I’m watching the sky today, just now, cloud capped, closed. I’m remembering the Snow Moon pushing them away with her bright breath over the past few nights. I woke with her, heavy across my bed, the loud of her a steady night voice, colour, timbre, the whole firking orchestra, around 2, 3, 4 am. Days gone by, nights gone by, as is always. There’s no holding them. I love the moon, the new and the full, because they make me uncomfortable in my jeans, in my life. There’s a holding, a containing I fight, as I always have, and yet, and yet, it thinks me different because, precisely because of this discomfort, I honestly don’t want it to change. If everything set simple, like a milk pudding in my life, then so would I. Disturbance is essential. Yes, it does upset me, feels me contained and restricted, sends me in a spin for easier jeans, thinks me that I am finally achieving what my mum always feared, an increase of bodily self. Funny how that still has a voice.
I know I have choices, always had, always will. However that knowledge is a truth, and not a feeling. It’s the feeling bit that confounds, surrounds, compromises a day, a night. Without the belief that I, or anyone, has a choice, the right to choose, we can be caught up in the twizzle of a twister, a disturbance we deny, allowing outside control. I think that life is a dance, and I think that being energetic, dynamic, is essential, to say no, to say yes, to move, to stay put, and so much more. Trouble is, that the old thinking gets tangled in our knicker elastic, halting movement. I remember it well, the confusion of it all. And, although I am hopeful that times have changed, see in so many ways that they have, I still notice a holding on from my generation of parents, and beyond. Such judgement, no allowance for flick or fancy. It saddens me. All people have choices, and, better, the opportunity to change a deeply rooted belief that says…….what you look like decides whether we approve of you, or not, how you speak, how you present yourself, your qualifications (on paper), your family background.
I get that so many slide down into the swamp of unbelief, and, that others rise up into shapes that don’t fit them at all. You can live a whole life, the only one you have, in that unfit shape. To a degree, I did that too, hoping for approval, for recognition, for acceptance. It worked pretty well. However, at this end of my life, widowed and in the evening time, I do hope that one day choices will be for everyone, for men, women, children, and all of those choices will be welcomed, discussed, guided and supported.
I may be a dreamer.
Judy Fairbairns 