fears

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Island Blog – A Fricker

I confess to feeling nervous. Not about the more tests thingy on Friday, not about the outcome thereof, not even that I will be alone for said tests and said outcome, but of the travel. From here, leaving home, my safe and happy place, to my daughter’s house and then, the following day on a train to Edinburgh, to the hospital. I’ve travelled alone before. It isn’t a new thing, nor a big deal, because I’ve done it many times, the drive bit and, as for the train, well, I just catch it and sit do I not? I wonder why we ‘catch’ a mode of public transport, as if it might run right by us like a headlong horse, one we have to leap aboard, arms stretching, holding tight, legs fighting to swing on, to cling on, the wind punching us backwards, as the beast gallops on, careless of our existence. It’s like that in India, or so I hear, but not in Bridge of Allan. Not that I’ve ever witnessed.

It thinks me enough to talk about it to my counsellor, she who has more powers of reassurance than she has teeth. She manages to reassemble my thoughts and my unthought thoughts, settling my imaginary fears into a neat and orderly line. I look at them, standing there, arms by their sides, a slide of naughty schoolkids, chastened into silence. They are all small, pint sized, half my height, strength, experience. It helps to see them this way, in balance, in perspective. Even the strong feel fear, I tell myself and this is as it is. Fears come to everyone, after all. It is what we do with each one of them that matters. If I allow a fear to grow, it will kick the legs out from under me and that is not happening. So, the happening is all down to me. Again.

Each time I leave the safe place, I feel this anxiety. I feel it when leaving family or when family leave me. I feel it when my wee dog is sick or when a tyre on my car looks a bit low. I feel it when my woodpile looks a bit depleted, or when a gale slam dunks the island, making a hoor of a racket just to frighten us all, when the dark is complete and unforgiving. I feel fear often in the small of my back. Fear is real but small, I tell myself. Fear is only a big thing if I let it grow. However, I am not stupid about such feelings. I know they will not stay buried just by my turning away from them. I must allow them to come in, to sit for a while with me, and then to ask them, politely, to leave. You are not helpful to me right now. You are not real.

So what is real? I have my ticket for the ferry. I know the road of old. It’s a pretty drive and I will take it at my own speed which is gentle. I will sit behind a lorry if needs be. I will allow others to overtake and make it easy by slowing down for them. I will notice the autumnal changes and the ebulliance of heather and the wild expanse of land left to itself, the arc of an uncluttered sky and I will love it. I will sit on the ferry admiring dogs and saying hallo to everyone I meet. And, on the day I ‘catch’ the train to the hospital, I will watch people, smile and acknowledge them. I will smile in the Breast Waiting Room, all those women anxious, eyes searching the room for something, anything to take their minds off their fate. I will laugh with the nurses as I unbutton and bare myself, as I am squashed and poked; as the needles go in. And, then, somewhat beaten up, I will smile at and laugh with the nurse who is my companion through all of this, and I will try to understand and to take in whatever she tells me. And, if I don’t quite understand, I will ask for a repeat.

And, then, I will catch the headlong horse back to that tiny wee station with its flower baskets and a backing of solid hills, and I will arrive to a smiling collection, a load of questions I probably won’t be able to answer and to the celebration of my eldest granddaughter’s 16th birthday. I held her on the day she was born and now just look at her, tall, athletic, full of dreams and plans to travel the world. And, as I write this, remind myself of this, I smile, this time, for myself. Although I may feel a recurrence of anxiety, of fear, I know that what is fricking about with my mind is just that. A Fricker.

Small, pint sized, and absolutely no match for me.

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Island Blog – Joining the Dots

When I first arrived in Africa, after the first flurry of excitement, I noticed how I felt unsure as to my part in the play. This happens each time I stay anywhere, to be honest, moving as I am into someone else’s life, home, timeline, routine. It’s as if the very air resists my forward motion, not that it is always forward, my restlessness and indecision tilting me left, then right, forward then back. My brain, so active, seems to collapse in on itself, a splay of wires and worms and it is then that the invaders invade, the ditherers, the undecided, the falterers, the wobbly arm-flailing, foot shufflers and my body obeys all of them. And, as if this wasn’t enough to confound the most confident of people, my fears rush up behind them like a second wave of soldiers, all with bayonets on rifles and determination on faces. These fears in Africa might be that the kettle roars and at 6 am will awaken my kids and make them furious so I’d better just have water. It might be that if I open the sliding door into the garden all five feral and definitely indoors cats will charge as one to disappear over the wall and into the mouth of danger, so I’d better stay inside. I can’t run the hot tap to wash up last night’s dishes because the water makes enough of a racket to waken the dead, trumpeting, snorting and coughing like an old man with lung disease. I shouldn’t go for a walk because that would let the dog out, the dog that always waits for permission and is fast asleep anyway. It is all, I know this, ridiculous, but I go through this every single time, me, confident, assured me. It’s as if my body arrived here but my spirit stayed home or is, hopefully, en route to join me up again like a dot picture.

