Change

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Island Blog – I Still Am

Well, who would have thought this? Not me. How can one day feel like a funeral march and the next as a beautiful thing, a day awakening after a long sleep. Nothing has changed, the circumstances are just the same, the day just another dawning. I still face surgery, a lumpectomy, a full mastectomy, I don’t know. And, yet, not the same at all.

I woke once in the night, ignored the dog bounce, chances are, at my peril, and re-awoke at 6.45. A lie in for me. And the day just kept her colour, her bright shining. I just flowed free, happy, light and full of ideas. I will knit. Who said that? Not me. I have wools, I have paints and texture ideas for a canvas. I have wires for stringing beads, I have the wisdom of a textural artist. Well, I did, ten years ago. I looked around me. The birds, the sparrows, flutter like gorgeous all around my feeders. They have learned, even with their fat beaks, to grab nuts from the feeder, and I do help them a bit with seed in a carefully placed place, limiting (no offence) the dives of sparrowhawk and goshawk. I just want to watch them, not offer them as prey. It has taken me years to work out the best location for feeders.

I wander through my day. I found Radio 4 Extra, plays and series. I listen as I knit nothing, just knit. I watch the New Moon finally give way to the Ordinary, that space between Tricksy New and then the even more so Full Moon, when the tides are slow to lift, slow to rise, kind of flat a lot. The big ass full is coming, but we, up here, the fishermen, the island women, and some of the men, enjoy a reprieve in that ‘slow’. I walk my small four legs twice around the short loop. We have ‘The loop’ one most people walk without thought. I used to do that. The weakness from being nearly dead has changed that for me. I know my footing here. I love it, the every step of it. I never thought about my steps before. Now I do, so I walk the short, twice a day. I am not afraid.

When i leave my beloved home, dog, island, on Monday to go to Edinburgh and then to the Western General for my consultation, for the decisions on surgery, on the next bit, I feel some fear, of course I do, but the NHS up here is fantastic and the things they have learned and perfected over just the last ten years is so encouraging. i don’t have the mind that knows everything about everything, nor about anything much, but I know I am supported by those who do, family included.

I remember a day in Barcelona, my tiny granddaughter fearful because her mum left her to go for a pee. She clung to me. She is now ten and quite the thing. But I remember that moment and how valuable I was in the moment.

And still am.

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Island Blog – The Soul of my Foot

Stung, I was. I didn’t feel nor register the sting but awoke the following morning to a sore arch. Still I registered not. I just thought, Sore arch, Get moving, Ignore it, as I do when encountering any sort of bodily pain. It wasn’t real pain, more a question. Will I walk wobbly-like in order to favour this whatever-it-is or will I stand tall, walk proud and straight as I choose to walk inside the days of my life. A no-brainer for me. All the day long I favoured not, paced out, never checked to see what was going on down there. I have no idea why I didn’t, but my deeper belief is that, in the face of serious agony, this was a mild case of absolutely nothing at all. This thinking is my choice. I will not catastrophize unless my intelligence tells me this is one, a catastrophe. Much later in the day, as the slight soreness began a sort of rhythmic throb, I did look and there it was, a definite sting hole in my arch. An arch. A doorway from one place to another, from one state of being to another. In other words, an opportunity for inner change. I love that. And I love doorways because they laugh me. I used to say, and it was the truth, that Himself’s mind was wiped every time he passed through one, the other room holding back the unpleasant interchange and that smile on his face as if what just happened never did.

I studied the sting. Well, study is a bit of an exaggeration as I can’t really see the close up details, but I can feel it with my fingers, the perfect circle of red, the pin prick centre stage. It’s rather beautiful, from back here behind big spectacles and wonky chops visionary skills. I experience a slight botherment when I consider how my eyebrows, my face, my close up details must look to a youngster with 20/20 vision, and bat the botherment away. The arch thinks me. You know that. The sting thinks me too and off I go in backtrack wonderment. I do walk barefoot through my grass which is calf-high now, allowing for three things. One is that I want the wildflowers to welcome the pollinators, the second is that the guy who cuts my grass hasn’t appeared for ages and the third is that I could step on a stinging thing. I look out over a considerable festoon of dandelions, the flowers of growth, hope and healing, the bluebells which have escaped (I suspect, deliberately) the confines of a flower bed, the violets, wood anemones, sorrel and something I love the colour of but cannot name. I must have gone through a doorway. I also have considerable trouble locating the small dog poo of a morning, even with my spectacles on, but smile at the tiny tracks she has carved into what must feel like a jungle to her, a jungle of green, with many a place to hide.

