fiction

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Island Blog – What we Give

I walked today, a bit wobbly, a bit sore, a bit doubtful. After a stupid fall, a small one ,the capital of which can make all subsequent letters lower case. It was a bump, just that, but the old of me denies a quick revival, as it might not a ten year old. I walked today, a small one and decided I would notice everything along the way. I had to get out and the sun was warm and the sky kind and my thoughts were doing me no service at all.

I started out on the Tapselteerie track, unsure, just me. Well, it is always just me so that’s not unusual. I turned at the fork and headed up the track, the original for the grand guests back in the day, and stopped to watch Painted Lady butterflies on the wild Scabious. I stood awhile, unmoving, just watching as they sipped the nectar. It thinks me. Oh I know it is instinct but go with me here.

We teach out children. Most of us think it through. Most of us us want them to learn the stuff which will help them even though we know that their generation is a somewhere we will never have the language for. Did I know that in the 70s/80s when I was mum to five? No. Even though I had the taste of the 60s, I went blind into motherhood, as if nothing would change. How incredibly stupid.

I look, now and then, at photos of me as a young mother. I don’t recognise her. I was so so young. And yet, this very day, one of my kids recognised his childhood and how we taught him. He had been through a challenging time and was so thankful for what we had taught about survival, about a can-do positive attitude, even in fear, especially in fear.

And I remembered myself, that young mother in a wild place and thought this. We don’t know what we give.

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Island Blog – To be Seen

I was working out something, no, somethings, as I worked today in the Best Cafe Ever. Not just me who thinks that. about the Best Cafe Ever. I hear it all the time, and more so today when someone said just that. Not to me directly, but to one of the Calgary Girls, we who serve and smile and pet dogs and clear tables and oh goodness, forgive me, there are men in this mix and it matters to them too. One the boss, t’other the Tuesday Chef. Both marvellous men. It’s just that mostly, it is the Calgary Girls who work the dynamic in the cafe. Although we are all, without doubt, deciders on inhabiting the sometimes awkward space the servery, we are the inviters.

Remember times when you arrived for coffee on a platform, or in a cafe, or in a clothes shop when the one who could bridge the gap across a counter did, or didn’t and the difference it made, not just to a possible purchase, but to how you felt for the rest of the day? We want to be seen. We really do. There is the very possible to interpolation, of a little smile, a welcome, a warm conversation. We know we are one of many, that the welcomer is fed up, has her/his own life stuff, but that smile can change our whole journey to work, to trouble, to tough decisions, to whatever. For me, this is the gift I can give. I have no idea about the life of anyone who orders one cappuccino with oat milk, one without, and one blackcurrant muffin, one slab of chocolate cake, two plates, two forks. I don’t need to. I love serving, making an experience a very happy one for them. They are people.

I looked into the ‘inter’ word. It’s so easy now with Google and AI, but in my day it was a downstairs scoot to the Huge Oxford Dictionnary taking up hours and dusty inches in the sitting room bookcase. A word came to me, found me, no idea what it meant but the way the letters connected, the way they fitted, caught me. I like it. I hesitate here. It seems as though interfusion is invited and, perhaps it still is. I am old now and still wondering, and yet, and yet, when i get a welcome from a barista, eyes on me, or a eye response to my hallo. I get it. We need to be seen, ultimately to be heard.

So, let’s start on this. If we step out there, traversing the wild of our imaginings, keep walking, keep telling ourselves we want to connect, no fear, no fear. I have walked beside someone who nudged me away from any possible connection on the streets. I won’t do that again.

Everyone needs to be seen.

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Island Blog – The Crevices

I’m watching a slide of cloud folding down into the crevices between the hills, like smoke through the trees, moving like a whoosh to cover over the hill road, the altostratus holding above, the cumulous confident. It thinks me about a load of things. There will always be be levels, the lower, the confident upper. Always, even in nature. Definitely in nature. My children have gone now, all their dynamics with them, all their longings, all their dreams and needs, leaving their roots once again and driving through blocks and hold-ups and ferry issues all over again in order to push their lives forward, to hold up their families. I feel old as I watch them go, even as I know they must. They are now in a place we were in once, very scared. I think everyone can admit to scared in these times.

