Family

by

Island Blog – Actually Tuesday

In deference to the olding of me, I get the flapdoodle assailment. I suspect it was always here but when I was dealing with immediate disasters, such as fire in the hold or a child dangling from a rope that fell three floors and yelling Mum in a screech beyond the beyond of sludgy sleep, his slippage a definite concern, my inner Dante could barely whisper. Ditto when there was disaster at lambing, or the horse was sinking in a freezing bog, or a guest was stuck in the bath in a locked bathroom requiring a deal of laddering and a lot of looking away. Nowadays with all of that a chuckle in my mind, when most survived, I have the silence of olding and widowing. I love a lot of it. It even funnies me at times, usually when someone I am talking to bursts into giggles. Life is ridiculous after all. No matter how we plan, how prudish, how strait-laced, how desperately we hang onto rules and restrictions for ourselves, our children, our husband, wife, partner, there comes a time when Life flips us like pankcakes without a safe landing. It always has and it always will. As we hold too tight, there is always slippage. The key is to teach that to our children, even as nobody does, holding on to the right of the times, the limitations, the fences and boundaries. I hope we learn one day. I really do. By the way the dangling son landed safe, the wee shite, after a deal of leaning over bannisters, proffering smoothing okays, being there to catch him.

Talking to my children, adults now, they tell me thank you for the crazy life, the wildness of it, the way they learned to accept life/death/life at an early age; the way you did this mum, sorted that, the way dad made us safe. We never doubted that. Pretty good, eh? I have all of this and so very much more, the convoluted vortex of it, not pulling us all down, but containing us in a swirling collective. The olding years show just me centre stage, and I have to confess, despite my siblings sniggering at my ballet moves, I feel proud. I make mistakes. Today, for example, I got all ready to go to the Library Coffee meet. It’s Tuesday here half way along the sea-loch, but not there in the village hall, I discovered. It’s Monday there, the hall’s wooden mouth clamped shut. I laughed at myself and drove home. I walked up into the woods just to say hallo and tripped over a willow root, apologised and rose again. I lit the woodburner and went to close the doors, the door closing handle breaking right off. I walked into the beyond of marvellous at 3 and met the hind and her calf, about 5 feet away from me. She looked up. Hallo Lady, I said, gentle and low. She looked a minute more, then ducked right back down to graze.

The clouds are umber grey just now, a bit shouty, pushing at each other’s backs, against a dying blue. Their tips are burnt umber, gold, rose madder, the hills below a silhouette. The day is leaving. I’m hoping tomorrow is actually Tuesday.

by

Island Blog – Perceived Failure

Ach, well today was a bit of a trudge. It didn’t wake thus, and nor did I, jumping (I did) out of bed as the very first schist of morning framed my blackout curtains. When I wake, I’m like Alice, excited, down the stairs and into the fart of the sparrow all exuberant and ready for strong coffee. I call Alexa into Radio two and bring in the tunes and, despite the dark which will stay resolute for at least another 2.5 hours, I am there to welcome in the light. To be honest, I would like to be one of those who stravaigle into a morning, yawning, turning over, sleeping again until the last noisy minute, such as the arrival of the council bottle bin collectors, all twinkly winkly lights and big noise, arrives at my door. But I am not, and there’s a twister. My mum attributed her ability to hit the pillow asleep until morning, the actual morning, not the hour, when light beckoned breakfast and the whole world visible, ducks on the pond, all that, as an easy conscience. I did squirm at that, I confess. I think she probably said that to my dad, he who didn’t sleep, who caught me wandering all awake and in the dark of the landing and who told me stories, cooled my feet, stayed with me until I did drift away. I wonder if he did.

In the echoes of Remembrance, of those who went to war, some many times, and all who came back changed. The echoes continue, even now. How on earth does a soldier return to ordinary life, the caption of it, the captive, the superficiality, the expectation to adapt overnight? It wasn’t recognised in my dad’s day, nor before, the fallout, the agony of it, the loss of one for one, the strong bonds formed under immediate fire. the fear, the desert dark, the cold, the all of it – the refusal to tell out. It is now, I hope, although I’m guessing there is a lot of fallout, too many echoes, too many triggers, too much seen and not spoken out.