After a few days I reassemble. I don’t feel it happening, like all my personal lego bits are now clicked into place, it just happens. I fire up the kettle at six, wash the dishes to a trumpet voluntary, open the sliding door and shimmy through the skinny gap watching the cats who watch me back, languidly, yawning, curled up, with no intention of going where they have never gone and do not miss. I go for a walk and the big dog watches me from between his paws. He may be hopeful but he knows the drill and besides, his beloved master has yet to rise from sleep. I can even put on a wash, now that my spirit has arrived from the UK, late but not damaged in any way, as the machine purrs softly once I have worked out how to programme it. The days mellow into routine with serendipitous opportunities presenting, for both kids work from home and are busy most of each day. I have ‘suddenly’ prepped and ready to go. In between meetings we can hop to the shop, go out for lunch, take the dog for a walk and it is always ‘suddenly.’ I rather enjoy that I enjoy ‘suddenly.’ I decide I am a ‘suddenly’ sort of woman, remembering the Tapselteerie days when every damn thing was ‘suddenly’. I had obviously learned the ropes and it gladdens me. When the flurry is done and they are back to work and I am back to whatever I fancy next, I smile. I ask for a list of jobs and write them down. Now I can varnish window frames at 05.30 if I so choose or oil the deck furniture before the temperature hits 33 degrees at 0900 and all the fears, ditherers, foot-shuffling undeciders have melted away in the heat. Even the fears have mummified. I look down at them and they look a bit sorry for themselves in that state. It’s because I no longer feed them of course, now that I know my way around this life.

And then I come home, from 38 degrees pre flying to 6 degrees in Glasgow and I just know the whole palaver will begin again. Even in my own home, things feel not of my making. I don’t have the fears but I have certainly walked miles inside the house getting mostly nowhere and this will continue, I know it, until my spirit, who did not want to leave Africa at all, returns to me. She may detour via other continents, of course, she’s a bit naughty like that. But I will wait for her, and when we are back together, all our ducks will be in line, our dots joined and our feet in sync, ready for all the new adventures we have yet to share.

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Island Blog -Still Breathing On

I meet with two other widows over coffee in a brightly lit cafe/chocolate factory. All last night I was fearful, not of meeting them but of going out at all. I had to choose paint, collect a prescription, buy soap from the best soap shop in history deliver a huge landrover tyre to the garage for unpunctuation and leave my own mini there for an hour or so. She, my mini, Miss Pixty Forkov, was having an argument with her onboard computer and I don’t blame her. She was telling me her tyres were fine thank you very much whilst her screen flashed me dire warnings of certain disaster. This long list of things confounded me, overwhelmed me and I had to take 3 deep breaths prior to firing up the engine. I realise this to be ridiculous. I have driven this tootling switchback road up and down endless hills and skirting 2 lochs for decades. But nowadays it can take on monster proportions inside my overactive imagination and it has everything to do with Covid restrictions and fears and widowhood.

Needless to say, once my lungs are well pumped back up again and my head silenced, all tasks are completed with ease. I arrive at the cafe and settle down with a double shot cappuccino to wait. I can feel myself calming down as we talk about how life is for each one of us. All our husbands died differently. All of us are still somewhat lost without them, no matter how pragmatic, how busy with ordinary tasks we may be. We feel abandoned and rather pointless. We live on for our children, not quite yet able to say we live for ourselves, having not lived for ourselves since we were 20 and that was half a century ago. What happens to souls after death, I wonder to myself. Is there an end date for a soul as there is for a body? If not, heaven must be overcrowded when I consider the thousands of years humans have been living out their lives. I look at my friends, two good strong women whose faces show me what they must see in mine. More lines, eyes not so bright, mouth busy but changed somehow, the ends pointing chinwards in repose. Is my heart broken? Is yours? We all agree. Yes our hearts are broken, our lives as we knew them stopped forever dead. It doesn’t mean we won’t heal, although the scars will always be there. It doesn’t mean we sit around feeling sorry for ourselves but it does mean we give life to these deaths in that we talk about them, about our dead men, the impact on our children, the legacy of loss, of father loss. You only ever get one of those.