So, swimming down into my soul, I have a sting in the soul of my foot. This is clear and obvious, even without spectacles. It throbs a bit, itches more, and is in my arch, a doorway of change. In any life, the gift of the ordinary, if noticed and considered, can flow and weave into any area of that life. A ‘something’ that happens on the outside of us can proffer a doorway in. How is my life, your life? What slight wounding on the outside can illuminate a deeper wounding within? For me, change is afoot. See what I did there? It is no random happening, not for those of us who recognise an outside event as an inner message. We may not, probably do not, understand what is being sent to us, but if we just acknowledge and wait, the voice of the. higher self will communicate. We all have sudden ‘stops’ in our lives when the love in the sky wants us to take notice. Could be sickness, could be a car bump, could be a sting, could be anything that stops us. We are mistaken if we bat it away as nothing. If I could tell anyone anything profound, I would say, Listen and Wait. Those two angels have served me well over many decades. Our souls are strong critters, way wiser than we are with our skin keeping us in. And my soul appears to be lodged in the arch of my foot, for now.

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Island Blog – Courage and Change

I remember turning 50. It was the first year of my freedom. I had, the previous year, hit a brick wall, in a manner of speaking. The road well travelled, the wife and mother, the business partner, the following, always following, stopped me one sudden day in my tracks. I looked around to see nothing new although the horizon lay wide and open and, in my case, uninvestigated. I turned and saw the mud and trudge marks, my own, winding back, back and into the far distance. How orderly, how obedient, how thoughtless. Thoughts rampaged through my brain as if released from prison, all tumbling and somersaulting with glee at their new found freedom. They chattered about new beginnings, about hope and choice and other constellations beyond the one I had, heretofore, considered the only one out there, the only one a-sparkle in the heavens above me. It scared me to death. It lifted my spirits. I had no idea what to do next.

What do you want to do next? The question came loud through the chattering, tumbling, somersaulting chatter. I caught my breath and looked around for what? An angel? Suddenly I felt the cold and numbing wind that blew across these acres of plough and winter and shivered. I was alone with this, with the stop, the wall, the track and the crazy rebel I had suddenly become. I’m not saying I hadn’t rebelled before, never kicked against the pricks, all of them, but I had done my rebelling cautiously and often in secret. Never had the thought of such a walk away from what was expected of me landed in my head, my heart, with such a determined thump. All the way back to the dismal rented cottage squatting uncomfortably within these acres of plough and winter, I talked myself back to sense and sensibility. Behave. You said you would. You’d be letting him down. People will tut and judge. You will tut and judge. All the rest of that day I was battered by opposing factors, big strong factors, and equally matched in this ring of indecision. And then he came home. I saw his smile, his welcome and felt like a creep, the worst kind of creep. I had, a few days before, contacted a local college about joining an art course full time. I had an interview on Monday next. As I sat him down and told him my plan, he didn’t understand. More creep. I told him of the interview. Next year, he asked, smiling his approval. No, I said. Now. Even more creep.

But he came with me for the interview. You’ll start on Wednesday, said the head of art. The course has already begun. I accepted and he said nothing against my decision. I had no car. Small inconvenience he said. Small? We’ll find one. And, within 24 hours, Miss Daisy came into my life. Although he didn’t like me baling the business, abandoning him just on a ‘whim’, he only showed his disapproval through silence, sighing and a bit of head shaking now and then. The following year is history now, the subsequent sales of hundreds of paintings, the move back to the island, the way freedom spoke to me that day and turned my whole life from tinned peaches to crepe suzette. Had I continued the obligatory trudge, I would never have learned to really live.