I’m shy now, once I see I have written this. My fingers do their own thing pretty much. So, I felt a trudge today, did I? I can see the judge front of me, all male and whigged. I planned to do this and didn’t. But I did sweep the floor, no, that’s a lie. I did walk, truth, I did do 100 rows on my row machine, I did check the canoes on the shore, see they’re tied right. Truth. I did walk, a bit. I did lose my specs and still haven’t located them. I didn’t attend a meeting, giving my notgoingness. I did bake a potato for supper, prep a salad, light the fire.

There is no competition. I know that. But I still compare myself against others. There is a learning there, and, as I work through this, I feel a tad less furious at my perceived failure.

by

Island Blog – Etymology and Widowology

My Thesaurus is tired. I can feel it as I lift it from the table, the pages all autumn now and threatening a fall from the Binding tree. Undoubtedly there will be a new and upgraded version by now, because words are being daily introduced into the world of etymology. I don’t know when I bought it, yonks ago. Being a wordographer, a lexicographer since I was about five and very full of myself and my ability to show-off my newest words, ones that never got past my dad, but flew completely over the head of everyone else, including my ma, home life was a bumpy road. Just imagine that, being that mother with this upstart of a child. Must have been difficult. My voice was too pure, my confidence too out there. Being encouraged, as I was, by good teachers left me in a lonely world because at home I was just too out there, too sure, too much of a show-off. I get it now, but it still leaves the stain of spilled childhood on the garments of my adulthood, and, of course, as a result, I grew less confident, more absorbed in self-doubt, the inner questioning about whether or not (probably not) I would ever ‘fit in’ and it all grew loud enough to confound. I had clear memories. No, ‘they’ said, just remembles, the false memories of something. In came the mubblefuddles, the anticipation of something, everything, going wrong. I remember the falter, the doubts, the strong feeling that, no matter how well I showed off, I was, actually, invisible. Teenage years were ghastly, although I do know there were times of fun and inclusion and I can hear, if I really listen, myself laughing, really laughing without having to look around a group for any judgement.

So much tacenda, so many things to be passed over in silence; as if in acceptance, which it wasn’t in the main. I remember embarrassment, humiliation, rejection, judgement. And, bless me for this, those voices still ring. This is learning, I tell myself. I am not my past, I tell myself. I am not the girl/woman they saw, no. She is mine. I see her. I like her, love her with all her wordingness, her need to be seen, loving her chance to ‘show off’ but never to put another down, never that. Just me being me. I don’t need to hold the floor over others, don’t need to be better than another, don’t need to win at games, to be the best. It just isn’t in me. I just want, always did, to be the weirdo wordo that I am and to be allowed.

Many years ago, whilst living in Glasgow, when I wasn’t just me, we went to a well-known fish restaurant in Leith. On the river and well-established, this place was always booked up. We sat for a pre-dinner drink at the bar. The waiting staff were young and beautiful and very professional. the lights twinkled inside and out there, shining up the river in twinkles as the dark came down. An older woman walked in, my age now, but not then. I watched her, sassy at 70 and colourful, not hiding her wrinkles, not trying to be anything but herself. ‘Usual table?’ one delicious young waiter asked, smiling wide and proffering his arm. She dipped her head, yes thank you. He waltzed her to a small round and elevated table still in the bar and with a lovely view of the twinkly river and all who wandered by. She was so collected, so herself. I noticed, on her olding finger, a golden wedding ring, loose but there. She ordered a large glass of red and some water. Her clothes were cloth and colour, long and swirling. She seemed to have no problem being alone, but I did pick up a something lonely. Couldn’t explain it at the time, know it now. We were called through to the restaurant after that and I didn’t see her again, nor ask about her, but I do remember thinking this. If I ever get to that place of aloneness, I want to be like her, with welcomes and flirtatiously beautiful waiting staff who recognise and welcome, with a small table to yourself and with a view of others walking by and with the twinkles of uplit water just over there.

