Early

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Island Blog – Hallo and Thank you

Today I woke too early, my head full of monsters. Will I have major or minor surgery? Will I be strong enough to deal with it all? What will be the treatment after? Will I forget my headphones? (locate my headphones), or miss the ferry because the milk lorry has capsized in the Glen? Will I arrive, as I did for the Nearly Dead hospital visit, with one nightie, no cardy and no tweezers? Tweezers? Seriously? Will my little beloved dog fall ill when I’m away, and how long will I be away? Will the chimney sweep come, will the garden go to riot because I’m not watching it? Okay, you get the monsters. They all say YES, to all of the above, of course they do, the negative bastards.

Right, you lot, I said, startling the small dog into barks and a leap from her bed. Right! No, Wrong! You is NOT getting me in a right fankle at 04.30 whilst still inside my nightie (take 3, maybe four, do I have four?) and with my eyes barely focussed, you is not. We all rose from the tangle of duvet and I did try to leave them upstairs but they had a different plan. We watched the early birds, the light spreading over the sea-loch, over my garden, over the land, like a new story. Heretofore, this has given me a new vision, a new day, a new dawn, but this morning, no. The damn monsters of fear and anxiety, of a still resident exhaustion in my battle to be undead, kept up their clatter-chatter. It is a longtime since I had to fight them in this way. I tell myself, it is okay to feel these feelings, but it isn’t okay at all because they give me indigestion and backache and a squiffy head and no inner peace. I tell myself that anyone else would feel this way, but that doesn’t help either.

Do I not appreciate the support and love from my family, friends and blog readers? Yes, I do very much. So, why isn’t that enough? It thinks me, a lot and those thinks lead me to the (possible) conclusion that, no matter how many are around us, surround us, we ultimately sail alone. We need to manage our own craft across all sorts of dodgy oceans. In the knowing of that, I managed the hours of today, just. I rested a lot, read a whole book, walked into Tapselteerie and met not one soul, something that would normally delight me, but not today. Today I wished for an encounter, just a wee hallo and a passing chat. I went to the shop for a few bits now that my ‘recovery’ and ‘preparation’ demands a whole load of dark green vegetables, pulses, seeds and probiotics. I didn’t even know what that meant before now. I just cooked and ate.

I have decided that this living alone thing is not much fun, not when you want a Resident Familiar to proffer balance in the face of inner monsters. That smile, that joke, that ‘come on, let’s go out for coffee’, or to the beach, or something. Although my Resident Familiar left the relationship a long time ago when dementia arrived to take up residence, he was still here, a sometimes warm, living Familiar. I don’t want him back, but that is not the point. When a girl is swept off her feet at just 18 when she still has no idea about life beyond the parental home, she can be forgiven for feeling somewhat lost after 50 bonkers years of marriage to a dominant male and on the adventure of a lifetime. Being alone means I have to instigate everything and others, who have a Resident Familiar, are, well, busy until next Tuesday. I get that. I was always busy till next Tuesday, and for decades. But, on the other side of that, being alone is marvellous, so freeing, so uplifting, so damn new. How bizarre.

I am not moaning. Tomorrow will come and will proffer a new set of ideas, new feelings. Today is just today. So why do I write a blog? Should I not, instead, keep all of this to myself so as to spare whoever reads these words? Possibly, but I have been a polite girl/woman for a very long time and right now I feel raw and bloody and honest and congruent. I don’t want phone chats, don’t want visitors, don’t want anything at all, in truth, other than for these feelings to melt away. I am effortlessly positive as a rule because that is how I see this gift of a life. Perhaps, then, I am simply in a place I do not recognise, one that upskittles me, tries to trip me right over. Yes, that’s it. I don’t know this terrain and it is hostile. Simples. And it really helps to write and to post. Really, it does. In writing out my feelings about whatever is going on, and to send it into the ether, whatever that is, my spirits lift into a reassurance, that no face to face contact can give me. I think of you all, in Canada, In the States, in Englandshire, in Scotland, on islands across the world, and I reach out, saying, through my own stories, Hallo and Thank you for being there, for clicking on the ‘follow’ link to my blog, for reading my words. I also imagine your lives, tough at times, maybe many many times, easy here and there, the infuriations, the lifts, the shocks, the abundance and the lack. The bones of a life, the flesh and the guts of an ordinary/extraordinary time on this goodly earth. Life, I love you. I truly do.

