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Island Blog – Thanks to a Horsefly

I’m here, back home and in the wealth of warmth. Well, warm, eventually, as the mornings can be sharp and bitey, requiring jumpers and leg coverings and a very good attitude to the shivers that challenge a mug of hot coffee. The afternoons sprawl wealthy on the bed of confidence, no leg coverings required, in fact, bring on the fans please. T’is weird and the way it is. By noon, I am overly clad and fighting my morning garb for the sudden, and somewhat desperate freedom from all that morning hoo-ha, which I abandon on the stairs. Jumper, leg cladding, even wrist warmers for the day is in pieces up here. Where once, we knew how the day would be, might be, the wise cautionaries telling us to keep our semets (vests with buttons and much restriction) on for months to come, now there is disarray and not only in the vest, leg cladding, jumper department. Weather steers moods. Cold rain, warm rain, just rain. Promise of sun, hope of sun, arrival of sun. It all guides us from pissed off to delighted, from a confirmed ‘there’s no hope’ to the one who is alert and watching the cloud shift, is accepting climate change, is actually the one in the game. And the game is more than weather. The game is one we play together and alone. Many of us have been assaulted by massive loss, like a sudden death. I almost cannot follow that sentence. It is too catastrophic. Too alone.

I find this next bit quite hard to say, as if I feel that what is going on with me palls by comparison to the catastrophic and sudden loss, one I have been close to this last week, and a timeline I can never be a part of, beyond the paltry can give.

But I am saying it. My time in hospital, whilst I fought to be not dead, has thrown up something important. With Cellulitis, there is a lot of swelling and one lymph gland remaind high despite the massive doses of antibiotics that saved my life, and after which, my consultant, Isobel, God bless her, sent me for a mammogram and biopsy and ultra sound. She was right. I have breast cancer, an unusual one, called Invasive Lobular Cancer. She, the cancer, is quiet, not necessarily presenting in lumps, although they did, eventually find one, the half size of a frozen pea. She appears in the right breast for the first time, as I have had at least five no problem lumps in the left.

What I feel is scared, unsure, and thankful for a horsefly bite. Beyond all those intitial feelings I am unsure about being in the garden. Thankyou friend Winnie for guiding me to big ass protection. Thank you to my ex breast cancer sisters who guide me to probiotics and dark green veg. I will leave island in a week for consultation and biopsy and mammogram and MRI and a whole load of questions and decisions. I don’t know whether it will be a lumpectomy or a complete wheech off of breasts. But what I do know is the strength of my family, my siblings.

I am suddenly cautious coming downstairs, cautious about walking out without a kick ass protection slathered over me. I am aware of my age, and that seemed to come overnight. Slower to move, all of that shit. But, for now I am watching eider duck on the sealoch, divers, geese, and the sun is creating diamonds on the salty surface.

And I am eternally grateful to a horsefly.

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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 – Keeping Time with Time

I wake early and with the sunrise. Out here, in Africa, we are two hours ahead of the UK for a while yet, until the clocks go forward this month. Africa doesn’t bother about clock changing and it wonders me why anyone does. There must be a point to it. Perhaps there is only a limited amount of time in the world and it needs sharing. We lose an hour and another continent thousands of miles across the world finds it has gained one, over us, that is. What is achieved in that gained hour I wonder? Does somebody somewhere get a job done more thoroughly or is that hour just 60 minutes of boredom, time wasted, time not needed, time spent in waiting for something, anything to happen? And when we claim back that hour, around now, with Spring in our step, do we notice the gain of it, treasure it, make it really count, or is it just lost in sleep, a sleep cut short? This musing thinks me. I don’t need to know the facts around time gained, time lost, because this is not the way my mind works. I am more interested in the concept of time and what it means at the core of itself. Time gained? Who gains? Time lost? Who loses? All answers float in the stratosphere, high above factual explanations, beyond the reach of science or physics, free-flowing through the vast and unlimited space of an imagination. There is no such thing as time. Time is an illusion. We all have the same number of hours in a day. But what do we do with our no-such-thing, illusory and equally gifted gift of Time? Now that’s a question.

