connected

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Island Blog – Woman Gone, Pineapple Chunk

It’s weird. I eat, sleep, rise, clean the loo, sort the wood burner, fill the bird feeders, puddle through the rain, buy veg and cheese and a toothbrush at the local shop. I play online scrabble with friends, drink coffee, wonder when, if ever, the dream cleaner will come to crush the dust with some poisonous spray in a schmancy bottle, a load of squirts rising into the corners of my spidery home. I wake to find hours and hours ahead of me, even though I love the waking thing, the morning offer of opportunity and chance. I decide to make a coffee and walnut cake. Lord nose why. I don’t eat cake, any cake. It’s a thing to fill the hours, and this one proffers me 45 minutes plus another 60 of baking. It helps, the thought of it. The cake, once retrieved from the oven, is beyond help. I fling it, as my darling Granny would say, in the bucket.

I have only connected with the Woman Gone, now and again over the decades. I married as a teenager, birthed my beautiful first born son at 20. She, the She of this, was already rising into the world of music, and she soared. Her voice. More than that. She, and I remember this, was good at her piano practice. She stuck when I wanted to build fireballs and to run. She stuck, she held, when I lost myself in the running thing, going pretty much nowhere. And then one man held me safe. I had no longing for a career, unlike her. I just wasn’t steady enough, I know that. If the running is in you, in your feet, you probably need someone to, not stop you, no fricking way, but in a gentle hold, breathe, wait, let’s talk, thing.

I have known death, watched it come, and often. But this, this woman, too sudden, too fast, too much. I know how well she was loved, how shocked those who thought, as I did, that there was no chance Death would softly take her. There will be a funeral, memorial, of some sort. And, to be honest, I am glad I will be there. The confusion of this whole frickin awfulness may, just may, find solace in a gathering.

I remember us at the bus stop right outside her house. I walked to it. I’m a primary girl, 6/7/8/9 and on. It was bloody freezing, the frost thick, the snow holding the cold, pushing it into anyone who passed, and particularly into feet and fingers. She laughed at me as I trudged towards her. As I moved closer, I noticed her fur-lined boots. How did she manage that? My mother had read the rules (always), and my shoes were regimen. No fur. My toes were threatening gangrene even then. We boarded the bus for the 25 minute ride to a school I hated, in a uniform that didn’t fit, was grey and puckered in all the wrong places,for me. We moved to the back, as we always did, being early birds on the pickup list. She dug in her lovely schoolbag, coloured and soft, whereas mine, of course, was a hideously rigid satchel, and pulled out a pineapple chunk.

I will never forget that.

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Island Blog – Barefoot and So Very Connected

Shadows are longer now. They surprise me, twisting my eyes towards them, when the sun gets behind this overgrown shrub or the line of my rake, or just me. I am, it seems, the giant. I reach all the way up to the big larch on the rockface, my neck and head lost in the skinning branches. I smile at the thought. Long gone are my days of hiding in trees, of scaling the scarp of an ancient trunk, scratched, bruised and, at times wishing I hadn’t bothered to begin. But the absolute joy of hoiking my butt onto a strong limb, into the hook of a tree mother’s arm, the inevitable wobble and correction and the determination to stay exactly there, completely lost to the eyes of predators, aka, adults or, later, visitors, even my children, is like a fizz in my blood. I like the memory, hold it, recognise it, know that it, once, was mine.

Although the Siskins, Goldfinch, Swallows and House Martins are gone, Robins have returned with a different song. Their Spring ‘Come to Me’ has changed, in timbre, in melody, in regularity. Timely, I guess, but what do they sing for so beautifully? Perhaps they sing for. Autumn, on the cusp of Winter. Perhaps it’s for the superb clarity, the reviresco of light, the copper,gold,fiery sunsets, the way the basalt sharps up, glitters with rain, sparkles with sun, moon, reflecting, as we all do in the autumn of our lives, a new and unexpected brilliance.

There is sudden sun and sudden rain, sudden cold and sudden warmth. The invasion of another seasons is always a fight. Think about it. Summer (so called) has lazed about for months, taking her place, sitting fatly upon her throne, throwing us, this year, a capulet of cloud sneezing and, somehow, she managed to throw into our mix, a. big dose of winter. I suspect, she, fatly lounging upon her throne in the Out Of Work Months, mixed up a laboratory of cold spite, made it work, cackled a lot and then brought her experiment down on our heads. Summer always had a love/hate relationship with the Winter King.