See? I feel better now, just writing this. Hallo you all. And Thankyou.

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Island Blog – A Mammoth and a Rant

Today was sludge. Some days just are, and not just for me, even as my own day takes on an immense importance. T’is disproportionate, I know, I bloody know. Nonetheless, it is so. I wake too early, about 5am which, I tell myself, roundly, is fine in the months of early light. My other self reminds me that winter is so very loooooooooong up here and those 5 ams are quite ghastly. An oxymoron, just for your information. Something is either ghastly or it isn’t. There is no ‘quite’ about it. Just saying. I trudge on through coffee, sweeping a floor, putting away drained dishes from my solitary supper the night before. I light the fire. In May,? Myself catches me by the arm. I want to swear at her. It is cold, I annunciate each word, my lips exaggerating ridiculously, just in case, overnight, she has suffered a demise of the brain or a loss of hearing. I eat breakfast, of sorts, and it is done and swallowed by 6. Now what? I wander through the rooms, looking for an answer. The carpet needs hoovering but it will do and, to be honest, I cannot find the energy to connect with my hoover. I shower, dress, come downstairs. 6.15. My mind heads off into loony land. What, I speak this out loud, is the point of my existence, hmmmm? My husband is dead, my children, and theirs, are all miles away and I am tired of everything. I can write, oh hell yes, I can write. I can sew, walk, watch nature, tidy, cook for one, clean out the fridge, even hoover the damn carpet/s. How exciting can a life become?

But, when will I pull on my fancy boots and be whisked away to dinner, one I don’t pay for? When will I look forward, in anticipation to a shared evening, a game of scrabble, the intercourse involved in the tricky process of preparing mango chutney from mangoes, or plum brandy for Christmas, the fun of discussing an evening with friends, the shall we do this-ness of real life, because being alone after so long is not real life. It is not. It. is survival. Who will dip the oil tank? Just me. Who will repair the faulty back door lock? Just me. Who will watch a fantabulous sunset and marvel? Just me. Eish , not enough, not by a long chalk, whatever that means. The rip asunder of a shared life, no matter the palaver of it all, is like a chasm and there are days I fall in, spending half of the next week climbing out, and for what?

A rant, on first looking, is like meeting a mammoth in a doorway. It is huge, inappropriate and tusked up. It is also, by its being there, blocking forward motion and also a massive startlement. It has to be named and addressed. There’s a mammoth in the doorway, you might say and those around and benigh you would immediately tell you there is no such mammoth. But there is. No, they say, kindly, a hand staying your pointing arm, there is just a clear and empty doorway, a way through, a clear passage. It is infuriating to be thus denied and fixed. When I am facing a mammoth, what I need is someone to believe me, whether they see said mammoth or no because if that did happen, and someone stood beside me, listened, heard and never said anything, I would disappear the beast all by myself. I would feel seen, heard and honoured, and the mammoth would, I just know it, look puzzled and confused. Oh, oops, wrong doorway, wrong timeline and way too warm. He/she would turn around and lumber off, soon distant, a natural departure. Instead, when I hear a trillium of flowery wonderments, covered as I am in slime and mud, cut and grazed from yet another climb out of the chasm, I feel unseen, unheard, dishonoured.

I know it is a natural desire to fix a ‘problem’ but if someone just needs to name the mammoth and you are privileged enough to be that much of a friend, just be there and say nothing. It is the quickest way to send the mammoths away.