by

Island Blog – You lifted me Sister

I’m watching the last blooms of my beautiful roses bounce and jounce in the wind, spattered with soft rain, the kind we get here, the familiar, the soft touch of it on windows, the joy of it on my face. We do get the torrential, we do, that cloudal punch which drowns little skinny rivulets, turmoiling them into spate and even into threat. Roads flood, bridges laughing, saying, Well, you get on with it in your big cars and even bigger attitudes! We islanders have lived with this rise and fall of the rain in our lives for centuries. Not me. I am not a borner, not a real Muilleach, but I have learned and loved the ways of survival for over four decades, and I want to live nowhere else. There is an extraordinary to this life, the way humour lifts any circumstance into laughter and a conjoining, usually into music and the pub. I consider this. How many millions of disasters were diluted with laughter and whisky and warmth and comradeship, and a march out to sort the out out? A sunken beast in a bog, a lost dog, sheep, heifer? And all in the twist of a dark and spiralling wind, the Atlantic rising like a frickin menace, spitting, turmoiling, interrupting a meal, an arrest in the shape of the day, the child out there somewhere, where is she? the goats in a twist, the hens freaking out, the milk cow needing a bring in. The whole thing of the thing. Familiar, yes, but there’s this. It might not come. It always does. We know this even as we hope it won’t.

I was there today. Not as the above, although I could wish that back, that need of me to be there, to help with a sunken beast, or goats in a twist, or even hens freaking out, or children who were somewhere. I was. The lonely got me. And here’s a thing about this lonely, and, i guess about me too. I present every single day as ready, prepared. That’s because it matters to me, for me. I plan my day, I mindfully plot my walk through the hours. I make choices. I nourish myself. I walk in the wild, on Tapselteerie, hoping I might meet visitors with whom I will connect, asking them this and that, only because I want them to ask about me. Some do. Most don’t.

The Lonely is a powerful thing. Actually, I don’t think it’s a thing. A thing is a thing, like a jewellry box or a piece of furniture, and the Lonely is more like a living creature, with face, voice, presence.

You called me today, Lu. You lifted me, you laughed me, Thank you wee sister.

by

Island Blog – It’s a Choice

Yesterday torrential rain, the burns roiling brown and spit, lifting almost to the tipping spot, yet not. Driving back from work I saw it, the inching up and the not yet thing. I would have paused awhile, just to watch the boil and fold, the coming back to the confines of the channel, the space allowed if it hadn’t been for this big eejit in a four wheel drive who was pushing me back. ‘You reverse around three corners and uphill in your wee mini because I don’t do reverse, nor corners, and definitely not uphill’ was said without words, but through the big shiny fist of that face with a bespoke registration. I did chuckle. That beast could have run me over and not noticed more than a wee lift and a wee backdownagain. As I did the easy peasy reverse thing, swinging sassy-ass up and around a couple of times with a smile on my face because there always is one, I thought only this. I am happy to be who I am and you obviously are not. It reminds me, this modem of thinks, the one without anger or judgement, the natural me in the me of things. Sometimes I share this with others who do rage, do stand against, do challenge. I am not weak. I just don’t want a fight. However, and here’s a sassy-ass thing. If I meet one of those big-ass craturs which has momentarily passed a big sweep of pull-in, I just might hold.

Today big sunshine beginning with birds and pinky light fingering across the hills. Not to upset the shepherds, but the world was seriously pink. Everything pinked, the hills, the sea-loch, the garden, and the pinkers began in the cloud lift and shift. As I drew back the blackout curtains, I laughed, I did. Pink was sucking all the other colours into her maw, and swallowing. It was her dawning. It thought me. Dawn doesn’t last, no matter the wow of pinking. It evolves into the day, the day swiping it into memory. Then, despite a day’s hold on the hours, day also defers, eventually, to the bite of night. Like life, like moments in life. Not everything holds, not people, not memories. I can lose them all. And that brings in a think. What is important enough to keep a hold of? And, more important, do I notice enough to make that choice?

Back to the spin back skinny road stand-off. It’s taken me decades to notice my response to a perceived threat in a conversation, on a skinny road, in my aging, my lonely times. It’s like climbing the wires of music score, so easy on a page, so not in reality, when you doubt your voice, your place, your pretty much everything. I have learned this. Laugh at yourself. That’s what I’ve taught myself, in any situation, in the need to be valued, acknowledged, valued, respected, heard, seen. Just see it light, like a passing dawn, like the person who didn’t wave nor smile, the fact that your warming stove isn’t working, that the crazy rain is flooding your garage, that there are mice in your frying pan cupboard and inside your walls, that dark days are coming, the Winter King in the wings, all of that, and more. I’m not saying I don’t take action on all unexpected tributaries, and warm mother stoves who, after decades of faithfulness, now decide to choke, because I do, but it’s not about action. It’s about how it infects a mind. And, I decide, no matter the choke-hold of my life, the constraints, limitations, confrontations, the losts and the founds, I will always laugh at myself.