When I was mostly tapselteerie, way back when children were children, when I was taller than any of them and when, if I said NO, then NO it was, I never thought much about time as a concept. It was something the clock told me, tick, tock, tick, a hand at my back, a hurry up, a panic, a flurry of hours that allowed for no sit-downs, merciless in the tick and the tock of itself, selfish. Selfish time, stop a little, slow a bit, let me catch up? No chance of that my dear, you just need to shape up and move faster. It is like this for all in the muddle-frenzy of young life, building children, building a business, clambering up corporate ladders, learning new ways to fit in, diluting self for the benefit of the team and so on. From where I sit now, watching all this flurrying about me, I am glad it is done for me, no longer diluting self, no longer at the mercy of time, of business, softer round the edges, watching, smiling, calm. I was never calm in the olden days, although I did know people who managed the calm thing and it really irritated me that I couldn’t, me constantly on the boil, my guts in a right fankle, my legs never still. These people seemed in control of their time, allowing it to pass them by, yet still able to fire on all systems when required. Something to do with my faulty wiring, I told myself, and there was a damnit in that thought. However, looking back now through the rosy lens of hindsight, I smile as I recall the fankle, the self-flagellation, the waste of those minutes, those hours spent wishing I could be who I was not. Time wasted, or was it?

Self-reflection is no bad thing, as long as it is not indulged in and developed into a standstill. In my long journey through wasteland and over capricious and sometimes spiteful expanses of ocean, I did, and still do, need to trim my sails, to learn from life herself, to change this or that, to find a new way to look at an old thing. Learning is a lifetime’s work and I am still learning, still a student, an understanding that can really up my fed at times, and delight me at others. I still have my mind, my health, my precious life, time. None of us know how much of that we have, myself included, and it seems to me that this doesn’t really matter much. It’s who we are in the time we do have that remembers people, makes a dent in others lives. Did I waste time in my life? I did. Was I completely marvellous at filling my time to capacity and at all times? I was not. Did I share my time, gift my time every time it was needed? I did not. Am I deeply thankful for all the time spent, shared, gifted, wasted? Those hours of shared chatter, laughter, tears and silent companionship, those highs and lows, those moments spent staring through windows and wishing life was different, that something would happen to change everything……….am I thankful for all of that time? I am.

And now, for however much time is left, no matter the loss and gain of hours, I will keep time with Time. I will sleep some away, waste some, share some, sit alone and gaze through windows but this time without wishing for transformation, without regrets, analysis, criticism of self, all of that time wasting nonsense. Even through the rumpelstiltskin hours of a tossing night, even when I wish she would hurry up, slow down, stop completely for a while, even then, for Time is my friend and she is gift. So many have no time left at all.

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Island Blog – Add New

That’s what it says when I click on ‘Posts’ on this blog. It thinks me in many ways. As I shower and dress up to join young friends for dinner inside the wildlife estate, I notice things, such as this:- One eyebrow has disappeared completely. Momentarily, I am somewhat scunnered, even as I know it is probably still there somewhere, well, not somewhere, but in the place it has always inhabited for many decades. I tip my mirror to MAGNIFIED and search again. There is the jist of it but now the other one, looking strong-ish and ‘there’, tipples my face lopsided. I attempt to colour it in, guessing the arch of it and check again. Now I look like an old woman without a map. I scrub off the colour, shrug my shoulders, and say What the Heck, or words to that effect. As I shrug my shoulders, the dewlaps beneath my arms activate. If I hold my arms almost above my head, they disappear, the dewlaps that is, but I cannot possibly sustain an entire evening thus. The young will think me bonkers and I won’t be able to eat a thing without taking the eyes out of my neighbour with a fork. I consider the dewlaps. If I was rounder, they wouldn’t be dewlapping at all, but I am not rounder and here goes another What the Heck. The rest of my make up routine is a right palaver, all guesswork and don’t look too closely as I apply eyeliner, mostly in the right place and mascara to patchy eyelashes. Spiders, I think, and chuckle. What, I wonder, do the young see with their 20/20 vision? Too bloody much is the answer, but wait. If I go wherever I go with enough twinkle winkle in my eyes, dewlaps, one eyebrow and all the rest, will it matter in the long run, the run of an evening, a load of 40 years olds with Granny? Probably not. So, methinks, tap chin, this is pretty much down to me and my attitude about me. As I move through the dewlap, one eyebrow and spiders sticking out of my eyeballs thing with the confidence of age, the history of losing things like body parts whilst acquiring others, am I not, all by myself, reversing their thoughts on ‘growing old’? How many young people, me included when I was actually young, have said they never want to grow old because look what happened to Granny or Uncle Mike or Aunty Bea? Well, maybe it wasn’t all sunshine for them and, for that, I am sorry. But if I can be just one old gal who just gets on with the process, then it’s worth stepping out there.