I watch chimney smoke across the sea-loch, early morning, as the stars are still stars and the cold is a thrisk of caught breath. The ground is sharp and fierce to my bare feet, a thrill and a real connection with the earth. It is a mystery to me, this sense of connection. I claim no understanding, and I don’t want to, because I love a mystery. I just know that I am always, ALWAYS uncomfortable in shoes and that my feet are happy bare. I cannot walk barefoot along pitted tracks now, any more than I could heist a larch trunk, nor heft my old butt into a mother curve, but that is ok. I could once, and that is enough.

The mice are coming in. I knew they would. The nights are cold now and they are no fools. Survival is everything. I won’t say I am okay about mouse droppings inside my pots and crockery kitchen cupboards but I honestly feel this is a problem that would arrive me a derisive snort from a woman who has no kitchen left because of the bombing. I sweep them away, wash anything I cook with, hope the wee sweet furry creatures don’t eat through the lagging of my water tank in the loft, and wish them well. I suspect I am fortunate to have met animal invasion on a regular basis in my young wife-life. It helps.

Rowan berries, wild sienna, catch my eyes. One here, heavy with fruit, a wide bloom of branches, over there, one skmming for space t’ween big-ass confers, doing her best. Hazels nut up, cones catch the sunset, way up there atop an ancient fir or spruce, and brambles wink blue-black in their tangle. This is Autumn. The rut will begin soon. I will hear the roar of stags echo across the sea-loch, plaintive, threatening, both. The crisp is coming in, no matter what, and it is beautiful. It is tough. It is upskittling, confusing, sudden, It is as it is. We, who live so very close to nature, are so ready for the tapselteerie of fickle weather changes, and we will adapt, and that is our human skill, if we so choose. I think, sometimes, no, often, of those who live in cities, in controlled (so called) environments, and wonder how they are coping with the strangeness of our new seasons.

I wake in the night sometimes. If the moon is loud, or if I hear swans beeping to each other as they fly over my island home, from the freezing arctic, heading south, I wake. I know why. I cannot miss one single chapter in this extraordinary life journey, even if inconvenient. I rise from bed, fling open the curtains, see the night, see the stars, search for swans, feel connected. So very connected.

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Island Blog – Try It

I don’t have a single thing to grumble about, not one, not even half of one. I have a roof over my head, one I can safely presume will be still over my head on waking the morra. I have five strong and healthy children and 12 ditto grandchildren. I have the freedom to choose what I will eat tonight with no fear of lack or hunger pains. I have fresh clean ever-flowing water, a telephone, a cooker, a bathroom and flushing loo, two of the latter. I have no restraints on my goings out nor my comings in. My day is my own. The list could fill a book and I am daily grateful for my health, my lot in life, my past and my present and there’s the key. To live in the present is to have life by the cajones. To be in touch, connected, engaged and curious is the only way to live a life to the full. Of course there are sad moments, down days, self-pity parties and la la but who doesn’t have them? However a grateful heart will always find something to be thankful for even in those times, even if it is only appreciating the fact that there are shoes on feet that fit, ones without sole holes.

I think that humans spend way too much time overthinking themselves. Burrowing into the regrets, blame and resentment of the past is so daft it’s hilarious. Oh, so you think you can change the past by doing this burrowing thing? You cannot. It was. It is not anymore. So, looking at the anymore right now begs a curiosity, a thankfulness for the butter on my bread, the fact that I can walk, hear, see, hold someone close and give the gift of a smile or a kindly word means everything. There is no other thing as good as everything and those of us who live by this creed, who have done the daily work required to shift a natural negative outlook on life to a positive and thankful one are the happiest people in the world. We are not cash rich and there are ‘things’ we might think we want. We are possibly bereaved, abandoned, neglected or even abused but none of these will control our thinking and, as you already know, our thoughts control our perception of life and even create our circumstances. Think well on that the next time you begin to list your ailments. Nobody wants to hear because every single one of us has them, one way or another. Instead, ask how are you? Did you love ice cream when you were a kid? What’s the naughtiest thing you ever did? What’s your favourite music? Do you have bluebells in your garden? Do you have a pet parrot, pig, lizard, rat, horse, dog, cat, extra terrestrial?

In other words, (or questions) lift lift the conversation until you are the one upbeat person everyone wants to bump into. The elevation you bring will elevate you too. Trust me, I am flying home from the local shop most days. It really works and the long term benefit of a fun, upbeat, interest-in-others attitude means that try as I might to find something to grumble about, either in the present or the past, I find myself at the bottom of the barrel with nothing in my hands. And, as to the future…..well I am certain that a heart thankful for every tiny little thing that means I am still alive and really appreciating every single gift might well mean that heart beats on because it is excited, enlivened, shared and treasured.

Try it.