Now I. have a son about to turn 50. It hardly seems possible. I hope freedom speaks to him too. Freedom is a decision and it lies in the grey of life. The ‘either’ and ‘or’, the black and the white, are just dilemma horns. In between lies the opportunity for colour, a blank canvas, the chance to create a whole new story, not necessarily requiring an abandonment of commitment. Relationships can survive, even thrive on change, however uncomfortable that change may be for a while. But many, no, hundreds of thousands, stay on track, unhappy, unfulfilled, un pretty much everything. We are not here on this earth, in this life, to be humdrum nor trapped. We are here to create magic. And, it takes courage to turn around, I know, courage we all have.

So……what do you want to do next?

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Island Blog – The Tomorrowlands

This morning begins, for me, at a time that bothers me in its insistence. No! I almost shout but don’t, modifying my shout-ness, even though there is nobody else to hear, this is no longer acceptable, this 05.30 lark when even the larks are slumbering on. And, yet, my body clock ignores my remonstrations with the tenacity of a teenager. I give in and get up. The light is the right light, the morning light, and the day is dawning whether I like it or not. I do like it for I am an inveterate morning person. What does inveterate mean? I forget, but it fits because other people use it around such subjects as chips with vinegar, reading crime novels and gardening, to mention but three inveteration opportunities.

I digress. Risen and with coffee on the brew, I wander into the conservatory which is cold. The nights are cold, star-backed and sometimes frosty, a relief from the heat of the sun. I am not complaining. Sun and heat are rare gifts in this island life and nobody with a modicum of sense moans about the odd times we enjoy both of these together. Oh we know the sun is out there somewhere, behind a depth of cloud cover that could halt an entire Scottish regiment, a feat most opponents have historically failed to achieve, but the ability to get the old boy to push through has confounded us longtime. Wishing doesn’t cut it, nor do prayers. Weddings can, and have, capsized a whole bride. Nonetheless, we island on because the beauty of this lump of rock is second to none.

The day slows down as I feared it might. Some days are tortoises where they used to be hares, way back when a clamjamfrie of children, not all my own, plucked at my skirts for biscuits and pressed for attention, then disappearing alarmingly, returning just in time and in dire straits, when food was required every 30 minutes and when life had her hand in the small of my back. Move on, move quicker, MOVE! Now there are no such demands, no pressure from life, in fact she is now telling me, the skeerie minx, to slow down, to ca’ canny, to rest. But even as I dislike this sudden, for it feels sudden, lowering of my sails, it is here with me now and I must needs welcome it as I welcomed, and thanked, the spirited life in my limbs. I decide to shift the limb spirit into my mind. It seems to work. Instead of bemoaning a loss of spirit and strength, I welcome it into my thinking. It decides my thoughts which decide my feelings which decide my actions. I have learned this from life coaches, a few of whom, or is it which, are in my family, and I have imbibed the truth of it and taken it as ‘read’. Funny that word. Read sounds like ‘reed’ and we know what it means. Read sounds like ‘red’ and now we are much confused. Heaven knows how anyone can ever comprehend, pronounce or employ such tiddleypom when learning English, especially the old English, a language quite beautiful to me but if I were to launch into it in, say, a Glasgow pub, I might not get home at all.

I’m still digressing. What I wanted to communicate was and is that my day was slow. It took me half hour stretches of resistance to restlessness, holding, controlling my desire to lift, walk, move, and it thinked me of the sea, the waves on the beach, fretting at the sand as an old woman plucks at the bobbles on her old cardigan. I read a bit, walked a bit, went to the shore a bit, made a feta and spinach dip, a bit, sewed a bit and la la la. I know it is right and proper for my children to have their own lives. I celebrate that. I know that it is right that my old china is dead. I celebrate that too, because it was always going to happen and could have been so much more upsetting than it was. I know I am perfectly tickety-wotwot alone. And, I also know that there are so very many other people out there who know exactly how it all feels.

Slow days, they come, but the joy of living in this funny, clever, resourceful and dynamic community is something I treasure and will treasure again at 05.30 in the Tomorrowlands.