Today I received, as I often do, pictures of my 12 grandchildren doing things effortlessly, such as bending in half mid-air, or winning at hockey or cantering along a beach, no hands, or dressed in lycra with not a dewlap in sight. I see my own children strong, fit, altogether and jumping fences, leaping off boats, making big decisions that require effort and strength, determination and a clear mind. I had all of those, once, and that is something to celebrate. I had all of those, once. Now I don’t, not as I did. Now I falter at times, lose things like eyebrows and the next sentence, might find it harder to construct a shape to the next day. I forget a story I’m reading and have to retrace my steps. I see a crowd of people and feel lost. I struggle to chop wood. All perfectly ok if that is how I see it, because, because, I have done all of these things, with strength and confidence, no problem unsolvable, not when I was in the lead. And the dewlaps, scars, slight weakness of limbs, of mind, all are just as they should be. Will I whinge and whine about losing stuff? No, I will not. In the quiet of my mind, I will know what I know. I have seen what I have seen, lived to the absolute full and for a whole lifetime. A slowness and a thoughtfulness replaces the buzz to move move move, and that peaceables me.

So off I go into an African night, missing an eyebrow, yes, but not much else. If I Add New to my thinking, I am always beginning again, in whatever state. Now, where was I…..?

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Island Blog – All Queens

Facial needling. Heard of it? I certainly had not and required the process to be thoroughly explained before I ventured near. The clinic welcomes me with lovely and uplifting messages, discreetly placed, phrases that tell every woman she is beautiful, with which I whole-heartedly agree. Beyond the weatherings of skin and body, lies a woman with goodness and love in her heart. Just look into her eyes and you will find her no matter the harshness she has survived, no matter how strong her armour and her need to hide within it. Not one of us finds life perfect all of the time. Not one.

I digress. Soft pastels cover the walls and the welcome is warm and genuine. I am guided to a flat bed and asked to remove jewellery and upper clothing and to lie down beneath the coverlet. My clinician is young and, yes, beautiful, and she explains the process. I am no fearty around needles, not me with all my tattoos, my five babies wombed and delivered au naturelle, various minor ops and various minor accidents. Needle away, I say and she begins, having first cleansed my face and neck with her gentle fingers. It feels like a sharpish massage and I wince, once, only once, settling quickly into acceptance. I relax and close my eyes listening to the buzz of the instrument and mentally following it over my face, marking out the rise of nose and dip of chin, the soft plump of cheeks, the wood of my forehead. I feel the bones beneath, the way they are perfectly fashioned to fit my skin, the precious brain they protect and have protected for 70 years, or nearly. No sell-by date for bone structure, not if you’re blessed with a good dose of bloody-mindedness and a further dose of luck. She works on my worry line, that damn thing between my startlingly dyed eyebrows which appeared when I was about fifteen and is now like a dried up river bed, deep and permanent. Or so I thought. This will tighten up all the lines and wrinkles, she tells me with a smile which I can hear, but not see. Yeah, yeah, I think. I’ve read such drivel on the backs of endless potion bottles promising youth after a few applications, and bought not one.