It’s a choice.

by

Island Blog – Bottoms and Tops

See this is how it is. There are both bottoms and tops in every single day, the tips and the valleys, the rises and the falls, the suddens and the expecteds, and they can come as a grand slam, whatever that means. Like my teeshirt drawer. That’s tops, obviously. Bottoms are either above in the lingerie drawer or they’re fighting for space in the bottom bit. Actually, the whole thing confounds, me, bothers me a lot. I am a woman who is not remotely interested in loads of drawers. I want one for tops and one for bottoms, The End. However, due to my Suddens, I have ordered top stuff, always a regret as this slimy, badly made sh*t arrives after two months. They need a wheech.

It thinks me.

Do I actually address the tops and bottoms of my life? Ok, the easy stuff is I will go up there and pull out drawers, knowing the self of myself, eventually, and thus filling a bag of badly made stuff which will become what? Can’t think about that. My sisters, my brother would never be drawn in to this foolery. I just know it. But, beyond the clothing and buying fiction, I think about the meaning of those words, old understanding.

Bottoms meant Valleys. Tops meant mountains. I like knowing that. It takes my mind beyond the buying nonsense, the devilish pull of it. What it seems to mean today. On an airy note, I did check my tops drawer and was laughing a lot as, after a shower, I pulled out a pair of badly made pants. i snorted, I did. There was an unravel…..I took it, pulled, and pulled, until those bottoms were lopsided at best. And what jinked me was this….I know about connection, about sewing things, big things together, and you can’t even get this basic thing right?

by

Island Blog – I Love This

When my life get’s tricky, bad news, no news, the lonely, the what now, the what if of it all, the olding with all its tired and broken bits, the hurtings, the way my fingers gnarl and bend without my permission, I think this thing and get that think to roll through me, to take over from toes up until it lifts my mouth into a real smile, one which reaches my eyes……..

I love my home, black coffee, red wine and a wave from a passing stranger. I love the sound of giggles from a child, the feel of a dog’s wet nose against my fingers. I love sudden encounters, shared smiles, the warm voice of a friend telling me without words that I can do this living on thing. I love the birds at my feeders, the finches, gold, green, ‘common’ not in the way I learned that word from my old ma……’common’ was basically ‘trash’…….the sparrows, blackbirds, starlings, robins, the way they fly in, watching for skyborn attack, dense aflutter, then scattering, grabbing a morsel and gone into the wind. I love that when I need help I can ask for it and not feel needy. I love tweaking my geraniums, the warmth underfoot of my heated sunroom. I love doorways and windows, my faithful car, my work, my gift of writing, my ancestors, seamen and women, out here in the wilding islands, the way they handed down such inner strength to me.

I love noisy pubs, scampi and chips, Atlantic salt on my face, the bite of winter and my ability to light a good fire. I love to welcome. I love cosy. I love sharing. I love gaps in conversation, the wait, the light and the chance in that wait. I love random smiles in unexpected places. I love boots that lace well, soles that grip. I love the West Coasters, the Island folk for their humour, their strength, their ability to turn any talk of trouble into opportunity and then take action. I love my laptop, the way she works with me, the lightness of her body, the way she can go quiet for two days when I fly to Africa and never give me grief. I love my children and theirs even if I only see them now and again. I love my sisters, my brother, my memories, my lifestory.

Then, as I turn back to the tricky, which has visibly diminished, I say (and I do out loud) I say, Hey, I see you.

I also see this.

by

Island Blog – Getting the Jump

Back from a busy work day, and I put on tunes, feed the birds, watch their flitter flow, the incoming of friendly. I check the something arrivals, boxes in my garage, stuff for me, for my kids who now own the houses we built, and there’s a big something in that. It was what we built, the me and the him, way back, and we sold, we had to. They decided to pull it back to the family. Even if none of them live here, even if I don’t like buy to let, somehow it feels ok because these ‘kids’ grew up here, played here, pissed everyone off here, built here and damaged here, knew it like blood. All the fun here, the wild crazy nights filled with music and fire and dreams and plans. So many youngsters came, so very many. I would come down for coffee and find a gazillion strangers stretched over dog beds, window seats, over carpeted floors, in doorways. Fuzzled, rising, discombobulated, apologetic, looking like shit, they appeared and. I was there, frying bacon,sausages, more, welcoming. They weren’t my babies, but they were that morning, and they so needed a mama without judgement. I was she, I know I was.