For my own part, as the most recent widow, I have only just come to a place of acceptance, a sort of quiet river flowing underground. Sometimes this river hits a confoundment of rocks that cause a lot of hiss and spit, spume and roar. Other times a waterfall, rapids and quiet swirling pools. There are bends and long straights, deeps dark as the middle of a forest at midnight, shallows where fish skitter and reeds wave softly from where they root, denied air. I inhabit the ground above this river, walking alone. The river compels me, beckons me, calls to me and offers me continuity, hope and a future even if I have no clue what that future will be. I know, as my friends know, that our children watch us now like hawks, picking up on every stumble, every doubt, every fear. Mum is all we have left now. Mum must go on and we will make bloody sure she does, the old bat.

When we separate back into our own solitary lives, having covered most subjects in the book of subjects, I know we all feel lighter because of what we all have in common and because we are not afraid of death any more. It is not a word whispered as it was before we watched it happen to our life partners. At the very point of death, when we turned all practical and businesslike, we left a part of ourselves behind for ever. We can be afraid of driving short distances, of imagined dragons, but Death has no hold over us now. We met him, after all. We watched him cross the room. We felt his presence. We are taller now, stronger now and more likely to laugh with abandon at things we might well have censored before. We are woman, invincible and still breathing on.

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Island Blog – Disparity, Contradiction and a Heart

How strange it is to be the meeting point for two opposing thoughts. My head feels like a boardroom just before two factions arrive to wrestle a great big problem into acceptability. One side thinks A and the other, B. How will this ever resolve, wonders the mediator? How could it when both sides are absolutely certain they have the answer? A contra-diction in the making.

And so it is when a fear walks in first, into my mind. Go away! I shout threateningly, pointlessly. It doesn’t move a muscle, this fear, just stands there, shoulders squared, feet planted and growing bigger. It’s irrational of course. My fears always are. They aren’t ever real, but imagined and yet they burn holes. They really hurt. But I used to think I knew enough not to ask them questions like ‘Oh do tell me how you plan to pan out?’ because, if I did that, they might be only too ready to paint me a vivid picture of destruction and disaster, all so very believable, all so very terrifying. This was my old thinking.

This time I just indicate their allotted seat and pour them a glass of water. I do this because I know that they will not be shoo-ed away. I cannot forbid them entry. They are, in that moment, too strong, too righteous. Ignoring them doesn’t work either. It doesn’t disappear them. I have learned this over longtime.

When the other faction appears through the doorway, we sit down together. The difficulty in finding any sort of resolution lies in the fact that this meet is between the feeling of fear, and logic. In other words, neither side comes with the same level of bargaining power as the other. Let us say that the fear is of possible sickness, possible disaster, possible loss and that those on the side of logic just cannot get it. Why on this goodly earth would you allow to apocalypse something that hasn’t even happened and probably never will? It is tempting to go with that sensible, logical kind of thinking, but in the end a mistake. The thing about an illogical fear is that, when it is dismissed or suppressed in one guise, it will just evolve into another one, to return another time. It is like Covid, silently attacking at random, no rule of thumb, no logic.

What I do is this. I welcome both sides to the meeting. Hallo, I say. I see you. Let’s talk this through. I am the mediator after all. My varying fears are not silly. They are very real. Look at them, sitting smug on one side of this table, watching me. I decide to let them start. Even though it scares me, knowing how they can spin their spin. I take a deep breath. Courage mon brave! Describe yourselves, I say, and wait. They do. I follow them, watch them grow and develop themselves into monumental cataclysms.

We all do. The logic faction snorts derisively, but doesn’t interrupt. It’s not their turn yet. When it is, they deconstruct each possible cataclysmic development, turning it to dust. I feel rather sorry for my fears now. They just got annihilated by clever talk straight out of a textbook, and, yet, they are still here, albeit now looking a bit sheepish. They did embellish things somewhat, t’is true, and they probably wish they hadn’t gone as far as they did; the end of the world, death, destruction, mass murder, tsunamis etc etc. But when I consider each deliverance coolly, I can see a use for both factions. I can appreciate the need for fears as warnings, just as I can appreciate the need for logic. I can see that feelings are just feelings, and that thoughts are just thoughts. As I look around the table I notice they are all just children, the result of childhoods good and childhoods bad. We are not really opposing factions at all, but just vulnerable kids trapped in adult bodies. None of us are right and none of us are wrong. We are just different, have learned different ways to survive, different ways to cope, different ways to live.