Process completed, advice on not using abrasive face washes etc gifted, I return home feeling as though a million prickly things are trying to get out of my face. Not unpleasant, more tingly and exciting. I have no worry line now, although I do realise this is not a long term magical fix and that I, from this day forth, fifth and. sixth will need to not worry, not invite the return of dried up river bed. I must keep my eyes wide, remain curious, laugh a lot, particularly at my worries and remind myself that I am beautiful, I am a queen. It thinks me about playing cards. What does each queen represent? I google and find that, although each one holds specific values, all four are really one queen. The queen of hearts brings love, fertility and creativity. She also tells of upheaval and change, understandably because love is heart-breaking at times, fertility never a given and creativity can be stifled by herself, by others, by the demands laid upon her. The queen of clubs gifts new beginnings, transition and opportunities. We all know all about those, even if the last has felt as far away as Pluto. Diamonds, well, she’s sharp that one. The queen of swords, intellectual, quick-witted, able to think on her feet, change, evolution. The Joan d’Arc within each one of us. HRH spades brings female intelligence, judgement that is practical, logical and intuitive.

So my thinking is that we all host all four queens, finding at the right time, whatever skills we need to make our lives the best they can be in any set of circumstances. Easily said. There’s no mention of all that sobbing in the dark, the longings for escape whilst trapped, nor the sacrifice of our dreams in order to play a bit part in someone else’s life. We all know those times. However if we can hold on, albeit with exhausted fingers, to the knowledge that we are all queens minus thrones, that tiny flicker of flame kept alive can take us through things we never asked for but which came our way regardless. What did we. expect, after all? A happy ever after, a magical and perfect life? There is no such thing and that is the harshest of truths to accept. But if we can accept it, without rancour or bitterness, we become the queens simply because we, in the silence of our hearts, beneath the armour, inside that beloved brain, believe it, even if it is never acknowledged.

At fifteen, when the worry line began to make itself known, I wrote down my dream. I want to marry a man of adventure, have lots of children and to live in a wild place. And that is exactly what came about. The queen bit had to come from within, yes, there was no encouragement on that score, but it didn’t stop me. I have no throne, no wish to queen myself over others, no interest in that. All I will ever do is encourage other women to find their own majesty and to clothe her in dignity and grace, to learn all queenly skills and to never let the world or anyone in it bring her down.

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Island Blog – RIP Old Friend

I knew it was coming but not when. Meantime, not knowing the ‘when’ part, my days continued ordinary and soft, although the sadness lifted my ruffles from time to time making me shiver. Those around his bed would know more, I knew that, just as we had known as we watched our own ‘him’ move invisibly towards that other place whence no-one ever returns. He was ill, he was dying and yet the hold on life seems to me to defy even intense pain and the desire for it all to end, for a life to end. Life is a strong force indeed, no matter how careless we may be around the years we live it. We hold on and hold on and why, when it is clear to everyone, to ourselves, that death is in the room patiently waiting for our fingers to let go.

I picture an image of those children, now with children of their own, of my friend, his wife, around his last bed. I know the taste of exhaustion, the longing for it to be over, the fear of just that. I know the smell of dying, the sound of it in raspy and hesitant breaths, the lift of gallows humour among the watchers, laughter flying around the room, small fry defence against the enormity of what lies before them all. A whole long life almost gone but not quite, no, another breath, the rise of it a sinking inside the room. Let him go. Let. Him. Go. But he defies the wish and breathes on and on and on and the night watchers watch and there is tea and coffee for staying awake and stories to fill the room. Remember This? Remember when he, when we, that time on the beach, on the farm, during the thunder storm, when the dog died, that party, my wedding, my wedding, my wedding?

And his wife of over 50 years will be numb. What do you do after over 50 years as a man’s wife, as mother to his children? Does anybody know the answer to that? You were a young beauty back then, full of hope and sparkles and dreams, a real catch, they said, lucky him, they said, and he was. To be a farmer’s wife is no easy task. Nobody takes shifts, you just both shift and often at the drop of a hat, or a piglet or a calf. You rise from slumber because you have to. There is nobody else will take this job, not at this hour when night is still heavy black and dawn is miles away enjoying herself. You take it all on. So what happens to your dreams and hopes and sparkles? Ah…….good question, and here comes strength and spirit and the life force within and she has plenty of that, this new widow, my old friend.