The thing about being old and alone is that nobody wants to hear about it. I have been thinking much about my husband as he felt himself losing himself. I thought that, had just someone asked him, someone beyond the family fear of it, the clinical response to it, asked him, genuinely and whilst he still knew himself, ‘Tell me about you. You have lived such an extraordinary life after all.’ We didn’t, they didn’t. I have nothing but respect and thanks to the carers and the ‘officials’ who came, but the system forgets or denies the ‘crevices’ as the smokecloud descends over the strong tree-lined hillside of a longheld life.

This situation is everywhere. I get the fear when things wobble and sustain. I walked through it all and, to my regret, I formed myself into a clinical response. I forgot who we were. I miss you at Scrabble, at Cards, at the chuckle on your face when you got me. I never learned Chess. I tried, you said ‘It’s easy.’ I wish I had asked you about your life, so much bigger than mine when we lay together. I wish I had not turned into mother/nurse so quickly as if I could fix everything, bring you back. Even though I could never have fought this awful life sentence, I still can find ways I could have been more than. I could have shown you the clouds, the way the hill road disappears in cloud swoosh.

I’m laughing now. You would be. It is as it is. Yeah.

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Island Blog – Wild and Herself

I sit on the aft deck listening to the snap of the ensign in a corrugated wind. Today we engaged with the Atlantic close up, feeling every wave, the lift and push, cross tides beneath and around us as we rounded the lighthouse at Ardnamurchan, always an adventure and a half. Then on to the Isle of Muck, the seas sideways and upside down and very teenage. It wasn’t rough. I know rough. I know massive waves breaking over the bow and this wasn’t like that but I have sea legs and my old legs remembered themselves even though it is years since I bowed through anything remotely rough. Other guests do not have my experience and I noticed how they quietened and hunkered as I rolled with each twist and screwball feeling immense thrill and excitement. I remember this. This is my whole life with seafarers.

We moored and walked for a couple of hours over many stories and a million years, through wildflowers and wild birds and the few people who inhabit this remote island. Then back to the boat for another dance with the Atlantic roil until finally the best of skippers brings us safely into our resting place below Rum for the night. What has uplifted me today is the way I feel. I was so very tired when I boarded. And yet today, the first day, I feel alive and wild again, feral and free and so happy. Is this my happy place? Not just the island magic I already know so well, the wide and truthful sky, the endless weather changes, the wildlife and the island people but the direct contact with the ocean. I thought I was afraid of rough, any rough. I remember saying I would not go on a boat again unless the sea was dead flat, dead, flat, humourless, a whisper of herself, submissive, polite, like so many women I know, as I was once. Today she showed me wild, almost in a tantrum, her truth and I felt as one with her.

I am always learning.

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Island Blog – Fiddleplay and Deep Time

A beautiful day, all sunshine and squawks from gulls mobbing eagles over the tidal loch. Everything clear, sky wide and still, garden flowers heads up to the light giver, safe from wilderley gales. Still. I wasn’t and that’s me all over. I say I am not a busy flicktwit, fussing about dust nor to-do lists, but I am, I confess, a woman who was a mother at 20 and birthed 5 children and who outlived a husband and who now has no idea who she is. I was somebody once, I remember that, the buzz of it, the exhaustive demands, the have-to go here or there, the suddenness of immediacy. A boat in trouble, a guest overboard, another 4 for dinner, a crying mother from a cottage because it had rained all week and everything and everyone was cold and wet. I warmed her obviously, tumbled dried her towels and clothes and Himself went up there, into the hills and sorted the dodgy fire. All fires were dodgy on Tapselteerie. I have no idea how we got away with that, but I do remember many fine folk, mostly women (no surprise there) who knocked on my kitchen door with faces. I can see those faces now. And here’s my thought. They came, they asked, they were brave and they were pulled in to the warm and fed and watered.