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Island Blog – We had it all

I write what is real, for me, and at the time of that reality, although I did hesitate before writing this one. Why is that? Because, when I consider who might be reading, it is only I in charge of continuity and yesterday’s blog was all about other people, other’s pain, otherness. So, it matters to me, still, what people think and that, I decide is a good thing, in balance. It takes a lifetime to find that balance. I know it. But this day has turned into many many hours of thoughts a-tumble, birthing many words, many thoughts and, if I am to ‘be real’ I must needs spew all that out when the edges of myself turn on me.

I woke early, about 4 am, thanks to a squeaking dog that wanted out. Pitch, out there, no street lights, no neon flash, nothing, like being inside a huge forest without a torch. A stumble ground. I knew it as soon as my eyes opened, as soon as I turned on the light and groaned at the unwelcome 4 am thing. I rose and smiled. I keep smiles all around the house, as many keep spectacles, pulled on my dressing gown and headed downstairs. I flicked on the kettle, made strong coffee, let out the dog. The wind was warm, bizarrely so for this time of year, pummelling up from the South, blustery, irritable, pushy. I breathed it in, caught bits of Southern stories, let the fist punches of wind ruffle my scalp, play curveball around my bare legs. I looked to the sky. Nothing. No moon, no stars, no light at all. Another day of this, I muttered, rain, punchwind and the sky locked down with clouds. Then I found another smile. They are, as I have already said, everywhere in my home, on tables, my desk, beside the door, inside pots, pans, dishes and drawers. They are my friends, and yours too, should you ever visit. I will never succumb to the blues, or not for more than a few minutes, occasionally a day.

The day drags on. I consider this, now dressed and ready for the dawn which is still hours away. I think of others still asleep this weekend, a Saturday lie-in, a different routine, time to play a bit, to family-up, maybe to wash the car or other exciting adventures that never get a chance Monday to Friday. To laze the morning, share late breakfast, read the papers at leisure, do everything at leisure. Shared stuff. I remember it. I also remember taking it all for granted, no question, no doubt. At times it drove me crazy, made me mad and stompy and sort of lost. I wanted to be on my own, longed for it and often. Now I have it and it isn’t as I hoped it would be. I am now CEO of my own company and the only person in this ‘company’ is me. There are no more opportunities for sharing, for the fight for independence within marriage, the spar and jar and tar throwing from one side of a shared road to the other. There is nobody there, nobody. Shall we play Scrabble? I ask the air. Or take a picnic to the Alpha Beta pier? Would you like tea? Oh, I think I’ll make jam tarts. Et Cetera.

Oh, it isn’t that I don’t have wonderful friends, children, family, neighbours and opportunities but at the weekend, they will coorie in to each other, inhabit their own homes and families, just as we did once. I can feel, at weekends, like the end of a joint of meat abandoned for the resident dog, the tough bit, the bit that is important in order to keep the whole juicy and moist, but useless at the meal. I stare out of my windows to a view that most would give anything to enjoy on a daily basis. I wave at the local weekend walkers, always in pairs or as family groups. I watch them laugh, move on. And here I sit, already 10 hours upright and find myself longing for the night to come. I have walked – slowly, slowly, s l o w e l y to fill in time. I have listened to the stories of the pine trees, the hazels as they sigh relief at a break from the punching gales. I see the beech leaves, sodden and mulched into the track and still copper sunlight beautiful. I stand awhile…….I stand awhile…. at the point where I can see the inlet and out to the skerry. I hear my children laughing, watch them cavort across the old stone pier, hear their shrieks of delight as they catch green-back crabs with bacon, a safety pin and a pole. I tend their scratches and bloodied knees, smell the seaweed, the salt, as the Atlantic swell pulls and punches ad infinitum, the spray cobwebbing our faces, gasping our breaths, making us laugh. I see the old boat, old Nina, the first, bobbing on her mooring. I remember.

Home now and the day is pulling t’wards night and I am glad of it. It is said that memories are everything. I incline my nod to that and then I challenge. Not everything, I say. We may get used to the not everything of things over time but we are never the same as we were when we ran in the sun, fought like cats, argued about silly things, took everything for granted and deluded ourselves into thinking that we wanted more than we had. We had it all, had we but known it.