I know what it is like to be a widow and I also know it has taken me over two years to even like myself in my solo role, one I yearned for so many times but had no clue about until he breathed his last. It was a relief, at first. Nobody wants to watch suffering after all, but that doesn’t last. I know that she will be busy and organised at first, dealing with admin and people and responding to sympathy cards et lala , but about two months in, it hits like a demolition ball, wheeching the feet out from under and with just cold ground on which to land. I wish I could wish this away for her but I cannot. I know the impact of this explosion will be huge for his children but not in the same way. She is now alone in her lovely cottage and no amount of warmth from the range and the fires will un-chill her, because, and I am only observing here, her marriage, like my own, was a traditional one (although she is a lot feistier that I) and he will have taken care of things she never had to learn.

And so, it is. It makes no difference at all that he was of a ‘good age’ as if that makes it acceptable. The death of a life is never that. A whole person is gone, all of the irritations, all of the expectations, frustrations, criticisms, encouragements, smiles, rejections, affection and direction has hit the final buffers. We are now arriving at Death Station where this train will terminate. Just like that. Just today. He is gone. RIP old friend.

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Island Blog – The Dance Ahead.

That’s the Lonely banished. It took a while. I had to wrestle this demon to the ground and, although my spirit is willing, my teeth and claws still in situ, my body is a bit wonky-chops at times. I managed it, nonetheless, holding down the limbs of it, all flailing whack and kick, its big mouth wide open and full of unhelpful words such as Fail, Stuck, The End, Best You Can Hope For, etcetera. Phooey, said I, blasting breath into its face, because I plan to have fun from now on, no matter my age or situation, circumstances be damned! The Lonely finally gave in, I felt it soften in defeat, lifting myself off its grabby little body to watch it slink, yes slink, out of the door, last seen heading towards the village. I did give it the bus fare to Faraway, however. I’m not a mean woman, after all.

Since its departure I have dived into a whole lot of exciting things, such as hoovering my floors in a dance of feet and nozzle, made hummus, walked miles and sat myself sitting on a stone bridge that affords me sight of the old days. This inlet of water led out to years of exciting sea-ventures in search of whales, puffins, shags, guillemots, kittiwakes, porpoise, dolphin and gannets, to name but a few. This inlet kept our boats safe from the mighty, and bullying, blast of Atlantic fury. I remember the boats bucking like broncos on their tethering, my hair, when I had any, flying in the wind, my ears ringing from the cold. I remember the trees bending in obrigation, root strong, the hazels as bow-backed old women, saving everything that grew inside their motherly protection from a spectacular crash-bang. No greater love……….

As I walk with my memories, the good ones finally rise to the surface, delighting me. I had forgot them, I confess, but I so wished for them to return. All I could see were the dementia years and the decline before that, for I know it is true that what began as wild love and unstoppable hope morphed from exciting plans such as ‘where shall we eat tonight?’ to ‘Did you put the bins out and if not WHY NOT?’ Or, ‘It’s YOUR turn to collect the kids, bath them, read the story, wash up, cook (arf), walk the dog, do the weekly shop.’ It comes to us all. Surviving such a disappointing change and remaining together is a sign of strength; learning how to dance it in a different way, to make it fun, to laugh together about the whole daft parabola of a shared life is genius. I like that word most of all when it applies to a shared and connected forward motion. It is a life changer for everyone involved, kids, outer-space family members, each other. Did we manage that, I wonder, just as a lone stag bursts from the trees. I was so caught up in my parabola/genius thingy that I gasped and stopped dead. We eyed each other, this young 6-pointer and I with no points at all. Those brown velvet eyes, the stand of its powerful fleet legs, the proud of its neck. It was only moments, but we shared those moments. Then it was gone, like the wind, becoming the wind.

Back home to hoovered and well-danced floors, I checked in all the rooms for the Lonely. No sign but a thought flitted about me like a butterfly, beautiful and fleeting. T’is this. What brings in the Lonely? It isn’t that I hate living alone, my life full of choices sans explanation, justification, apologies. I am loving all of that. And then it came to me, the answer. I am addicted to love and not in absentia, but in persona. In order for me to thrive and love life I need to love. Then a second thought breezed in. If there isn’t a person right beside me, that doesn’t mean I am deprived of the opportunity to find and to feel love. I just have to learn a new way to feel love. I can love the moments, noticing everything around me. I can love my children and their children actively through texts and calls. I can love a morning, a slow afternoon, the catch of light and the soft fall of the dark. I can love myself and that’s always the hardest thing. I can love the chance that I will encounter something wonderful just by believing that it is out there somewhere so that all I need to do is to build on that belief whilst keeping myself in trim for the dance ahead. And when the Lonely comes back, I will be ready.