One of them said she played the fiddle. She was beautiful, Irish, four kids. I asked her, bring your fiddle, and she did, and we danced a story from her past, one I recognised. The fiddle captured me in that moment because it is the voice of stories, of history, of deep time. And that thinks me. In my olding, many memories scoot back, slowered, rainbowed, probably nonsense, but I get glimpses of someone bringing in wild salmon, the fish caught on it’s way up to spawning, full fat and strong. I remember receiving this huge fish, welcoming in the fishermen, whisky poured, the laugh around us in that kitchen, the fiddleplay. Even in times when no fiddle played, the fiddle played. Deep time. Those fishers long gone. The wild salmon too. They were then and this is now.

I’m not so sure about now, but, then, I am guessing that in deep time, not many felt sure about their now. Olding is not fun. I should qualify that. It still isn’t fun but there are options and choices. Things hurt, bones mostly, but could be more. Thoughts slow, take time to land. Hearing might grow cloudy. Concentration striates, shifting all over the place, like a seconda on a harley with no map. I meet many of us, all bright and brittle all can do and all doing this olding thing, feeling sore and tired and bloody determined.

One young woman, younger than my youngest, said to me yesterday this…..You inspire me. You are so ……

That was just what I needed to hear. On i go, fiddleplay lead on.

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Island Blog – Spirit and a Thumbs Up

I’m back from work, a busy one, many lunch and tea/coffee customers, all served well. With my new eyeball I can see which table needs clearing and out I go with a scoosh thing and a cloth and a wide tray. I talk to folks along the way, notice the ones who don’t do ‘talk’ and those who bend in like willows, easy, open, smiling. All cafes have all sorts.

I meet people. People with ready smiles, drivers in cars who swerve and reverse, who acknowledge me in my car. I meet others who don’t. There is ridgity everywhere. I understand it, I do. A holiday, too hot, wrong accommodation, just doing this holiday thing to save something. Been there. I think many have. I have no wisdom here, only experience. And here comes another thing.

I met a beautiful chef and his husband. I see how life can be now in the now of now and it skitters my heart. I work with him, laugh with him, wash his pots and pans and bowls and spoons (too many spoons) serve his food, honour him. I think that my own spirit, my inner rebel just loves and thrives on this and other such connections. I have seen so many faces on the other side of the counter, asking for lunch, for bespoke teas, for incredible cakes and pastries, for soup and salads, for hot chocolates, all from here or nearabouts, and then there comes a sparkle one, dynamic, curious, fun. Could look like anything, or anyone. No code, just that sparkle. Hallo you.

Spirit is strong. It rises my own, confronts my wrinkle thinking and reminds me how I am still very much here. They laugh at me, the young, but they laugh and I will absolutely take that as a personal thumbs up.

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Island Blog – My Face, I Think.

Jeez but it gets harder to click onto my own writing page. I have to caterpillar my way through botstops and signposts facing backwards at best, nowhere at worst. However, it is as it is and this automaton fantasia will not leave me behind. I can feel my face lifting and falling, twisting and flexing as I write this. I have such a face. To be honest, it seems that my face works as a singular whereas one might suppose I was, at least partly in control. When I hear something someone says or reveals, my face is right there, showing off, definitely that, long before my considered response, with appropriate facial confirmation ,has a flipping chance to catch up. It’s like holding back a wild colt on a fraying rope, and that might just be a good piece of imagery.

It isn’t that I can’t control my face because I can….ish. It takes longer now with all the wrinkles, each with their own opinions, their sense of place. They are not just ruffles of skin, no collective. They are independent runnels, valleys of ponderance, elevations of realisation. It’s exhausting managing them. And it is my face by the way, not that they give a toss about that. So, when someone says something that rises a response in me, one which I absolutely know how to hold, to control, to banish into complete annihilation, my face takes over. It shows. And, if my face is busy considering, faltering perhaps, the eyes have it. Darn. I can spend many awkward seconds flicking away, looking for something giving me time, me, not the rebel face, not the eyes, not the truth.