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Island Blog – Homecoming

Oh I did not want to come home! The heat, the sunshine (dodging it a lot) at upwards of 30 degrees from sun up, the red sand, the bush, the Africa of Africa, the music, rhythm, even the mosquitos, all of it had become my familiar. After two months, that is understandable if you’re loving every minute. Washing dried in minutes, the dog was too hot to walk after 9 am, and my bare feet on the wooden stoep burned like there was a fire beneath them as I oiled, sanded, varnished and painted. I wanted to help. Don’t tell me to sit down. I can do ‘sit down’ for a while, and longer than a while indoors with the aircon blasting, but I will always choose to be involved and that whole involved thingy thinks me. I knew I was coming back to just me.

The life out there, three long long flights away, plus a train and a ferry, is a whole different life. It has its disadvantages, for sure, the usual irritations, the added falafel of dodgy drivers, slow responses, (a lot of shoulder shrugging at any confrontation, plus a wide toothy smile), the heat day after day, the impossibility of finding parts for your car, the lack of Helmans Mayonnaise. I was a visitor. Visitors have no say at all in a place of lives being lived. They, we, I, have no clue as to the reality of the it of it. Just saying. I know, for example, how visitors here on the island for a sunshine week #rare, wax lyrical on the benefits I enjoy living here. I have no right to complain. My eyeballs roll every time. And it thinks me. On the way we perceive what we see, the snapshot of it, the processing, the decision made. Fumph. T’is thus. No. T’isn’t.

Anyroad, I take three flights, the first most pleasant, a slight rise in a half empty plane with comfortable seats, an old girl for sure but sassy and just for an hour. I am still in slight clothing. Then I get lost in Jo’burg airport. Possibly not easy to do but I manage it, finding myself in Baggage Collection when I should be (and soon) in Connections. I right myself, and speed up. It is only a short about turn and march and then another 3 miles to the gate. Which gate? The signs are now and then and mostly then so I, not worried at all, ask someone. He, an official with a badge, is super kind and walks with me to the appropriate corridor. he smiles, all black and wonderful and really cares. My strength of spirit returns. I arrive at Gate 10. I sit. Gradually, a lot more passengers arrive, all muslim robed. Because it is now 5 pm, they lay out their mats and bow to Mecca. I watch them praying, their devotion. It warms me. Not my thing but I still admire anyone with deep faith. More arrive, and more and suddenly I am unsure about my choice of gate. I rise and ask a sharpshooting black woman, official. She tells me, smiling, this is Emirates Gate. Oops.

I set off again. Good heavens this airport is huge, but I am not stupid. These muslims are heading the same way as I am, to London, so I must be in the right zone. I totter, yes, I am weary now, to Gate 14 and I find my people, I can hear the Glasgow accent, the banter, the tired voices, the helping of each other. I sit once more. We are called and because I am seat 20, I am almost first on. But as we queue and queue and queue on the ramp, I realise we are not the first. No, First is first, then Business Class, then us, lower case.

We walk by Business, seeing the beds, knowing they can stretch out for the 11 hours in the air, will have the taster menu, champagne et lala. And we take our seats. I am at the emergency exit. I ask the little lady near the window if she knows how to work it. She says she hasn’t a clue. Nor do I. And then he arrives, built like a cathedral, a professional golfer with tree trunks for legs and muscles that might challenge his flankers. She at the window sleeps the whole night. He, fitfully but so polite with his body. Me, not a minute. However, we didn’t have to employ his strength as we arrived safely in Heathrow. An unsteady walk to the next gate for Glasgow and into oh my goodness, the cold. From over 30 degrees to 6? However, there was a warm daughter to hug me warm again, a hot bath and a warm sleep. Home now on the island and so very thankful for the whole shebang. All of it. I learned so much, and I am thankful and curious and, do you know what, if you do nothing else to shape up a change in your life, just be curious. She, Curiosity, is a wonderful leader.