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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.

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Island Blog – Nowhere to go but Here

I am gradually learning the art of engaging fully with the day. Yesterday is gone and we all know tomorrow never comes no matter how fast we run. I suspect this engaging thingy may be age-related. It is also a time in my bonkers life when there are few demands on either my time or my superwoman skills, although a dash of those colours is always welcome and I am the first to leap on my motorbike in order to save someone’s day. But living fully inside the warm arms of this day is key to peace of mind, a softly pumping heart and no need for the Rennie packet. And the arms are warm. The weather is just weather. The hours are the same length they always have been and always will be, the ordinary daily tasks much the same even if I sometimes hoover/wash up/ repot geraniums or make soup in my neon tutu and top hat, at others in my dressing gown. I am a thankful woman. I have learned how to be that woman and she, me, is so very full of gratitude for all that comes my way, be it the excellently wonderful or the totally shit. All of it. And why is this? Because I have woken up once again, can spring, more or less, out of bed, choose my breakfast, watch the birds and the garden, the sea-loch and the sky taking not one look for granted. There are millions of ghosts who would give everything for just one more day in this beautiful world.

Worrying was what I did when my kids were, first, around my feet and peering up my nose or skirt, then later as towering sort-of-adults, able to wheech me over their shoulders. I worried, oh I worried. They are imaginative, enterprising and full of mischief, just as we taught them to be, but we were sensible and they absolutely weren’t. However this worrying was never a good thing, mainly because every disaster I imagined never happened at all. Also the art of worrying is not a pretty picture for the one being worried about. It indicates to them, quite clearly, that they are not to be trusted, that they don’t really know what is best for them. It turns their straight line into a curve at first, rounding into a circle of control in the end. Not healthy at all. And, for me, it unfocused my mind, addled my brain, upset my kidneys and unsleeped my nights. In short, worrying is always a pointless exercise, no exceptions. Oh I get the feelings of fear, anxiety and sometimes sheer terror, of course I do, but worrying is a choice and above all a method of control, even though most of my worries back in the day were more than justifiable. Just putting them on the school bus did not necessarily guarantee they arrived and and the simple act of coming home from the village was not without hazard. They lay in wait for each other with weapons of mass destruction and many a bruise or cut called for the nurse in me, the soother, the sorter out of complexities, the cool angel of peace, moving like Florence, over a wilderness war zone. A tapselteerie childhood and motherhood by the way for I was right in there, enmeshed in a time when compassion and fury lay together in my heart like unhappy bedfellows.

The truth is, and always was, I want my children to fly free, to make their own mistakes, sort their own lives out, find their own paths through the tangle woods even if this letting go wotwot is the hardest of all letting go wotwots. I know I don’t need to watch their every move unless of course I have made chocolate mousse. Dunked finger holes in the chocolate mousse, particularly if said finger kinks into a curve for maximum effect, is not a good look either for the mousse or for me, the cook. There is a limit to how much whipped cream can disguise such mining.

Needless to say I am always there if my help is needed and always will be, but that isn’t worrying. Instead it is an awareness and a readiness, boots at the door, my mini fuelled up, cash in my purse and a clear head to help sort out a problem; my ears open because I know that just by listening to the issue, asking the right questions and keeping quiet (a lot) will find them their own answer. It will also tell them without saying so that I believe in them, that they know how to deal with this, that I know they can sort this, because haven’t they sorted such warsle many times before? As, indeed, did I, this clueless wife, mother, nurse, storyteller, sorter of problems, such that threw me shapes I did not recognise at all. However, the temptation for we mums (and dads) is to think we are IT and without this IT, our children, friends, anyone we love who has just been blasted into space without a rocket, or a parachute, or breathing apparatus, is first to worry ourselves into a tremble of an eejit and then to buck forward with rocket, parachute, safety net and hot soup instead of what really works.

