Freedom

by

Island Blog – Lucky

What is Luck, beyond being a word oft wrongly understood? In my ancient thesaurus, the word has many and diverse meanings. These days I meet those who consider ‘luck’ to be a chance happenstance, a random beneficence and they have reason to fix on that belief. However, in my study of words and wordage, I discover more. ‘Luck’ can mean opportunity, a new chance to shift something, to make it anew. Well, not anew, because there’s nought new in this world apparently, although I disagree with that too. What the writer meant was that all humans are humans, after all and after all, as if we are all either robots or born from the same womb.

So, when I say I feel lucky, I can just hear the triproad of rocks in my path with all this analytical tiddleypom, all rising into mountains only they can see. My through road is clear. I feel lucky. I can see. I can freely walk around a rip-tidal Atlantic coastline any time I want. I can smell the sea, watch her stories rush in, pull out, rush in again, and I catch some of them. I can see a hover of gulls, hear their screeching, watch the lift and luff of their agile wings. I can taste the clean rain on my tongue, feel its healing on my skin. I can walk. I have wonderful caring friends. None of my children died, nor theirs. I can buy the food I want to buy. I can travel. I live in my own home with a view (I will never say ‘to die for’) that others envy. I live in a warm encompassing community. I belong. I have shoes and boots, warm clothing, a comfortable home. I am not belittled, marginalised, racially attacked, afraid of any walk on the streets. I have not lost my voice.

So many right now have none of this. It disgusts me.

by

Island Blog – Freedom and the Pefficor

So what is freedom? A massive question and with a gazillion answers, for sure. For some it means a facilitated or courageous move away from confinement. For others it might mean, well, pretty much the same thing. I get that it isn’t always possible. I also get that it is possible, but would take huge courage and a faith that, eventually, a life would improve. It has to. Confinement is always wrong. Always. However, a person may have been complicit in the confining thing and that bit is often the one reason to stay. I agreed to this. I let this happen. I am to blame. We are such suckers for personal blame, as if it was born with us like a tricky twin.

Here’s a thing, one which might sound bajonkers. Not only might we be the one confined, physically or mentally, but we are also the pefficor, the more senior ‘officer’ in the ranks, of which we are but one. This nonsense is crazy but it is real. Inside our minds there are the critical voices, or just one, from our past, our childhood, and there is the pefficor, quite a gentle name for such an ungentle, who didn’t see us, not really, hear us, not at all, ask about us, our feelings, our life, well, maybe once or maybe twice. We can’t understand the power of that voice, nor why it keeps triggering us into a big response in the life we now live. I know what is missing. A good self-esteem, a strong sense of self within any dynamic, any workspace, any group of friends/ strangers.

The next bit is always inner work. In this world, so lost in the machinations of gain and power, even though all of us seek simple, gentle, loving, kind, we keep listening to the pefficor in our heads. Life is all about success. No, it isn’t. Life is all about listening, learning, uplifting, observing, slowing, watching, accepting. Striving for money is a death wish. We know this. We’ve seen so very many fall into that black, snake-infested pit. The wrong goal.

Whom do we admire? And I omit with a big omit anyone in fame because that place just doesn’t exist beyond a cloudal fluff. However, with many teens in my grandlings, I can see the power of the pefficor in their lives, the subsuming of self into the morass. I can see how tough parenting is nowadays and I am glad my kids, now parents, had the freedom of the wild.

I have no idea why all this came to me as I sat down to write, but it did. All any of us ever want is the freedom to live, to love, to move, to lift, to change, to settle, to choose, to speak, to listen, to be heard. Not a lot to ask.

by

Island Blog – Ordinary Knickers

Today I went to buy new underpinnings. T’is a while since I did this. What I wear beneath what I wear is functional and, although an important, nay critical, part of the dressing process, I rarely think about buying new. Unless, that is, I discover exhausted elastic or a seam falling apart. My reason for yesterday’s adventure into the lingerie department, a terrifying place in my opinion, so much choice and with so many consequences, is because I have purchased a white dress. It isn’t see-through per se, but bright turquoise knickers would definitely be making a loud statement. I need white. I have no white. White knickers are for children. My teenage longing for something of colour beneath my clothing is a feeling I still recall, even now. However, needs must. I take a deep breath and dive into Lingerie.