Ah! The truth.

We live so much in lies – a word which creates immense trouble but it isn’t a long one, so easily tackled. Over ‘polite’ time it has become a white dissolution, barely there at all, a wisp, a nothing. But we all notice, we all see because this……our innate connection to ourselves is strong. We know what we know. Don’t need affirmation. Don’t need acceptance. If we are ‘outsiders’, considered disconnected, awkward, different, weird, hold to that. It is a gift.

I have a word for you. Aspectabund. It is long dead in dictionnary world but I like it. It means he/she/they who wear emotion on their face/s. It was understood then that emotion carried import and a certain control over logic of the day. I rest there, as does my face, I think.

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Island Blog – The Grannies, the Shelf and Doorways

We are many. We are legion. We step back having been the quickstep for decades. We hold the walls, hold to the walls. We keep the balance, we interfere, we quicken and we falter. We don’t know who the hec we are a lot of the time, apologize and curtsey in doorways we never knew existed before, not in this house of endless meals, of welcomes, of beds made up short notice, late talking, of searching without the right language into the new world, one we really don’t understand, the lie of the land all around the home, bodies everywhere, party detritus tidal in its curve over a once ok carpet. Of a lot of holding back, of rubbing old tinsel lips in ponderance, of confusion and inexellence, where once we were excellent, the ones who bandaged, made fast decisions, even overriding the hesitating grandpas, who btw were astonished to find themselves on that high shelf, in my generation. In the laughness I see exactly that in the generation after me. Nobody is ready for that shelf.

For me, oh I know I am lucky, fortunate, blest, whatever. But I do remember the full stops, the commas, the parenthesese which came like a blow. It was never that I was eradicated, never that, but I sensed the invitation to full stops, commas and doorways. I was suddenly not who I was. Not excluded, never that, but there grew woods and motorways and lifestyles that rose up between us, between me as the feeder, accommodator, welcomer, and the new woman in his life, the new man in hers. It thinked me of those shunting trains on tracks, always going backwards. And I did. I curved away, into foetal at times, unsure of my voice. I had never even thought about my voice before. I lived in chaos, beautiful chaos, exhausting chaos for many many years and I was she. I was She. I lost my voice. Not the actual voice but the knowledge of it, the recognition for me. It had been an usual, ribboned, rainbowed, musical, gifted and now the hesitation to emit anything vocal spun me into a hole in the ground.

Something rose me, rised me up. It was the acceptance that you, young person, now my child’s beloved, is a generation below me. I want to learn from you. I also see your welcome. I am aware of doorways. I respect you, see your dreams, love that you want time with me, invite me into your video games and endlessly bleeping iPad or whatever trackillion light tracts. And your beautiful children, real humans with a truant of consilplisit emotions and longings and dreams. And I am still Granny, or one of them. There is always a welcome, warm food, bandages and no judgement although I might twist a tea towel at you if you don’t help with the washing up.

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Island Blog – Symphysis and Sine Qua Non

I am not friendly with the new Oxford Thesaurus. The original, assembled in 1800 and something, would have been filled with delicious words, now long stuffed in the attic. Words with musical flow, words which have depth, structure, timpani and texture. I don’t mourn their loss. I do mourn their loss, but I will still find them, even though I knew nothing of the 1800s beyond the authors and constraints of the day. Today I was thinking of conjoinder, of the word for life partner, of the push and pull of any relationship. Glancing back to my own past, I saw a scatterment of brilliance, of sunlight and of storm and of unclinch. I saw the giving and the taking, of the imbalance. In the words of my old Thesaurus, battered and losing yellowed pages given half a chance, I find so many words. I was satellitic. I know I was when I fell in love. I orbited without question until I did, and then came the tumbles. I think we all know what I am saying here. Falling is wonderful and euphoric and scampatious but it doesn’t last. Looking back, glancing, I can’t say I can point a finger at the timeline when something shifted, but it did.

