second chance at life.. we who can change everything right now……. might pause for thought.

October 20, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 106 A Timely Light

First of all I want to say thank you to everyone who comments on my blogs. Your responses to my own thoughts, thrown out into the world, come back to me like a soft warm morning full of birdsong. I write as I feel, looking not for a Well Done, but to touch on another’s life, to connect a couple of dots perhaps, to feel I am not alone, not physically, but in my innermost self, that woman I am stuck with, as she is, with me.

It makes me consider these two women – the visible one and Her Indoors, and the oftentimes mismatch between the two of us.

In the early hours before dawn, I ask myself big questions, such as who are you? and what do you want of this life? and why do we get in the way of each other? and why is it we aren’t perfectly aligned in our thinking? I know it may be a tad late to be addressing these major issues, but I seem to be doing it now and, besides, time is an illusion, whatever that means.

When I meet someone, I observe her intently. I learn much about her from how she says what she says, her body language, her choice of dress, the pitch and volume of their voice. I can hear clearly what the inner person is saying, however much talk comes out of her mouth. Is she really herself or is she fitting in to the shape either she, or others, require of her? Is her confidence real or built only on the sand of her expectations? What drives her? The need to be thought of as a ‘good’ woman, or the need to be true to herself, or a bit of both? Does she feel she has done her very best in this life, or is there an ache of regret and loss, and how well has she managed to conceal it under bright merriment and high rise cheese souffles?

I often feel there is a wasp in between me and someone of whom I have just asked a personal question. One like….. Are You Happy? Oh, I will get a list of all those things she may quickly pull into the room like the success of her children, the fact that the Co-op now sells mixed peel outside of the Christmas period, the arrival of the Redwings to colour up an autumn scene, but she won’t answer me direct. After all, what she feels about her life is not important at all. What is important is how she can make others happy, and this the point when I am in danger of falling out with Her Indoors, because I understand it completely and it is surely a goodly way to live, isn’t it?

No, it is not enough, and becomes glaringly clear when the children fly the coop, and she is without purpose, unless she has been ‘selfish’ during the busy years, and taken time to develop and grow her own interest, one that can support her to the end of her days.

When I look back on my own life, I see how fortunate I have been in my choices. I found a man who has never understood for one second the shrieking sharp-toothed Her Indoors, but has loved her anyway, even if he did have to walk about in full armour-plating for many years, which was wise of him considering my deadly aim.

I think we don’t need to seek acceptance, nor understanding for the inner person, except from ourselves. The big mistake is to bury her, or him, for this applies to both species, and then to blame an outsider for our own refusal to let light in.

Without light, nothing grows but fungus.

October 17, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 105 Think or Thank

Just in case anyone thought I had fallen permanently off the ladder of life, I am here to announce, with renewed confidence, that I did, short term, but now I am back and climbing once again.

I think that this year has been a big one and that it took a toll on me, one I struggled to pay off. The emergence of Island Wife into the world with all its accompanying publicity and travel threw me into a new place, one I didn’t know my way around. Add to that the emotional push and shove of a very personal and honest story flowing anew into, not just my own life, but those involved in it. It wasn’t just me who needed to have the answers to all those questions after all. Each character was thrown into the deep end, just when they thought they had deep ends enough of their own to swim through.

Within this, there is joy and there is sadness. As long as a personal story remains inside a person, it is manageable. It lies mostly in the inner straits of a personal map, perhaps allowed out in snatches, perhaps not. Suddenly I bring out the super trooper and the whole thing is centre stage, blinding, and not just to the distant onlooker.

I had not envisaged it at all. And nor, I suspect, had they.

Laying out a life story for the world to see requires each involvee to live it all again, with individual takes on each part of it. Believe me, hardly two together saw it the same way, and only I saw it as Island Wife.

I saw again the failing in me. I read again the times I was too weak and feeble to lift my eyes above the situation I found myself in. I feel the guilt, I feel the shame, and, as recently, when I became unwell and exhausted, I revisited those feelings. I didn’t want to, but their voices are strong and much louder than those who tell me I did my very best.

Now why is that Judy Fairbairns? is it that you love to beat yourself up? Is it that you are constructed in such a way that you are, when at a low ebb, dangerous in your inward thinking? Is it that you don’t see yourself with any value rating through the eyes of others? And, do you think too much?

If I am honest, I will say yes to all of the above, but, I know I am only out of balance. Within me are two major powers. One creates, the other destroys and they are two sides of the same moon.
I can light the night or eclipse the sun. It isn’t either/ or….it is both, and there is a wonderful energy in that. If I was a beige girl, I would walk a steady path. I am not beige. I am rainbow or midnight black. If I can honour both, I find my power. Not over others, but over myself.

And the key is to accept both and not to hide away from the dark side. To be honest about the whole moon, recognise it, honour it in its natural orbit, and bit by bit, year on year learn how to wind in the strings of each energy, with my own bare hands and battered heart until I know myself completely. Only then will I really be me.