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Island Blog – Dreamers, Just Go

We are the dreamers. Did you know that? Dreamers are the ones who, if they believe in those dreams, can change their world, and, accordion to the ripple effect, change other lives in the process. I am not necessarily talking about the weird things that come into our heads overnight, nor am I a follower of those who say they can explain such dreams. What I mean is that, if someone can follow their dream, even if it is just for today, just a weeny thing that appears to have no import, then, if that someone takes action, even if it feels weird and a bit ‘out there’, then who knows what may come of that dream?

It can be powerful. Let me break it down. In this strangest of days, as I wonder who the hellikins I am having buried a strong, dominant leader of a man, I could fluff. I could be like a dandelion clock, just there for someone to blow away. But I know I have roots, even if I cannot feel the security of those roots in the ground. All I know is that I will not flop. Not me. I am not a flopper. So, this dream thing. I wake early and know, although I wonder who told me, I just suddenly ‘know’ that I need to walk out, and right now. Because I am used to someone else telling me what I ‘know’ for so long, I am somewhat confounded when the messenger comes to me direct. I am looking about for himself. Oh, he isn’t here. You mean me? Well, yes, I hear, and I am now facing this directive. I swither. But, but and but again. I planned to do this, or that. I can see eyes rolling and I chuckle. I haven’t washed the breakfast dishes I whine, nor swept the floor and I always do those things at this time and in sequence. More eyes rolling. I do pause to wonder how often eyes can roll without disappearing altogether.

Ok, ok, I say, I will go walk right now, leaving the dirt and the dishes. Ok, enough already. I am pulling on my trainers and it is barely light. I wake the dog and drag her puzzled self out into the wild. She resists, a lot, digging in her small feets but I am having none of it. I know she is telling me that we walk later, following the routine. Yes, yes, I tell her but I am bigger and stronger than you and you will come. Her skids show in the track. I feel slightly sorry for her but if I know anything about the female of any species I know that we are very good at adapting. Eventually she concurs and trots along beside me. We watch early sunlight turn beech leaves to emeralds. We startle deer in the woods and they thunder away, their white scuts flashing. At the old pier the tide is full and still. Slack water, the pause between flow and ebb, the moment captured. I, we, are part of this moment. The tide is flood, meaning there is a full moon coming, but not yet. The water is very high and so clear. I can see way down. It is a while before the plankton bloom turns the sea cloudy. We are a part of that moment too. I see crabs scuttle, oystercatchers fly, geese swashbuckle in the shallows, curlews pipe overhead and herons croak like old smokers.

Then it comes, that flipjack, that effortless gymnast, the otter. I stand in awe, watching this extraordinary creature, king or queen of his or her world, dive, catch and eat, on the run. I hear the crunch of shell. He or she is only a few feet away but I am no threat. The kelp lies still, no wave action. The rocks, illuminated by saltwater, shine like varnish. The early sun lifts and pinks the clouds and here am I watching a dream. Had I stayed home to wash dishes and sweep floors as is my routine, I would have missed this magic.

Don’t miss the magic. If that dream nudges, then go.

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Island Blog – Remembering the Butterfly

Today started well. I rose at 5.30 as usual, washed and dressed. Downstairs waiting for the kettle to boil I realised my frock wasn’t feeling like it did yesterday. It was tight under the arms and squashful across my bows. As I wear two or three frocks at the one time, layered with musical precision and always clashing wildly with each other, I wasn’t sure which frock was the offender. Well, dammit, I will have to pull them all off, whence I discovered the blue one, the last one, the one playing the bass line, was on back to front. it was a relief to finally reassemble the noisy ensemble and to hear and feel, once again, a smooth and velvety tune. I take a big drink of water, fill and flip on the kettle for coffee, and prepare to put a wash on. Lifting a pasta bowl from the drainer, I dropped it on my bare foot. Yelling in silence, so as not to disturb himself so early, and hopping around the table I glowered at said pasta bowl which had rolled off into the corner and was definitely sniggering.