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Island Blog – A Wasp, a Wander and a Whole new Rhythm

Hot it is and sunny, too hot to sit for more than a few minutes in the full glare of heat and light. I find myself a chair beside the pool shaded by a lovely tree with dangly fruit, the name of which escapes me, if, indeed, I ever knew. The dapples lift and sway in the breeze as if shading me with a pencil as well as with their limbs. I watch the dragonflies rainbow across the surface of the water, no bumping into each other, no animosity. Does animosity only exist among animals, humans too because we are, aren’t we, animals? A queen wasp who looks more like an exotic kite, pushes her way through a tiny hole in the masonry. I must remember to tell my African son about that, because one queen means a gazillion eggs, means a whole lot of aggressive fliers after hatching, and right above the stoep. Swatting is no fun over cocktails, not when the number of swattees far outnumber the hands of the swatters, and besides, these wasps can jig and spin away, return almost silently with a sting in mind on that wide open neckline or that bare arm. I was stung by an ordinary English wasp once on a Norfolk beach. I suspect the sting was a quick reaction to its shooting full speed into my ear, for I had just stood up to fold my towel for the homeward trudge. Get up child, now and fold your towel! I blamed my mother for the ensuing pain and swelling, the sleepless night throughout which I had that wasp pulled apart slowly by wasp haters, to be tossed into the sea, preferably 2 miles out. The African wasps are rather beautiful, lighter in body and spreadier of wings, ones with little peacock eyes at the ends that flutter charmingly. However, I am not fooled by this fluttering beauty. A wasp is a wasp and that’s a fact.

I have read four books since arriving and that happies me as reading is my second favourite pastime, writing being the first. I had wandered through the garden centre under that ferocious sun to find the little second hand bookshop. I chatted with the owner and then browsed a pleasant browse in the cool of fans as the power was off, again. The power cuts, or load sheddings, come 3 or 4 times every 24 hours including during the night when even the deepest slumber is sweated awake for a while of tossing and unsticking. I get used to it and many folk have generators which thinks me of the sound of stopping. The sound of stopping is the sound of a generator, many generators, all humming and chugging, thrumming and backfiring so that the whole town changes its beat. It is also the sound of other stops, other stoppage, other stopping. When I stop, at the kerb, say, I stop the beat of my feet. When I stop the music, there is the sound of silence. When snow falls or the wind drops, or someone runs out of words, there is a new sound as if I enter a new space completely.

As the power is returned to us, the sound is of sighs or relief, of a yay lifting into the air, perhaps startling it into fractal lines, a mosaic only noticed by those who notice. Watch it lift away to allow the new beat, the old beat, the rhythm of electric power. See how the mosaic becomes air once more, the delight in that ‘yay’ breaking up and separating to create space, no bumping, no animosity, whereas most of us down below, grounded, irritated, hot and stressed can only think of internet connection and the frustration at being ‘stopped’, jagged punchlines and a lot of grumbles. I drink coffee at a table beneath a huge jacaranda, its trunk age old and lost beneath the wooden decking, growing and rooting without interference, and offering in return, plenty shade for wanderers like me. I watch others go by on their own business, busy with agenda perhaps, time constraints, a list to complete and in time. I notice the change as the power returns, the dance in passing feet, the smile on faces and I smile to myself. The down here world has a lot of opportunities for bumping, confines, restraints, shouty bosses, deadlines and my favourite not favourite, companies who value profit over the well-being of their employees. Is it all that space in the sky that allows for a gentle symbiosis I wonder or do they, the dragonflies, wasps, bees, and other flying things, also struggle for space to beat their own beat? Are we so far behind in our learning on how to live together that we are in danger of a whole load of bumping or are we really good at living a grounded life? I don’t know the answer to any such questions, but I do know that, by looking up, by noticing and watching, through questioning and wondering, we stop our daily thoughtless trudge. And there’s a whole new rhythm there. Just listen. You’ll hear it. (Not the wasp)

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Island Blog – Go Widdershins

Today I walk widdershins. I decide this last minute at the place where two tracks meet. Normally I veer left but not this day. It thinks me, this differential, this random and spontaneous refusal to stick to the ‘norm’, this comfortable, this mindless unthinking. Since when did I get stuck in the bog of ‘norm’? For a while, obviously because my whole body argues with my decision and my brain is in uproar as if I had turned up to a Monday evening meet of the WRI stark naked, toting a half full bottle of merlot and waving a poster that reads FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION FOR WOMEN! It thinks me, a lot, this differentia thingy. Accordion to mathematics, the word differential ‘relates to the infinitesimal differences or derivatives of functions’. Hmmm. So when I decide to walk widdershins just to experience, at a physical and mental level, the chaos that ensues when I abandon the norm, what I am actually doing is to challenge the derivatives of functions. Well Yip and Pee to that!