The key for now?

Don’t think……….thank.

September 28, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 104 – The Unfinished Line

Painting a new canvas, I think about lines. I was taught at art school to let the eye finish the line, meaning that I, as the painter, should leave it half done, indicating by it’s direction and the flow of the piece where the eye might like to take it. It’s essential to the composition, the alternative leading to a dizzy spell because our eyes will always seek a resolution. We want to land somewhere and go ‘ah!’ and if we can’t do that, we won’t like the painting at all. We will be confused and all over the shop, deducing that the painter was too – that he/she just dithered brushes over the canvas without direction.

Writing employs the same rule of thumb, indicating to the reader where the lines are and allowing them to bring the line to it’s resting place, but not telling them exactly where that place is. If I am too bossy and organising in my story, I leave nothing to your imagination. I don’t allow you to relate, through your own life experiences, opinions, ideas to this character or that one, because they are too stereotyped, too plastic, too finite. You will be yawning by Chapter 3 and probably won’t read the whole book, unless you are one of those people who can’t bear to waste 8.99. I can easily bear that. If I find myself yawning by Chapter 3, it’s off to the doctor’s surgery with it, or the local charity shop, which very possibly isn’t very kind of me.

In life I find the same rule applies. If I am a woman who has a need for a rigid set of lines around her life, I lose out, because, although no-one will tell me I am stuck in my self-absorption, I nonetheless am. If what I say has to be how it is, then I am not allowing anyone else to complete the line, and, beyond human politeness, I will be skirted around in wide circles because I got boring by Chapter 3.

The good news is that opportunities to be dynamically fascinating and compelling come around over and over again as we begin a new venture, such as having a baby or maybe we leave the family home, or we notice we are turning into a lizard. I am only a lizard when my hairdresser pops the black cape around my neck a bit tight and I have to wrench it off and remonstrate with her – a remonstration that always makes her chuckle. Otherwise, the lizard bit goes mostly unnoticed as I avoid at all costs, a magnifying mirror. Seeing too closely anything in my life can have me pulling on my old anorak and moping along the long and whining road until I realise that nobody is following me anymore and I am quite alone.

Time for some new lines to be drawn, lines for a new adventure, indicating direction, begun but not finished.

So, off I go, this time as a guest speaker at Wigtown’s Book Festival, next Saturday lunchtime. I have no idea what to expect, no idea how Island Wife will be received, and all I am taking is myself and my reasonably ok skirt and sassy boots, my eyes for looking out and my ears for taking in. I don’t need to control anything beyond myself and, in that place of freedom, of letting go, I find my sense of humour, alive and well and waiting for me by the side of the road.

I may meet delays, I may get lost, I may forget to pack something vital. It might rain or snow. Wigtown might be wiped out by aliens on Friday afternoon, or the hotel we are staying in may have lost our booking confirmation. But this part-time lizard isn’t going to worry about any of that. She is just going to draw a few lines.

For someone else to finish.

September 23, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 103 – New Things and Clown Fish

There are things I have never bought. I’m not talking yachts and diamonds, but household things like a new sofa or a multi-functional, all purpose blender. I have looked at them online and not believed one word of their wonderment. For a start, in that exciting world of sofas, which, by the way, fails to excite me at all, I puzzled over two things. One is the material and the other the exhorbitant price. In my world, a sofa could be wrecked in one short day. It could be stained with all manner of tenacious colourings and smells, be flipped on its back to become a defence against military attack, or offer a comfortable resting place for swamp creatures such as collies or children just in from the rain forest, so I never bought one, not ever, relying instead on second hand ones already ‘broken’ in.

However, the multi-functional all-purpose blender has niggled at my peripheries for a while now. I do have a small liquidiser, which can whizz up easy stuff like over-ripe strawberries and yoghurt, and an old magimix which belonged to Granny-at-the-gate and got left behind when she went northwards to heaven, but it leaks and, besides, is not multi-purpose, whatever than means. I also have a bread-maker that produces amazing works of sculpted art. I sprayed one once with enamel car spray and it lasted a whole winter of island rains before I threw it over the fence. It hit a rock and I wasn’t sure which one had shattered.

So, last week, with a helpful link to a good one from my healthy eating sister, I ordered my own copy. A few days later, when dashing out the door to feed the 15 doves who have adopted me as mummy, I fell over a box the size of a small bathroom, which had been silently delivered earlier that morning.

Can’t be. I thought. Are there half a dozen of them in there? Oh, no, of course not. it will be all packaging and poly bags warning me not to put them over my head, or that of any in-house child.

I find myself, at this point, wishing I hadn’t ordered it at all, because now I have to do something like unwrap it and assemble it and then, worst of all, whizz a few somethings into a whole new something. Then, I will have to spread it, or slap it on meat, or fish, or drink it. The very thought brings on a yawn and I go to do another job for a while.