I thank them all for coming. I employ sensibility and compassion, both coming straight from my heart and not my head. I acknowledge both fears and those on the side of logic. I tell them all they are valued and appreciated, in balance. I suggest they talk to each other without prejudice, open, interested, listening to what the other says instead of listening for an opportunity to contest. I feel the air soften around us and in my head. I tell them I am stepping out of the room for a bit, distancing myself. By the time I return with coffee they are chatting like old friends.

Although I know the fears will rise again, as they do for us all, that meeting of so-called opposing factions teaches me that we humans have enough heart to solve any problems, however overwhelming they might appear at first. The key is to appreciate whatever floats into a mind, to notice it, to say Hallo, sit down, let’s talk. Wishing fears away, or dismissing them with confounding logic, only holds sway for a short time. I know where my fears come from. Self-doubt, lack of self-confidence and from believing all the horror stories in the media. The world is not like that even if the tabloids and news programmes would have us believe it. We make up the world, we people, all of us. And we have big hearts, remember? I have also learned the art of stepping out of my own head, my own room, when fear and logic lock heads. Neither of them will win, this way. The removal of my sticky fingers, my gobby mouth and my imagination is always a good thing.

Let us take control of how we deal with our minds. Let us learn how to take a step back when turmoil hits the boardroom. Just through observation and without any attachment to either argument, we can solve any issues inside our brains.

It isn’t the world that needs fixing. It’s our minds. When they are seeing the good in everyone, the beauty in the life around us, when they decide to be unbiased and open, to step out of the current melodrama within and to think, instead, with our hearts, the world will automatically heal.

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Island Blog – Self Seeding

When I awaken at silly o’clock, my mind is full of thoughts. In no particular order, they step up to the microphone to tell me things and the critical thoughts are the pushiest. They invite me to revisit my choices and actions from the previous day/week/month/decade, taking care to highlight any such choices and actions that might have been done ‘better.’ I tell them they’re fools if they think (even with my magical powers) that I can turn back time. Other thoughts scatter, flitter, dip and dive about, thoughts on tonight’s meal for himself, whether I need more bird food, who’s trending on twitter, what Boris might say today. They’re like butterflies, these thoughts and pose me no threat. They simply require action.

However, I am disappointed to realise that after all these centuries of life on earth, most of us, if we’re honest, let the ‘could do better’ or, worse, ‘could have done it better’ thoughts take the stage. We actually listen, pay attention, greedy, it seems, to sink ourselves into a bog from which it is surprisingly hard to self-extricate. We don’t talk about these thoughts, not out loud, anyway, and certainly not to A N Other. It would be a confirmation of truth, would make the judgements real and we would run the risk of outside confirmation. So we do everything we can to shut them up, take them out, bury them. Ah…..bury them……well, that’s a mistake, I have discovered because, like seeds in the ground, they can rise into bloom after decades of darkness, alive and spreading. So how do we get rid of this propensity for self-judgement?

There are many ways to do this, and one of them is to let those critics speak out. I sit with mine, once I realise they won’t go away of their own volition. They are ancient voices, after all, rising from childhood, school, marriage, friendships, and they show the other side of my coin, the one that doesn’t really want to be seen. They can tell me I’m all kinds of horrible. I know the guidance that teaches me to feed the white dog, not the black one, to water the seeds of self-love, not those of anxiety, doubt, fear or judgement, but the actuality of each awakening, each morning, can confound me in a nanosecond if I have not watered the right seeds. It is a daily practice and not just for me. Understanding that, even with my magical powers, I cannot turn back time is understood at a logical level, not an emotional one. I know it is a true fact. Nobody can turn back time. Good, that’s that sorted! No it isn’t, because those critics from my long ago past made a scratch on my heart and that scratch is still there. I have to learn a way to accept those scratches, to remember that pain and to then allow them to heal rather than picking away at the scabs. I do this by recognising they are there; that they do not influence who I am now, beyond a whisper memory. I see you, I hear you, I tell them, but I no longer need you in my life. Thank you for reminding me that life was tough (as it is for everyone growing up) and I survived; more, I blossomed, rose like a spitfire into the sky, nurtured my family, loved with all of my scarred and battered heart and although I am nowhere near smug about who I have become, I can see she is rather wonderful and thoroughly deserving of all things good.

There will be someone reading this who knows exactly what I’m saying. We are all unique, spectacular beings doing our very best to live a good long life. We might remind ourselves of that and go water the seeds of self love.

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Island Blog – Threads

This morning I saw two hinds on the hillside across the sea-loch. Their calf-rounded bellies confused me at first. I am used to seeing them more slimline, hungrier. My long sight is excellent. It’s quite a different matter when I need to see something at close quarters, such as 23 count needlepoint. For me, it is just a spread of white with dots and any attempts to align a needle with one of those dots ends up in complete failure. My cross stitch is decidedly cross.