I know, I know, all I actually did, despite my rocket scoot into fantasy, was to walk the other way around the Tapselteerie track, but this is not the point. The point is that this day a differentia stopped my unthinking. Something outside of me posed a challenge, threw down the gauntlet of years and sent a dart into my mindlessness. I recall the moment. Go the other way around, Differentia said.

But I normally go this way. (whine).

Eye roll from D.

Ok, I will. (whatever)

Now I am not saying that I met a family of giraffes or anything like that but going widdershins is something I would highly recommend because, and I realise this in my own life, we can get horribly caught up in what we ‘normally’ do, eat, the places we meet, the timing for Sunday dinner, the food we eat at Christmas, the people we have over, the iron fold of pillow cases, the day I phone Mother. A million things we ‘normally’ do.

Quit ‘normally’. I say that with confidence because this adherence to such limited parameters confine us in creeping-up ways that create resistance to change and, as we know, the only thing that never changes is change itself. It is entirely human to fall into the comfortable prisonal run of dull predictability until the day or the moment we realise where we are. A hamster on a wheel. This is also entirely human, we all do it. It isn’t that she or he over there was just born brave. We all are, but life can tamp us down too often and over toolong time that we doubt we have the wherewithal to go widdershins to what is expected of us, our ‘duty’, the glass ceiling and more and we lose confidence in pretty much everything about ourselves. I get that. But the beginning of a lift into a new relationship with self begins with just going widdershins on one singular thing. Could be ‘nothing much’ to anyone else but it may well be a significant stepping stone on the path to finding who you are, really, the core you, the runbone you, the person you fear most because, well, you’ve heard too much criticism over toolong. Step out my friend. You won’t regret it, I promise you.

But, best not go to the Monday meet of the WRI stark naked, toting a half empty bottle of merlot and waving a banner. I doubt it would end well.

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Island Blog – Tatterlife

Yesterday the air was warm and still and the sun shone like a circle of fire in a right blue sky. T’is rare here and so very welcome. We, who live as islanders in the now of Now, know this and our shorts and suncream come out just like that. There is no Winter/Summer collection of clothing. We find the beach, the forest, the shore, just as the birds do. We do not presume another such day. This day the wind rises, not cold but coming from a source that will turn to South Westerly but not yet. This afternoon the wind is slanty-eyed, mean and punching and the poppies will not last the night for the accompanying rain that batters resolute. These are the days of our life up here and I remember it well, travelling back overtime when being ‘out there’ for the animals and the visitors brought a damp into the evening kitchen. Oh dear, tomorrow there will be people at our door, damp guests in need of warming food instead of the fresh salmon salad with minted new potatoes I had planned. Dawn found me making soup, a contradiction of what was yesterday as they chuckled in frocks and sunlight. But I know what you don’t know yet. I didn’t say.

And it thinks me. I wonder how those who expect Summer to be Summer or any season to be as it was, either in childhood, or just before we finally (good lord) got the hang of climate change. Resistance is futile. We know this. And we still resist. I think about that. Out here inside the sharp-toothed mouth of a volatile Atlantic Ocean, we might be wiser than we thought. After all, we have lived with a dynamic not many could ever live with and for years, no, generations. I get that island roots help and they do, a lot. My own understanding of this came once I discovered that my great grandfather was a lighthouse keeper on Skerryvore, one of the wildest and most isolated of lights and I mean so wild, even when the Atlantic was in a good mood. Ferocious waves and zilch accessibility. My great grandmother, on Tiree must have wrung her hands at every storm approaching. Or maybe not. Maybe she just got the hang of this sunshine calm/ ferocious storm dingbat thing like every other day. A boat will bring mail/people/family/food supplies. Or not. And the Not might be months.

