Daughter

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Island Blog – Explosical

I just made that word up by the way, but it fits. In that word is Ex, meaning gone. Plose, as in ‘Boom’ and Sical as the arse end of Musical. Well, if Latin/ Greek scholars can derivativise words into minute parts, then so can I. Much as I respect the past of historical learning and memories, even remembles, it is high time we caught, grasped onto, and learned from the way language has changed flipping ages ago. We all have many new neighbours, new work colleagues, new dialects on our streets, among our new-met friends, in all social gatherings. And it isn’t just the pronunciation of a word, the tilt and lift and shift of the musicality of a well-established word. I know this, I have been confounded, felt the hesitation and the embarrassment as I tried to understand what the person across from me just said. I got the drift, but not the fulcrum. Even in my long ago youth, I remember that sweaty awkwardness, the wishing I was anywhere but there, trapped in a chair, sweating anxiety. Not now. Now I will respectfully admit to my own lack of understanding.

There is musicality in all languages, in the way they emerge from the iodine of whatever the familiar is to us, the old tunes, the stuck of it. It seems to me that the English, the British, are more stuck than they might want to be, perhaps with the legacy of owning half the world thick in aging throats, perhaps. But to lift into a welcome …..How about that? I am my father’s daughter and thus fixillated in entrenched wordage, but, and I do believe this, if he was still with me, and could still pontificate enough for me to bring him down to a whisky and a courie-in, he would get that, no matter the dictionary, which, by the way I have added to twice. Language is explosive and musical, and if we want to dance with it, well, we need to get out there and do just that.

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Island Blog – I Just Need To Be Me

I was scared, I was. The thought of an airport, just the one was enough to skirmoil me, and that was just Edinburgh. Just. Edinburgh. Change enough. For starters, I had to have the right suitcase, hand luggage, shoes, coat, stuff in handbag for all possible sniffles, awkwardness, etc. At home, I had fretted a lot about the weight of my big suitcase. I knew, yes, 23 kilos. The conversion still confounds me, being a stones and pounds girl. Noneltheless, I weighed myself, stepped off, picked up seriously heavy hold luggage and weighed again. 71 kilos. I am damned and going to hell. I am so overweight it’s not just embarrassing, it’s rude. There will be chaos at the check in desk and what will I do?

I flung out this pretty thing and that, which is all I could do as time had come to depart for the ferry. All the way down to the airport, in spite of the knowledge that my daughter would be seeing me safely off; in spite of knowing that all would be well, the tension built. How can a suitcase possibly weigh 71 kilos? There was no body in there, no stash of concrete, no lignum vitae sculpture, just frocks, knickers, teeshirts, etcetera. It was the suitcase itself, I decided, somewhere near Tyndrum, damn thing, four wheels and enough steel connections to hold up a small bridge. Why on earth did I buy it? Yes, it is hard shell, and yes, if I had to trundle the thing for miles I would need all those go-any-direction wheels and the pull-up handle, and the wherewithal of all of those will obviously require attaching somewhere in the bowels of the thing, but 71 kilos?? I’ll get rid of it, once the embarrassment of being told I am seriously overweight has passed, all those tutting people watching and judging and muttering, not to mention the suspicion on the face of the nice girl at check-in.

I am nervous as it gets to my turn. Big smile, eye contact, ever hopeful, keep moving, Good afternoon and how are you M’aam, she says, and I proffer my ticket, lifting, with extreme difficulty the damn suitcase onto the weight thingy. I can’t look. That’s fine she says and I look at the luminous digits. 19 kilos. Wait, how can that be? Does a suitcase lose weight? Mum, says my daughter. Did you subtract your weight after you both got on the scales?

Well, no, obviously. It thinks me. All that stress and tension, the sleepless night before flight, the imaginary fears of being refused boarding, punished and marginalised, or, worse, forced to open the damn thing in front of a whole airport, to hand over loads of frothy kit to my girl, or, worse still, to have to put it all on over whatever I was already wearing, was a ridonculous waste of energy and thought. I do try, and I am learning how, to tell myself that all will be well, that I am not an old fool. I accept that any big changes, such as flying alone to Capetown, will discombobulate most people. We all make mistakes and therein lies the choice to either berate self or to have a jolly good cackle about the whole thing. I choose the latter and this is why. One life, that’s what we have, in this particular time and place as this particular person. If we are all here by intention, not accident, then I am here to learn humour, to work hard, to find the fun in everything I do, to love others, to give freely, to be brave, vulnerable and humble. So I don’t need to get everything right. I don’t need to be sensible according to the bizarre expectations and rulings of the world. I don’t need to be organised, like her, or without fault as he likes to believe he is. I don’t need to make no mistakes.

