candle

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Island Blog – I’m In Charge

I light myself a candle. Today was a waiting day, one that wakes me with an inner fog. Thoughts rise but fall again before I can set them in order, unlike other days when I am the one in charge. Even in a voluminous nightie, I am in charge. Even before my teeth are brushed and my dragon breath is extinguished, I am in charge. You stand here. I’ll need to think more on you. As for you, thanks but no thanks, not today. And you…..well I have no idea where you came from, perhaps a deep bog, a sinking, stinking one. Begone! However, this morning’s thoughts just swirled like whispers around me, uncatchable, turning to air whenever I reached out for a grab. The ones I haven’t mentioned? Throttled at source. I could tell, just by their colour and smell that they would serve me no purpose.

Waiting is tough. Waiting for a bus in the rain is tough. Waiting for a baby to emerge through the intense agony is tough. But this waiting, this cancer waiting, is definitely up there with the best/worst waiting thingies. I’m not surprised my thoughts have trouble thinking me straight. I am all wonky lines and inner wobbles. Even my walk down the stairs is old-lady cautious, as if my feet might miss a step regardless of all this foot attention I’m giving them. I even count the steps for goodness sake, as if, in forgetting one, I might not arrive in the same house I left on the landing. I’m not hungry, not anything much, until, that is, I hear the chatter of little girls. It is then that I recall myself, remember who I am. I may be waiting but I can do something with it, fill it, distract myself from it, begin to see through the fog of it.

I check my phone every 30 minutes. 15, actually. Just in case the consultant or nurse has called with an Oops we made a mistake you don’t have cancer after all. I read until my eyeballs threaten to abandon ship and my head can no longer sort out the protagonists of any one of the stories, merging them together until the mesolithic Scots tumble with the Harare prisoners on death row. Not a movie I’d recommend. But that doesn’t matter, the tumble of characters, because to read is to escape and I can think of less healthy ways to do that.

We, those of us not attending our first day back at school in smart green sweatshirts and black breeks, go out to visit a farm shop a short distance away. There’s a wonderful cheese counter and we ogle the selection from Stinky Blue to Not Stinky Goat and everything in between. We sit for a panini lunch whilst Little Boots, the smallest girl not yet at school, enjoys a multi-coloured lolly, on my knee, plus multicoloured drips and multicoloured chatter. I laugh. I now look like an abstract painting. This and other little distractions distract so cleverly. It thinks me, now that my head is fog-less.

I light myself, that’s what I do, that’s what I can do, all I can do whilst I am waiting. It’s me taking charge even though I am not in charge of anything outside of me. But I am in charge of that bit, and that ‘bit’ is me, the Bit Part in a huge production called Breast Cancer. I read that actors in such huge productions spend most of their time inside a trailer, waiting to be called. Waiting and waiting and who would know it once the finished film is on screen for our pleasure? It looks complete, everyone busy all the time, as if that is how it was put together. But it wasn’t like that at all. Nor is this. I will, I know, look back one day and forget the pain of waiting, the length, breadth and depth of it. It will just be mentioned in a sentence. I had to wait. That’s all. But now look at me, all bright and cancer free and filled with my usual overload of beans! And not waiting any more, not for nobody nor nothing.

I watch the candle flicker, the flame waver and wend in the airflow I create just tapping out words. I see the glow of it inside the glass jar, the shine of the melted wax, and it smiles me. This candle may snuff out, but so will the waiting, and the treatment and the anxiety and the fear and the pain. I may be a bit wonky chops when all is said and done, but I will still be in charge, of myself anyway, and that task is not for the faint-hearted, I can tell you.

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Island Blog – Memory Thinks and Flying Colours

As I light the candles in my lovely sitting room, I remember how oft I have done this over the years, and not just here but everywhere I have settled. My home is a sharing place. I remember the faces of all the young people who have barrelled in after a pub visit or for a party here and there was always a party here. We were known for it. Always a welcome. A candle or 20 at the window beckoning. Come in, come in and rest by the fire; eat, share, drink, laugh, settle that tired body right here. Music played then and music still does.