On making the coffee #footthrobbing I put 3 tea bags in the pot and poured on the water. There was just enough. I left the brew to steep and went off to refill himself’s water bottles and to lay our clean hankersniffs. I wiped down his rolling stock (hospital bed tables) and poured myself a coffee. I planned to listen to the birds, watch them flit and flut, fight and fly off, a lovely show of colour and attitude. This is not coffee. Initially I was a bit shocked #foorstillthrobbing at the thought of my folly. How could I do that? I don’t even drink tea, although my hand knows the route to the caddy as I make tea for himself all the live long day, so it could be that. I’m not losing it, I swear.

Washing spun and ready to go out, I gather the peg bag and climb the mosaic steps up to the hill garden. It isn’t blowing much and the air is looking rather tut tut but I’ll risk it. One of the items is a large woollen blanket and I don’t really want that draped inside the house if possible. The vetches, alpines, wildflowers, berberis, dwarf willow, violets and daisies all accept my greeting. I always talk to my flowers and other growing things. In fact, I have noticed the birds calm as you like around me when I go to feed them of a morning. I walk in slow motion and soothe them with my soothiest voice and they know me now. It’s rather charming. The flowers are quieter but I know they hear me. Anyway, back to the washing line. Hallo Lady Larch! She is the tree who supports the yellow plastic line and we respect each other. The last thing to fix is the blanket. I admire it for a bit. It is considerably whiter than it was pre wash, like snow or sea froth. Last peg connected and I spin around to leave. Ah……

My other foot, not the still throbbing one, manages to catch a corner I hadn’t noticed, still touching the grass but only just. There’s a little hole in this corner and my toe leaps through. I know I’m going to fall, and it is only grass, which reassures me as I do. Picture me now. I am lying on my back, my leg extended cloudwards, my toe in a woollen blanket stranglehold. There is nothing to do but laugh, even as I realise that both feet are going to have something to say about this morning’s abuse. I stay where I am for a few minutes, watching the clouds schist and shrink, billow and spin against the blue. Lying back, quiet now, all laughed out and barely moving, a butterfly lands on my nose. I stare at its underbelly, feel its tiny feet on my skin, see its wings lit like disco balls as the sun shines through. It stays, and stays for what seems an age, and is suddenly gone.

Later I couldn’t open the back door because himself had parked his wheelchair right up against it; the bruschetta mix I made is watery without lovely greek tomatoes that have actually seen sunshine; I’ve almost run out of kindling and I forgot to get bananas at the shop; the bulb for my flytrap died; I dropped flour all over the flour (bag burst) and my stillthrobbingtoe is turning blue.

But all I remember is the butterfly.

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Island Blog – Woman

I’m thinking about her today. I am one, after all. A woman I mean. As Dennis rages like a husband outside my door, threatening to uplift the new conservatory, I turn in to my thoughts. After a Dennis sort of morning I put on music – my sanity these days. Have you heard Disturbed sing The Sound of Silence, or Elbow’s Fickle Flame or Lily Allen sing Somewhere Only We Know by Keane? I research music a lot and am helped considerably by my youngest, equally in love with music. Lyrics, musicality and beat can lift any soul from a dark place. I recommend it if the dark surrounds you this day, or any other day.