I remember them. They have lifted, morphed into whatever shape they chose, or didn’t. At times I see their faces. There were so very many over the ‘kid’ years, over the sealife years, so many. And I know they remember, because me and him proffered a welcome, loved a party, celebrated young people who had no idea when they’d get the jump on the old ploughed furrows or shift and squift a jinx to the left or right of parental restricts.

I honour you all, you brilliant men and women, and I thank you for the best fun days and nights.

by

Island Blog – The Longtime

The rain is so loud I can’t hear Mark Knopfler. I have to turn him up and it takes me out of my chair, my finger pointy. I want to hear the lyrics. The rain challenges me. It thinks me. Well, actually it doesn’t. I’ve had a lifetime on the island meeting those two. The weather and me. The dynamic I know so well. Nature, storms, heavy rains, wild days and nights, so very many, the irritations, at first, then the fears. My husband heading out into the thing I want to silence and deaden, my boys too. Now, with a husband gone and my boys wise, seasoned and knowlegeable seamen, never sure about any sea nor ocean, and so far, securious, I can find some peace, althought a mother never does that well.

Everything is waggling, the overgrowth at this time of year, and I watch it. The louring sky is dank, empty, wondering what to do next. Sky white paused me coming back from a busy work day at the best cafe ever. So many lunches, bit voices, gentle askings, queues building, the Washeroo going like a dingbat, whatever that is. I was behind a learner driver coming home, wipers on speed. I clocked this and held back. I thought about the learner, and on these roads and at this time of year when most (it seems to me) tourists don’t reverse for whatever reasons. Here, just let me say, most single tracks follow the sheep tracks, and that’s flipping obvious. There are rocks and troubled grounds, bog and spill off. So, we, the islanders know this. Visitors don’t, and how would they? It can still piss me off, not that I’m proud of that. You head for a corner, one of 4, and you just know it’s clearthrough on island days. Not now. The reverse manoeuvre feels like a snake recoiling, and in this rain, unclear. I do it a few times as an oncoming vehicle stops dead and flicks on emergency lights. Oh dear.

I do care, I really do.

I also welcome winter. And that thinks me again (god help my thinks) Because and what Because? The time to rest, the pause of voices, requests, little roads with everyone pulling in because we know, the settle, the unwind, the emptiness, the wildness wide open, the longtime.

I love the longtime. I hate the longtime. T’is how it is.

by

Island Blog – A Speluncar Paradox

Blimey it’s hot. Even the stoics are wilting, including me, although I rarely confess to any such thing. And that thinks me, a lot. What is this inborn choice/need to always present upbeat no matter what the what or the whom? I spent this non work day with my thinks. We played think tennis together, the ball whacking over the net and back again. We both did a load of sweaty running about. The ball, the answer, said damn all, and no surprise there. Had I been that ball, that question, in this heat and being arse-whipped again and again, never mind the bouncing thing, I would probably have remained silent. Did we come to a conclusion? Well, no, although the match may have brought in a synergy because what I (we) realised is that I choose to be upbeat and also that I need my cave. There’s another also. I do not need to explain nor justify either, particularly the cave bit. I am human, chancing into weak, rising into brilliance. No, not weak. Bin that. If I always bring in the light, my choice, my need if you like, and my pleasure, then this cave choice is my safe hideout. Equally vital.

So, when I mourn for the lost children, for the wars which devastate ordinary lives, when corruption in high places decide the way the streets will or won’t move safely, when social media desecrates young trusting children, when lies are told in high places and those of us is ‘low’ places hear of them too late; when huge companies hide their truths, when weapons trade across oceans, hidden and politically permitted, when news comes too late, when everyone knows what’s coming, but if the sun shines and there’s a barbecue, a dance, a chance, a band playing, then everything’s ok. Isn’t it?

I am ready for my cave, my paradox, because tomorrow I will leap into the light I bring and spread it blooming everywhere.