Eventually I have to face it so I lug this huge container inside the porch and grab a sharp knife. Ok, here’s the top of the whizzer and here’s the bottom. So far, so good. Isn’t that enough, I ask myself? Well, in a word, no.

Ten bags are nestled among the moulded corrugations of cardboard, each one wrapped in polythene danger. I remove it all and lay each piece out on the counter, which I can no longer see. Even the Clown Fish in the tank dive for cover.

I begin to assemble. 30 frustrating minutes later, I still only have the top and the bottom identified. There are round things with small holes, round things with big holes, whisks, plastic discs, a small rocket, metal blades contained in immovable shells, each yelling out LOUD PROMISES of finger loss should any contact be made. I am now a bundle of nerves and have to call my healthy sister who just giggles unhelpfully.

Did you assemble yours? I shriek at her.

Nope, she says. Her husband did.

Well, I have one of those but he is at sea, so that doesn’t work.

She guides me gently onwards and the motor leaps into life, although it has nothing to do but spin around at a terrifying speed, for now.

Later I bring together not a well-thought-through list of ingredients from a tried-out recipe, but just what I have in the fridge. A bit of almost mouldy red tomato pesto; half a bag of raw spinach; one apple with the brown holes removed; one floppy carrot; a clove of garlic; 5 pitted black olives (ha! you thought I was going to sabotage it with pits didn’t you!!) and the juice of one orange.

Well it whizzed for two seconds and stopped. I poked about with a wooden spoon and it whizzed again for another two seconds and stopped. It went on offering me the same resistance, one I have only ever met before in myself, for half an hour, but I was determined to win the fight.

What I ended up with is a paste that resembles the inside of someone’s liver, but it tastes delicious. It made me think of how important it is for something to look good for us to want to eat it.

Trouble is, I have only used one tenth of the flipping thing. The rest of its working parts slumber in a dark cupboard. Just the thought of working out what they do makes me want to join the Clown Fish.

September 20, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 102 – Memories

They are funny things, memories, but not necessarily in a ha-ha way. If anyone has ever asked a couple to describe their rememberings from any area or time of their shared life, you will have felt, as I have, that they definitely weren’t there together.

When my own mum recounts something from my childhood, she tells it in a way that assures me I was in another family at the time. I used to think she was right and that I was wrong – ever the swing from either to or – and that this ‘wrong’ in me was because I……..what? Wanted it to be different? possibly. Refused to acknowledge the truth? possibly. Had blanked out reality in favour of fairyland? possibly.

Nowadays I see it differently because I understand that she saw me through her own eyes, as a child inside her life and that wasn’t how I saw it at all. I looked with my own eyes, filtered each experience through my own emotions, needs, hopes and dreams, which were never hers. She has ideas for me that I didn’t like or understand or even want. So, the battle begins early in a life, the battle for a good hold on reality.

And who is to say what Reality is?

Even in a marriage, where two supposed adults, really still children themselves, encounter days and times and moments together, the looking will differ to varying degrees. Where one sees rain, the other sees the light inside a raindrop. One feels he cold, the other doesn’t, so was that house a cold, uncomfortable one or was it a wonderful home, or was it both at the same time? And, in the spinning out of the tale of of it, who will name it?

Then, there are the ears that hear that tale. Are they on one side or on the other according to who or what they personally relate to? If I am angry about something or someone, I will, however ‘good hearted’ I may be, paint them in certain colours, and colours stick, words stick, take root and grow.

It isn’t as simple as the glass half-full, half-empty cliche. Cliches are always too simple, sounding like goodly truths but lacking substance, texture, depth and context. They may help to elevate our thoughts and this is helpful indeed, but no living soul is ever one type of person or another. To get from black to white and back again, we must allow and embrace a thousand shades of grey, and it is inside those greys we mostly live out our days.

So, now, as an old woman (I love being an old woman, choosing, as I do, the picture of old age as a cumulation of experience and wisdom and of letting go) I can hear a story re-spoken and learn, from it’s presentation, more about the person speaking it out than I ever do about the ‘facts’. I even hear my own voice doing the telling and notice where I put the emphasis, what colours I choose, what body language I employ, what tone. And it often smiles me a lot.

On days when I only see the rain, there is a moan and a whine in any telling out. The simple question How are You? can see me grabbing someone’s hand and leading them into a miserable dark wet cavern littered with the old bones of all the women I hoped to become and allowed to die without a voice. On days when I am energetic enough to slip between the raindrops, pausing to catch the warmth of their reflected light, I can swirl us both into the sky along with the fairies and the angels and actually feel critical of their need to tell me about the bunions on their big toes.

Same circumstances. Exactly the same circumstances. The days are the same, the tasks the same, the view the same, and yet everything is different.

So, although we are all within the parameters of this day Friday September 20th, and even if we spend a part of it together, we will tell very stories about it’s 24 hour span.

Which of us is ‘right’ I wonder?