I wander through the day from this to that and back again, each time scrubbing my hands to two Happy Birthdays. I’m amazed there is any skin left. It thinks me. The hinds are blissfully unaware of what we humans are currently facing down, the scrubbing and the fear and the ridiculous overbuying of things that should be shared out equally, as are the mint, the daffodils, the buds on the climbing rose, the siskin (just returned) and the perky little robin building a nest in the bonfire pile down the road. The other thing that has no idea what we are currently facing down is the skin on my hands. Beyond being rather startled, it stays firmly in place. How wonderful is that! I remember people saying how amazed they were that the world kept turning as they fell into the dreadful darkness of bereavement. How can this be? Why doesn’t nature know what we are going through? I guess she does but keeps on keeping on anyway and thank the holy crunch for that.

Like everyone else my ears are glued to the news. Changes radical and maybe catastrophical come moment by moment and it ain’t going to stop. People are being sent home, pay-less, their businesses going under, the forecast more than gloomy, but through the brume of these times we are seeing the effulgent power of the human spirit. Heroes and heroines are popping up like toast from a toaster, offering kindnesses that lift all other hearts. It is as it was in wartime and perhaps this is just that. Isolation, depression, fear and loneliness will grow. They cannot not. What we choose to do will keep us together, like those flaming needlepoint threads that are so skinny as to be invisible to me unless I took myself to another room, thus employing my long-sight. Each skinny thread, each act of random kindness is going to turn this thing around. We will remember the tough times, of course we will, but these will fade into nothing when we remember the chiaroscuro of human kindness. Those moments when someone else stepped up, delivered groceries, called to calm with a warm voice, wrote a letter that came at just the right time or sent a text saying I’m right there with you. We are in enforced lockdown, many miles apart and yet we can all send a gleed, a glowing coal, to others so that they can rise the fire in their grate.

Thoughts change things. Keeping positive when we see and hear of the dreadful circumstances of others, of our own perhaps, is not always easy, I know this. But if we can keep hold of the threads that join us, we will get through this if we can just see beyond our own perceived fears. Too long we have made ourselves islands, working just for ourselves and not thinking as we were always meant to do, of the community in which we live. There are always, no exceptions, others who are worse off than we are, no matter what our circumstances.

And it begins with one action, one thought, one single thread caught and followed and sewn (if you aren’t me) into a beautiful picture, multi-coloured and, ultimately creating the most perfect blend.

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Island Blog 16 – Locomotion

I walked today in the snow along paths flattened into bob sleigh tracks. I just knew that if anyone was going to hit the deck, it would be me. The students, just leaving school traveled confidently in their wellies, talking on their mobiles or chattering happily in twos or threes, their heavy school bags banging against their hips. Confidently, I said, which is not what I was doing.  What is it with growing older that brings new fears?  I recall leaping over rocks and skittering over ice with laughter and the fizzing taste of danger on my tongue.  If falling over was to happen, well, I wasn’t going to fuss about that, or even consider it, for youth is a fearless time, when I was invincible and above all unpleasant things, such as breaking a bone or looking a right charlie in public with my shopping bags bursting open and tins of baked beans rolling under the wheels of a long line of passing cars.

I joined the crocodile of students in the hope that, in their midst, I would maintain an upright position, but soon they peeled off, to their own homes leaving me to face a long stretch of shining ice, alone.  I kept close to the trees, where the ice was mushier and less threatening, humming a little hum to myself, telling my legs to relax their tension and to trust the image in my head, of being attached, by a long thread, to a cloud. I made the mistake of looking up only to find there were no clouds, which threw me somewhat.  I passed dog walkers, my age, striding out as if the ground were as solid and clear as it is before and after snow, thinking…’what is wrong with me?’

And then I watched the dogs.  They trot.  Well, you can trot when you have four legs!  When I walk in the wild places on the island, down steep hillsides and so on, following the deer tracks, I think about this whole number of legs thing, and I realise how compromised we humans are to have only two.  A centipede flows.  All those legs make walking, as we know it, unnecessary, for who would walk if they could flow instead?  I would much rather flow to be honest, but I do appreciate that a human with multiple legs might struggle to fit into society. Just think of buying shoes!

It seems to me that this blog is more about giving in to fears, than it is about growing more legs.  What I need to do is get out more, step onto the ice and walk it until it loses its hold on me.

In other words…..keep walking over it until I know it so well, I can dance.

A life lesson perhaps?

 

Island Blog 16 (1)