brother

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Island Blog – Talk to Me and Brother Days

I must have said this a gazillion times over the years of my almost half century of marriage, yelled it, screamed it, thought it, dreamed it. All I achieved was indigestion and a sore neck. Don’t bother, that’s what I say and did say to myself but myself kept hoping for a breakthrough.

Now I am widowing my way through hours and days, through dark and light times, through back-lit frustration and regret, sadness and happy memories, I still can feel my gut clench, as if those iron fists are just waiting for permission for this clenching thing. They have no moral standards, these iron fists, no emotional intelligence, I know that and if I am able to pause my racetrack of thoughts I can swerve away, refuse to engage with such thoughtless metal. It doesn’t always work.

And then he came, my brother. I haven’t seen him for so very long and even then it was never just us, or not for longer than a walk through the wolds of Norfolk, the trees, across fields that go on all the way up to the horizon. For five days he was mine, just him and just me. Big sister always teaseable, slightly younger brother, big man, good man, the best. For a few days prior to his arrival I freaked out over food. After all I cook pasta and eat salad day after day and with added bits to lift the whole plate out of the ordinary, so the thought of presenting (omg) and arranging delicious food on a plate, such as pork chops that aren’t as tough as his walking boots, and beans with something, al dente of course and potatoes, oh lordy, I haven’t bought them in a very long time. The whole thing indigested me big time. I called our sister, a professional and hugely talented chef and she flapped me down like she would a plane coming in to land too fast. I slowed my heartbeat. This was not about what I cooked, nor how clean my house was, she said. This visit was about him and me, as rare as an original Picasso and equally easy to destroy with the fire of fret. So, to hell with that. Thank you Fifi.

Every single minute of each day was an adventure. Just as I sat my old ass down for a rest, his bright light was shining on the next opportunity. I loved it and it reminded me of what I had forgotten, the times with him so very long ago, his wicked humour, the way he finds something in anything and everything to celebrate and to investigate, his kindness, his interest in things other people ignore, his curiosity and the way he picks up on something I say and steps alongside to understand more. We laughed our way through rain, tussocks and hummocks (he actually said, and over his shoulder, Remind me never to invite you stalking with me, as I fell over again in the bog) and I watched him across the table drinking tea and munching on a biscuit and I drew that picture into my very self. We may never, and probably won’t, have this again. But I don’t mind that because such is more than a stepping stone for me, and maybe for him. As I fight the awful and dreadful lonely moments, the fear of ageing alone, of sickness, debility, all that shit, I will remember that time, every single moment we shared.

The early morning he left, in the dark, I was surprisingly emotional. I haven’t cried one tear since my husband died. I was choked and so was he. He talked to me and I to him. The day he left was not easy but I know that everything passes and so it should. Instead of holding on (so not my thing) I let go and hold to the memory and that memory will feed my soul and calm my gut for a long time to come. When I was unhappy back in time, I brought adventures into my mind and lived there until the pain passed, which it always did. I would laugh again with someone over something, find myself on the Tapselteerie track with a few dogs, more children and a walker I didn’t know but who made us all laugh despite the rain. I flew with the geese, swam with an otter while she showed how she could tackle a whole ocean effortlessly. I will do the same with my brother days. I know he is gone. I know I face alone but I have the gift of his visit, our time together, the laughing, the jokes, the sharing, the family bond. I am rich beyond all worldly wealth. My brother showed me how a man can communicate and that I can feel hope for the women of the world. For me he was the fresh spirit that frees the one bottled too long. (not my words)

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Island Blog – After the Rain, Relation Ships and a Blackbird.

This weekend my daughter came with her girls. I know they all love it here, the freedom, the wild swimming, the spontaneous Let’s Do it thingy. Even I did that. Boots at the ready. My daughter knew little else other than ‘here’, the wild places, the free flow of life, even as she had to go through the awful teenage years, the indecision, the lost and found of herself. But, still, she, like her brothers, think of this place as home. It was a wonderful two days, jam packed with pretty much everything and nothing really planned. We went with our moment, as you have to with all the sudden island rain and the shapeshift of seasons within a single day. If you are busy not paying attention, a whole gamut of weather can swamp you, or, worse, you can miss a sunlift, an elevation, an invitation to connect. Get involved with Spotify or something on TV or your FB page and an opportunity moves on by, missing you as you, with hindsight, will miss it. As a result of this missing thing it is easy to see rain as a continuity. Which, btw, it is not.

The day my girls left, it rained stair rods. I doubt all of you know what the heck stair rods are. They are those rigid steel rods that hold (or held) carpets down on stairs where the horizontal meets the riser. They were ferocious in my rememberings. Meeting one of those in bare feet with the enthusiasm of youth in an exuberant push t’wards elevation and the ensuing pain did stay with that foot for some time to come, gaining no sympathy, despite the bruise. Those were the days when I knew that butting up against a rigid was altogether my fault, as was pretty much everything else involving collisions. Too fast, not thinking, not planning ya-di-ya. But as it still happens to me, although not with stair rods for they no longer exist, I can still bruise and bash myself through sheer exuberance, acting spontaneously and without considered thought. It is either that with me or it’s frozen immobility. I have never managed to be grey.