I I just need to be me.

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Island Blog – Outsea, Stamina, Vagabond

Normally, I write to music, a background of brilliant lyricists to an accord of well-depthed musicality. Beats and all. I am a rhythm dancer, know the upper levels of vocal, surface level instruments, worked with the best. He could hear discordance, dis, cor dance, in any recording and said so, when he could. And, through walls of children noise, of egg boxes, baffles and plywood confines, so did I. I was curious, like Alice, wanting to learn through my own imagination, my own stop, no, maybe, no, yes, thing. I could hear it, as he did, and still do. Any poor combination dies quickquick. The depth must be there, from the bottom to the top, or it will never grow legs.

However, this writing to music thing, is a tad poorly ce soir. My phone, which has been shouting for backup, for a couple of days, has now laid down with a ffs, refusing to connect, without a load of huffy repercussions, to my so-called smart speaker. Thus, it is silent here, in this sunshine island home with a view that stops every single passer by, and is the envy of all those who don’t see it, don’t know it, as, well, normal. It isn’t mine, nothing is mine, no ownership of land ever grinned me, not never. Land is land, land owns land, no matter what man does in his/her attempts at ownership.

I digress, big time.

I’m thinking about stamina. I knew I was always, and still am (ish) a sprinter. Can do short distances, then flop. My daughter is a long distance woman. I didn’t know her at first, once she showed her colours. How can I advise, recognise, guide a female from my birthing, who is so different to me? T’was a thing and a half, for some time. I took my mother fingers off the control button, watched her develop, away from me. I searched for a connection and found it, eventually. The Sea. It is in her blood as it is in mine and we have connected in ebbs and flows over time. She lives in the Outsea, that place where no swoosh and lap is in earshot, where Sea is a dream, a longing, where trees and insular roadings and confines, vagabond her mind, where the call of home, of gulls and the wild, of crashing storms and the loud of it, the fear and uplift, dynamics her.

I had no idea I was going to write this, in silence. I just read Stamina, and in she came.

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

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

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

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

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

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Island Blog 54 – All Roads Lead

Island Blog 54

 

I had arrived as a surprise.  My daughter met me in the hallway and we hugged and exchanged greetings.  A little voice from deep inside the house asked ‘Where is Granny talking from Mummy?’ and we both laughed, as did the little girl once she found me.

I could have been using skype as my road, or the house phone on loudspeaker.  Her last thought was that she would round the corner and find me standing there.

But there are many roads we cannot see, such as a span of years or a scene from the past.  We can only find a shape to those inside our imaginations, and no two imaginations will find the same route, although the destination is the same.

Driving Miss Daisy the other day, through the wintry  island wasteland,  I pointed out a wonderful stone formation, obviously man-built as support for the rise of a narrow track, that wound its way down towards the Atlantic shoreline.  There was not a drop of mortar holding it together, but only the skill of the dry stone builder.

We considered the time when this track would have carried man and his animals, and nothing weightier than a pony and cart loaded with hay or feed for the hungry animals. We could hear in our imaginations, the slow march of a day long gone by, the lowing of the cattle, the call of a ewe to her lambs, the odd shout or whistle of the shepherd, and the bark of his dogs.  For a moment we could count the day in hours, smell the changing seasons, according to the rise and fall of the sun, or the flow and ebb of the moon tides.

But our pictures would have been very different.

Sometimes in the clipping season, or when the ewes are brought in for dosing, the hill road from the little town grinds to a halt. The local shepherdess is gathering her flock and calling for them to follow her, through the open window of her truck.  Those of us forming an ever-growing snake are required to dig for patience as we lurch and stall in the wake of a hundred woolly legs. There is no opportunity to overtake, and no possibility of speeding up.

Some of us click our tongues and roll our eyes impatiently.  Some of us smile, knowing we have arrived in an afternoon where time is not the issue, and to hurry along would be to risk lambs becoming separated from their mothers. And we can notice, at this slow pace, the first buds on the heather, the marsh harrier overhead, the way the clouds change and reform into new shapes above the gentle roll of the hills.  We can catch the soft calls to ‘follow!’ as they float back to us on a breeze.

And we will all arrive at our destination.

In the end