However there is no sharing now, no candlelit welcome, no visits at all. How extremely bizarre is this time in our life. I sit alone beside the merry woodburner and I reflect. I remember. I can hear the music and the voices, the laughter and the fun and, more important of all, I can say thank you that I have known these times; times when I could hardly cross the floor without tripping over somebody; times when young people chose this home to visit, knowing, as they always did, that there would be a warm welcome, refreshment, friendship and the chance to dry off. I know that everyone left feeling better. I know that we gave that, me and Himself and I feel a rush of happiness flooding through me. We didn’t live with a stricture, nor a fixed structure; rules were rules of course and there certainly were times when I waved my stick at bad language, or poor behaviour, but apart from that, freedom reigned within these walls and the ones before and the ones before that. I like that. It is not how I lived as a child. There were so many rules it was hard to move at all. A bit like those laser security beams, criss-crossing every room. Only a spider would get from one wall to the other in safety. Perhaps that is why we did it differently.

Now all these young people, the marine biologists, the geologists, the cetacean experts, the ecologists and many other ‘ists’ have grown into their own worlds, have their own families, their own four walls. They will not come again. But they did once and I am glad of it for I have an ocean of memories to warm my cockles. I can hear their voices, see their faces wreathed in smiles. I remember feeding the five thousand on huge pots of refried beans or bolognaise or chilli con carne (chilli sans carne for the vegetarians) and just loving each shared meal. I see steaming bowls in cupped hands and bodies on every available horizontal surface. Even now, after so many years, I still cook too much and my first thought when someone visits is of what I can give them to eat. So strange to know for certain that there is no chance of anyone visiting anyone and for some time to come, and when that time does return to us, will we really connect with the gift of that freedom or will we just take it for granted as we did back in the normal times? I did, take it for granted, I mean. It is natural to do so, until that ‘natural’ is removed, forbidden, wiped out. Only then do we consciously think.

I have enough roasted vegetables and pasta for at least 4 days. As I sit alone by the merry woodburner watching the candles flicker and dance, I let the memories float through my mind and I say a thank you; thank you that I can remember; thank you that I experienced all that youth and colour and fun; thank you that I am still alive, can still use my brain, am well, happy and absolutely certain that we will all get through this time of strange estrangement with flying colours.

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Island Blog – Lock Down Light

Well you can’t do that. Lock down light. Light will seep under a doorway as you sit in the dark, catch you in a flash of lightning, astonish you as you meet it in someone’s eyes. Light will out. And we love it. The thrill of light can turn a dark moment/person/situation/problem into a new possibility and, even if we can’t explain ourselves at that time, or after that encounter, our sub conscious minds will surely find a way. The only way to lock down light is by putting it into a dark and sealed box. Then it is no longer light, but darkness, and so it seems to me that we are the ones who decide on the existence of light.

We use the word ‘light’ in so many ways. Things are illuminated by something, or someone, else. We throw light on something…..in the light of this new understanding, this reflection, this memory…. We choose to stand in the light; we find light in a dark time; we share our light with another who keeps crashing into things; we accept light as a gift when we ourselves are fumbling about looking for a metaphorical candle. Light is us and we are light.

In this lockdown time, light is being shone on all aspects of our individual lives, those of others, and on the whole world. Although the problems #the dark of our lives were always there, we could ignore them, to a degree. We could move over them, overcome ourselves as we acknowledged they were here to stay. In short, we fabric-ed them into our normality, accepting them with varying levels of grace and grit. But not now. Now, it’s if someone with a Big Pen is highlighting those things and we are being forced to look at them, all yellow and luminous in a sea of black text.

This is a good thing. This chance to change is on offer, free of charge. Only in a crisis do we humans stop to pay attention. All those years of accepting this, or doing that the way I did is up for questioning, and we cannot avoid it. Nor must we. There are small businesses going down, people losing homes, work, lives, family. This is a light throw on our whole existence and however uncomfortable it is, however painful, it will show us a new way and will keep us safe in the end. Those who, right now, think the world is ending will discover it has no intention of abdicating the throne. New opportunities will arise for all those goodly folk who feel they are permanently broken. As long as they remember the light, and, when they forget, someone will bring it to them.

I am not one of those unfortunate people and my heart aches for them all. It must be terrifying. But, having lived as long as I have, I know the feeling well and it passes. It passes because we humans are strong, resilient, resourceful creatures with marvellous brains. We are Light. We can think. We can reason. We can flip our whole life if we decide to. Many have. Many have changed everything and, in doing so, become light for the rest of us.

The light of the lockdown will not be contained inside a box and turned into darkness. It is showing, instead, how much we want to give, how enterprising we are, how strongly linked we are to the muscle of survival, and not just with plans to survive, but to thrive once more, shining out new light into a new order.