My daughter is the opposite of me. She always was. She is very obviously a lady. She is calm, quiet, considered, gracious and thoughtful. She would never dive into a swimming pool before first checking it has enough water in its belly. Our differences have been both a perfect match, like yin and yang, or a pulling away. This visit brought a new light to our connection. We are learning to grow an adult friendship. Now it may seem that this beginning has come a little late to those who managed to forge adult relationships with daughters when the daughters first became young women, but in my family it could never be that way because himself required full spotlight, leaving only a little glow for the rest of us to forge anything at all. He was unable to allow us time together without him and so his departure has gifted just that to us. I observe all our relation ships now have new rigging. Slowly, slowly, we are setting sail on a different sea and in a new direction. It is not something I ever expected but I am loving it. How strange life is. How heavy is the influence on children when parents still hold on to their own childhood baggage, that learned behaviour that, on reflection, can be destructive and can keep a unit confined to barracks over many long years. I know I colluded in that confining thingy but, as is obvious, there is nothing I can do to change what was, what I was, who he was and what we did to our children. They are, each one of them, strong, dynamic and good loving people. And, like us, damaged. But I can do something about the Now. I can change, say sorry, listen and learn. I can be humble and encouraging, I can leap into the new with open eyes and an open heart. I can sail alongside each one as we adventure on, working with the wind shifts, the tidal turns, the clouds, the sun and the rain.

‘After the rain’ doesn’t always apply to the outside stair rods making way for the sun. Rain will fall on the inside and the outside of us, and rain is life-giving water. We need it and when it does slow and stop and the world opens up like a smiling face, we can be thankful for both the rain and for the stopping of it. Taking every moment as a gift, not missing a single one, watching, learning, observing and listening, we can change or begin anew at any age. I find saying sorry for being crap at times very freeing. I am learning how to honour whom I was as a mother. Both awful and wonderful, rain and sun. It is the best anyone can be. To have the courage to be vulnerable, especially around children can mean so much to those children. I recommend it. I don’t recall ever hearing my parents say they were sorry for the things they got horribly wrong. Their generation held it all inside, too afraid to be humble for fear of losing control and status. I can see that. But we, my generation, have learned from this and have discovered that, contrary to old beliefs, it is a strong and brave man or woman who steps up, palms open and says I am sorry and who really means it. And, after the rain, the blackbird’s song is pure and bright and completely new.

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Island Blog – Ice, Clarity and Skeletons

An ice-white day, from start to finish. When I awoke at 3.30 a.m. I walked out, barefoot, in search of the Aurora. She wasn’t playing, not yet. But if we are graced with such weather again, maybe next month, she will dance in the skies behind my home and I will watch her as my bare toes meld with the earth. I recall, well, coming outside from a robust and loudly musical ceilidh, to see her dance her lights across the stars, and for quite some time, until my mouth threatened to freeze wide open and my toes grew chilblains I wouldn’t meet till the morning. I will never forget that night. March 3rd 1993. Funny how dates can stick when others flounder grey and insubstantial within the soup of memory, like slime.

I walked the whole round today. I have avoided it for days, maintaining to myself that I am always tired and, thus, justified in my short walk which isn’t a walk at all, not really. Some of my friends, my sisters, my brother, speak most jauntily of a mere 7 miles and twice a day, and, whilst they cover this ground in my mind, I am left slouched and idle in my 20 minute trudge through a ‘not-walk’. So, this day, this ice day, this day of clarity when Ben Mhor, so clear and so near, looks like the whole mountain might suddenly appear in my kitchen, I decide not to agree with my trudge self, but, instead, to walk on. And, I am glad of it. I could feel the eyeball searing cold of the Atlantic hit me as I curved myself around the apex, even though there was not a stitch of wind, nothing even enough to shimmy a leaf. I paused, often, to really look. Striations of ice lay on the stand water, water that will, possibly, give birth to tadpoles in the Spring, whereas now it just reflects the sky in rainbow connections. The trees, skeletal and defying identification for I am great with leaves and considerably less great with bark and shape, lean over me like big sisters, strong and well rooted. The ground is caramel with fallen beech leaves, glowing eerily in the light of the sinking sun, sienna with a touch of ochre. The track is puckered with ridges of frozen mud, elevated by boot trudge, by the hooves of horses, the snatch-track of bikes and I feel a peaceful calm run through me. My pace is timpani inside the silence. A jay screeches, a woodpecker cuts the silence and I watch it lift and flip away. Ravens, their voices so confident, commenting on the day, black and slow in flight, flap lazily through the blue. Lady Larch, the queen of the woods, catches all the orange of the last sun. In a human world, she would be a model. She is certainly tall enough.

A constellation of star moss lines the track on my homeward walk. I stop to marvel at the frost-bright crowns each stem wears upon its head. On the track, the grey stones have grown an old man’s stubble, white with light, but, unlike an old man’s stubble, it melts beneath my fingers rendering the stones an immediate ordinary. I come back through my little wonky chops gate. The latch no longer meets its docking. T’is a winter thing. Come Spring, it will happily click shut again, but, for now, I must needs elevate one side of the gate in order to connect with the other. Inside the fire yet burns and as merrily as it always does, the smile of welcome; welcome home. I make tea and press play on my talking book, resuming my place as observer to another’s taut and well paced story. My story is not well paced. It is only in the re-telling of a story that any well-pacing can be brought to bear, as if distance from the drama matters. And, I concede, it does matter. In the thick of the drama, however undramatic this drama may be, everything is sharp, frozen even, and with no recourse to sensibility. On the other side of any story, the eyes of the observer are essential, even if the observer is she who lived through that story, or he for that matter.

Veg roasted, candles lit, fire encouraged into a new and warmer flame, I am content. I have walked further this day. I have watched ice halo star moss; I have laughed at my ignorance of trees without leaves and stood beneath those massive skeletons in awe. I saw the Atlantic buffet, albeit kindly, the basalt and granite shoreline; I studied the ice diamonds on the track, one I walked today. Walking on diamonds.

Every girls dream.