I see you up there. I am watching. Can you feel your toes? Look down and aim right. How does this bit of ground look to you? Do you think you can point towards it? Yes I know it’s the unfamiliar but you have moved on since yesterday and, as we know, tomorrow is a right pain in the neck because it absolutely never comes, no matter how fast you run. Yes, I am watching. I’ll be there with a sandwich and a flask when you land. No, I am not going anywhere. It’s ok this bit of ground, this new bit. There’s heather and saltgrass, orchids too now that it’s spring and birds…..you should hear the birds and you will. Soon. Then we will sit together, marvel in the moment and you and I will walk, not back into our lives, but forward. Not yet, thought, not yet. For now we will sit quietly in the present moment and say our thank yous to the love in the sky, the love that is always there for the asking. After all, there really is ‘nowhere to go but here’.

(not my words but borrowed from another)

by

Island Blog – Enough for me

I’ve been thinking. Thinking can be quite a full time job I find, have found. Sometimes it can be destructive, sometimes instructive, sometimes pointless, sometimes pointful. Because a gazillion thoughts crowd our minds from the minute we wake up and all the way up to whenever we manage to fall asleep, we must learn how to handle them. It’s like all your children, plus their friends and their friends friends and cousins are all around you shouting demands at the same moment. Their little fingers pluck at your clothes, their voices screech like jays and you, only you can sort out this mess. You rear back, try to find some place of quiet in which to find a solution, or many solutions, often without success. But you can actively get away from all those children by leaving the room and closing the door, running upstairs to lock yourself in the loo whilst you unwind the mental tangle, calming it into a good idea, a distraction, where with thoughts you cannot. You have to manage them internally and there is no upstairs loo available.

In times of long moments which can feel like hours, thoughts cluster, conjoin, form fat shapes like dumplings, weighing heavy and so amalgamated that it is nigh on impossible to sort the wheat from the chaff. They dumple in my head, that’s what they do. What was it, that last fleeting thought? I don’t know, don’t recognise it, not as it is in this state of dumple. Who would? So what to do? I am pulling on my mental boots as I acknowledge the complete irreverence and lack of respect from these thoughts. How dare they assault me this way, tell me, or infer, that I am less than I might be, have failed too many times in the past and HaHa you can do nothing about that now you fool! I swipe them away like bluebottles. I’m going out, I tell them. Without you. I slam the door, truss the dog and begin to walk.

Immediately I am aware of stepping into the real world, my spiralling thoughts silenced. Now I am looking with my eyes facing out and not in. Left behind is the familiar, the four stone walls, the paintings, the photographs, the dust on the floor and the to-do list. I am alone but not alone, a body moving into a world not under my control, the random chaos of pure Nature. It isn’t random at all, nor chaotic but to me with my stays tightened in a back-home mode, my memories contorted into a twist of nonsense and untruth, this outside world seems just that. Birds flitter back and forth, butterflies butterfly and windshift troubles early greening limbs. Bumble bees claim the soundbite, hesitate me beneath willow catkins and I stand to watch their fat little bodies claim the sweet. Yellow, white, with round arses and pointy ones, tiny miner bees, even bluebottles tap the nectar. Percussion, timpani, glorious. Two paces beyond the willow and I hear nothing at all. Their sound is just for them and not for me but I hear it and it fills my head with hope. Life will always want to live.

Further, and I stop to welcome wee wind battered primroses, their butter faces reaching for a sun they will not meet this day. Star moss leaps out from stand-water, even from the crook of a tree where limbs have split for their own reasons and who have now offered a place of safety for some other leap for life. The wind today is kinder. The iceslice punch softened. I duck beneath a larch bough, heavy now with spindle green and with the hope that no unthinking walker will cut it back as I have seen before, as if this limb didn’t own its space and as if folk have forgotten how to duck. The latter I decide. Humans are so very arrogant and so very mistaken in their arrogance. Just saying.

I return soaked and thankful to my outer clothing and my boots. But more, I return changed. As I tentatively open the door to my four stone walls, I hear nothing. No thoughts loud my thinking. I am zinging on what I have just walked through and which welcomed me. Life will always want to live.

And that is more than enough for me.