I add something super dull to the shopping list, holding said list in place with a heart shaped stone as if Dennis might get in somehow and snatch it. Actually, he is welcome to it. I get dead bored of shopping lists, of washing clothes on the right setting, of wiping down tables, of mopping spills I never spilled. It seems to me that women are always on the move and it is just as well or most of the world would just sit down and wait for a sandwich. Not only do we end up on the sandwich rota but we are required to pop here and collect that on a regular basis. Then there are screaming children to squeeze into clothes they don’t want to wear ending in a fraught drive to school. There’s a flaming mother-in-law to appease and toilets to clean; there are beds to make, rooms to tidy, gardens to tease back into life; phone calls to answer, batteries to replace, dogs to feed and supper to be planned, bought and prepared. I am sure there are modern women who fold their arms, say something colourful and then go out for Prosecco with the girls but I don’t meet too many of those. From girlhood we are conditioned. I see it with my own little grand-girls, the unconscious teaching by their mums, the learning they absorb through example. I want to throw fireworks at it all, but (and there’s always one of those) I cannot see how the family would survive if women stopped being IT. That indomitable spirit is in each one of us. How else would we survive? Although life does dump on us, despite the fairytale wedding and all those impossible promises, we find an inner strength we never knew we had. It seems we can take pretty much everything on the chin and still keep our sense of fun and fight.

A man once said, a man I admire to the skies, that he had no idea how we women kept so full of life. Observing the very obvious attitude of the world, that of demoting women at every opportunity, plus the lie that they believe in equality, this man made his own mind up. God bless him. We need more of him. He can see our spirit and he loves it. Loves it! it doesn’t frighten him at all, which is, of course, what it does to men in general. Strong women remind them of their mothers and they really don’t want that image in their minds.

This fighting spirit is powerful and dangerous. Powerful when guided right and dangerous when left to turn into low-boil anger. I have learned the difference between the two, often. I know when my angry puts down roots and applies itself to the whole garden, and it needs uprooting. Power is quite different, something precious to be nurtured and loved and admired. It is a part of every woman. Although young girls learn submission and polite behaviour in order to survive the early years, that spirit is still alive inside them and it will out, trust me. And it scares even them, the first time; the time they see injustice, feel it, are hurt or attacked. It will rise like a hot dragon breathing fire, one who needs teaching. Not now Dragon. Yes, now Dragon. That sort of teaching. We learn this as we form into the women we will become and it is a good thing. I have met women whose dragon controlled them and their life was not a happy one.

However it is good to just know the dragon is there, to feel her power and strength and to know she will always be there for you, and for me.

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Island Blog 48 – Mother Love

Island Blog 48

 

This morning way too early I wake and step through the automatic doors of the hotel to say hallo to the new day.  The sky is closed, a thick pale grey over the wasteland which calls itself an industrial estate, perhaps in the hopes that it will be once industry moves in.  Outside a young woman smokes a cigarette and shivers.

I live here, she tells me, as I am homeless.  I must have looked surprised, thinking, as I did, that a hotel is not where I would expect to find a homeless anyone.  She says she has a little boy, aged six and the council have lodged her here temporarily whilst they find her a place to live.

I know my jaw drops, for it suddenly seems so huge, being homeless with a young son.  I ask her about his father and she tells me that he had hit the boy, just once, but once was enough, especially as she gave him 3 days to show remorse before leaving.  She says in that split second, what love she might have felt for him left her and stayed gone.

Her family lives in Cornwall which is light years away from here, but she won’t go home as it would disrupt the child, who loves his school, and, by the way, his father lives up here.

I thought about mothers.  What we do, what courage we find, what love we show.  We may get it all wrong, but that strong protective fire deep inside us burns bright from the moment of birth and stays with us for the rest of our lives.  Nobody, not even the child’s father, stands a chance against such a powerful energy.  We would give up our freedom, our quality of life, our life itself for our children and, if asked, we could not explain why that is.  It is both a gift and a life sentence and we have no defence against it, nor can we escape its hold on us.  Most of us, regardless of personal cost, wouldn’t want it gone anyway.  It becomes our drive, our reason for waking every morning to bring out the sunshine, even if the sky forgets to.

She finds herself some breakfast and eats alone among a scattering of strangers, all dressed crow black for the working day ahead.  I’m going back to bed now, she says…..my boy cries at night, doesn’t sleep good and I stay awake to hold him.

The cleaners will wake her around 11 and she will wait here, beneath the wide screen set to silent, with the hotel muzak beating out its quick fixes, until school is out.