I think we island folk, for all the moaning that goes on about ferries and poppy stripping, are pretty well equipped mentally for the way times are a’changing. I think that everyone should experience life in a wild place. Not not and not again as a holiday home but as an experience. The island, all islands are beautiful in the sunshine days. But there are zillions of poppy stripping days, of roofs lifted in sudden changes, of the slam dunk and crash of nature blasting in, of freak storms, of ferocious and terrifying gales with hours of lashing hailstones that can kill a cow, a deer, a sheep.

But I am glad to know this, to be in the mix of this. Not happy about the scary times but somehow in tune with what I have known for decades. However, this time, this climate change time does alert me like a rabbit to danger. And it is ok. If I am resistant to the change that is a glare in my headlights, then I am a fool and I am no fool. The poppies will be stripped in this sudden wind. And then I will walk out in the calm of the next day, thank them, and let them go. This is a Tatterlife. We are all living it no matter where we are, what we earn, whom we know. It isn’t that life is dying, no. Life is finally asking us to live it.

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Island Blog – Intelligent Adaptation

I walk this day around the shore of the sea-loch as the tide ebbs and fast as if there’s a great ocean sucker fish drinking deep. I watch the water startled, yanked backwards by some fierce mother as it is whipped back through the narrows, rock-squashed into a skinny rip tide. It thinks me of my grand girls when Mother decides on plaits and will not allow any escape from said plaiting.

I chat with the trees, the track, the sunlight and even the damn flies having been away for a marvellous four days during which I boarded a ferry, drove over 200 miles and spent 3 nights with my daughter and her family for the first time in too many years; when I left my island home alone, knowing she was empty of life until I returned (first time); when I found my inner brave and launched out into open ocean, as me, as one, as singular, as a widow, as me. Although I knew that it would be more than ok, that I would encounter only k9ndness, the thought of going any further than island rocks scared me. But and but again, no buts, no butts. On the ferry, good lord the slowest and smallest Calmac ferry ever, I sat with poppy dog on my lap and longed to turn back home. Called back to my little Pixty car waiting for me in the bowels of the boat I am safe again. I drive out through the open metal maw and my journey begins. I know it well but haven’t driven it long longtime. My fears? traffic. people. that’s all. (all lower case).

The stay was wonderful. I remembered easily the activity in this home, the go here now, the go there now, thing. We did it all. We checked horses in fields, walked dogs, skirted rivers, watched butterflies, played word games, cooked food, laughed, engaged in private moments, slept and went again. When I left I reflected on it all, the whole colour wheel in captured glances at how it was, that singular catch, the legacy of it. I drove back at my own speed. I am not slow but I’m not fast neither, or is it either? And this this thinks me into intelligent adaptation. Maybe a big jump but stay with me. I have 3 hours for thinks.

In my sudden (for death is always sudden, no matter how expected) widowhood, I find an identity. Initially I was a puddle. For a long time. Now, not. I want to be known as me, unpuddled and rising into a lift of wild water, connectable with the rain that falls from the great Up There. I never knew me. I never was me. I was daughter and then wife. ‘Me’ was for decades irrelevant and unremarkable, as if she didn’t deserve noticing much beyond her physical presence. And, although I have made many adaptations over time I didn’t really know my way through it and, to be honest, I am glad I didn’t. It would have caused fire without available extinguishers. Instead I just kept moving on, learning, adapting and repeat. But now, now that when I go away I come back to just-the-way-I-left-it; when I can go out without saying anything at all; when I can plan new encounters, new commitments, new anything, I feel a quandary of contradictions. I know the old way but that way is dead now whereas I live on inside this loneliness, this freedom, this nothing, this everything, this, this, this.