Relationships are a bizarreness. We contain, maintain, restrain, align, define, rejink, rethink. It’s how life is and that’s not a gloomy thing, a shadow counterpart, a darkling sepulchre. Oh no. It’s a profferance, a chance to rise. When I realised that this orbiting thing just made me dizzy and distant, I cut off all my long and thick chestnut hair with pinking shears. I was in a temper, yes. He loved my hair. I hated it. The cutting was a ferocious hack, painful and very slow. I remember walking out looking like a waif in wellies and taking pack lunches to both himself on the silage cutter and Bruce on the Something Else. I went to Bruce first. Oh, he said, his smile a bit wonky. Good luck. I nodded, handing him up big sandwiches and a drink. That walk between both tractors saw me and Lunch full focus, could have been miles. I was so visible. My first No More Orbiting illuminated, every stumble step, every mental correction, every giveaway, every risk held in my body like fizz.

He took his lunch, his face rockface, turned away. I had hours till he was home, the weather good for cutting and bailing the precious winter food. I remember the skin on my back alight as I walked home, the relief on entering the farmhouse kitchen, then the fear, the judgement I knew would come. School collection and noisy kids were a good distract. Eventually, he came back, tired, wanting what he had left at breakfast, missing that. But I had landed, no more orbiting. I had no idea where I had landed, but I had, I could feel it, the roots growing from my feet, solid and symphasistic. I didn’t feel strong at all, and even though I was banished from the marital bed, I had begun a singular journey in a conjoined duo, and I could not go back, would not.

Sine Qua Non.

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Island Blog – You Did This

An ordinary day. I awoke to my range sputtered out and her sputtering was soot, all over soot. Thankfully, possibly politely and to save me, her spit didn’t go too far. Anyone who has dealt with soot will know how determinedly it holds to itself. Tiny balls of refusal, sitting there, all sizes,complete and resolute. Cleaning cloths are ruined in immediacy. However, I know this game. She, the Spitter, the Fed Up. Someone turned me down too below the hum beat of the home and she obvously struggled to breathe, eventually panting into something big and black and stuck to the wall, like a nothing much. When I arrived down about 6, I could see the story. Ok, I said, because she is very important to me and keeps my winters a warm hug and much reassurance I will call in the sweeps. Your throat is choked and you have done so well, because, if I am honest (confession here), I knew her flues were compromised and did nothing about it. I am not a woman who does nothing about an alert, but this time, I did. I swabbed her down, caught those balls of refusal into kitchen roll and binned them. She, my lovely warming range will have her skirts twirled and her breathing tubes whistle-cleaned and her privates rid of all amorphous carbons next week. A relief for sure.

The day dindled on with a this and a that, gentle and amorphous. I did things, swept floors, enjoyed watching the trickles of my life conjoin and connect. I watched the sky, the cloud bumps and the pull-aways, the almost parental cloudal wrap, as if the kids need corralling. I washed things which required washing. I fed the birds, watched them jink along the fence, saw the long unpainted fence, thought about that. I read awhile, and then something blasted in my phone, a voice saying my mobile is in danger, hacked, all information already absorbed. It was alarming at first, the voice cutting through the audio book I was listening to, I will not panic (I told myself). And it kept coming. Your private information, bank info, passwords, social connections all compromised, all hanging off the cliff. I still didn’t panic. I might be ostrich here. I did breathe a lot, out in out in, mostly out. I thought, child. I thought Stu. In the overtake of my screen, where the invader could not be swiped away, I could still connect with him. He talked me through it all, go here, swipe there, delete there. All done and deleted.

It thinks me. There are a gazillion things I can, and will, sort myself. There are more which I cannot. I believe that the strength, the power in me is knowing that and then recognising it and then taking action. Tripling. I see the tripling gate. If I go through this, ask for help, I am weak, a failure, needy.

I say oh no. You are brave. You are real. You were the strong support once, and through decades of so-called ordinary days full of soot and cold and turnaways, for days, weeks, months, years.

Remember them and smile. You did this.