How to work with the hoo-ha of such contradictions? Intelligent Adaptation. That’s how. Oh, I sound so smart but I am not smart at all, not on this lonely road, not on any road. But I have learned that it is eminently possible to move on from circumstances and situations only if a human wants to. In my journey, particularly through the older years, I find myself the moving on person. It saddens me because I know that there are wonderful people stuck inside the dead past, unable, unwilling to accept the new. Not me. Don’t let it be you. Isn’t this intelligent adaptation? What I went through is peanuts to many. I don’t need to say anything because, and this matters, I found someone professional to talk things out. Private. Secure. My regrets, my pain, my fear, all of it conversationed in the right place; thus I can walk towards the village, watching eagles fly pre buying broccoli et la la, tossing my Hallo into the day, knowing that my very private angst is in safe hands.

I called my bank today. I was welcomed with Hallo Mrs Fairbairns. It jarred me. I am not Mrs anymore and never will be. Many thinks around that one. I think about intelligent adaptation and I know that I can adapt and then rise into the me of me. However, the online thing requires a title. Mrs, Miss, Ms. No. Captain, Brigadier, Princess…… No. Each one of those titles sound like ownership. I was Mrs. I am no longer. Titles bother me, labels confound. It’s probably my issue but I doubt this affects only me. Being boxed, labelled, leaves many of us on lonely streets, wandering, wondering who we are now and where we might choose to belong or to whom. And the wandering is of import because it is not possible to adapt to a whole new life in the wake of the old and familiar one. I might feel lost at times, probably will, over and over, but I am finding my way. My Way. I won’t inwardly growl at being labelled as Mrs because I know the title to be one of respect. I also know that our language is archaic in such an area as this. I want my first name and then my second. But, wait. My second name is now my married name, which is not my name but a gift from the rule book of Traditional Marriagitis. So I continue wandering, the conundrums flitting about me like swallows. Whether or not a definite answer comes, it doesn’t really matter because I am building the new me from the inside out, using intelligent adaptation as my thought and reasoning process.

If all this sounds confusing, it is. Even to me.

by

Island Blog – On Golden

This day it is warmer, even warm. I awaken into the morning, light already, the wind light and the sky bright. No flat grey this morning and no cold wind and I am thankful. It has felt for a while now that this island stuck out into the great Atlantic has been the fulcrum for conflict, as if Summer and what we expect clashes with Autumn and what we don’t expect, and in June. Even the sea is a restless woman, plucking at her coverlets when opposing currents and wind patterns argue loudly with the tide cycles. Tide over wind, wind over tide, it’s exhausting and I am mighty glad not to be out there on a boat.

Today would have been our 50th wedding anniversary. I am not at all sentimental but I cannot say I haven’t given it a thought. Quite the opposite. In fact, I choose to think and a lot as I look back down the years of anniversaries and of 365 days in between each of them. So many and over such a long time, a time of growing children, of laughing and crying, of loving and hating, of warm easy peace and big storms, of wind over tide and tide over wind and repeat. Not many marriages make such an arrival into the harbour but we would have done, had he lived. In a traditional type marriage there is, or was, a lot of old fashioned claptrap, a lot of He is the Man of the House and She is the Little Woman who cooks and cleans and I can tell you I yelled and rebelled a great deal, but somehow we stayed where we were and where we were was together. This sunshine day I remember him as he was way back when romance was still alive and the pressures of adjusting to change flicked the feet out from under us. I sometimes wonder, now that I have time to engage with the wondering thingy, why it was so hard for him as an older man to accept change between us. I remember him questioning once, Why on earth would I want to do that? when I suggested that we both might consider this change. After all, wasn’t I fleet of foot and fancy free until my first son was born? I knew I had changed, of course I had. However this man who could accept all the vagaries of a capricious ocean found it very hard to accept any such in me, even as I knew I was 90% ocean.

But here I am alone now and remembering. I remember the times he surprised me with dinner plans, with roses and thoughtfulness. Romance was never dead in him. He just found me impossible and I know I was. The last anniversary card he gave me on this day in 2020, the year he died, he wrote in a very wobbly scribble ‘You know I have always loved you.’ I recall a mental snort, one I am not proud of, one I didn’t show. Instead I bent to kiss him on his withered cheek and smiled. We did ok, I said.

Happy Golden my husband.