I’m like a little girl in a strange world. I study the various bras in amazement. Every consideration has been made, it seems, to provide endless and puzzling results, to uplift, separate and transform what is into what isn’t. Just looking at these things is enough to squeeze the air from my lungs. I cannot imagine wearing any of them for more than a minute. Head down, I scurry through the weapons of torture and on to knickers. Just white pants, that’s all, white, cotton, functional, medium at a guess. I wander through high-leg, low-cut, no-visibility, full-cover, high waist, post-birth, thongs, mid-rise, none of them either suitable or white. I search for Ordinary Knickers. I glance over to the pay point. One young man, deeply inside his mobile. I decide not to ask him for Ordinary Knickers. This is Africa, after all, and we would both be embarrassed, my voice loud in the almost empty department and he, stumbling for words, an unsettling image in his mind. It wonders me he is here at all. I dive back into the confusion. There are no Ordinary Knickers it seems. But wait! In the budget section, I spot packs of 3 and one shows me a glimpse of white between ‘skin-colour’ and ‘black’. I purchase hurriedly and leave, gasping in gulps of freedom air, relieved to be leaving the terrifying and bewildering world of Lingerie behind me.

All good so far you might think. Back home I try on the white, size medium, and sigh. The shape is not my shape, the waistband which isn’t at my waist, too tight. I pull on the dress. It works. The underneath of the overview of me is invisible, although sitting down creates a skin-fall mid body, but, I suppose I can bear wearing the damn things for an evening. I guess they, like all my ancient colourful knickers, will soften over time. I also know I could snip around the elastic, not right through, of course, I don’t want an embarrassing knicker-fall, but just enough to give some give.

I make coffee and think a bit. I do understand, and vaguely remember, the delight of new underwear but as my young and middle life demanded functional clothing, a farmer’s wife ensemble of tee shirt, jeans and a jumper, I didn’t spend much time choosing what to wear underneath, didn’t give it much thought at all. I remember my first bra, a little white thing, a most uncomfortable restraint and one I resented daily. Not much has changed over the years it seems, and now relieved at the thought of another few years of not having to brave a Lingerie department, I move happily into the rest of my day.

by

Island Blog – Intelligent Adaptation

I walk this day around the shore of the sea-loch as the tide ebbs and fast as if there’s a great ocean sucker fish drinking deep. I watch the water startled, yanked backwards by some fierce mother as it is whipped back through the narrows, rock-squashed into a skinny rip tide. It thinks me of my grand girls when Mother decides on plaits and will not allow any escape from said plaiting.

I chat with the trees, the track, the sunlight and even the damn flies having been away for a marvellous four days during which I boarded a ferry, drove over 200 miles and spent 3 nights with my daughter and her family for the first time in too many years; when I left my island home alone, knowing she was empty of life until I returned (first time); when I found my inner brave and launched out into open ocean, as me, as one, as singular, as a widow, as me. Although I knew that it would be more than ok, that I would encounter only k9ndness, the thought of going any further than island rocks scared me. But and but again, no buts, no butts. On the ferry, good lord the slowest and smallest Calmac ferry ever, I sat with poppy dog on my lap and longed to turn back home. Called back to my little Pixty car waiting for me in the bowels of the boat I am safe again. I drive out through the open metal maw and my journey begins. I know it well but haven’t driven it long longtime. My fears? traffic. people. that’s all. (all lower case).

The stay was wonderful. I remembered easily the activity in this home, the go here now, the go there now, thing. We did it all. We checked horses in fields, walked dogs, skirted rivers, watched butterflies, played word games, cooked food, laughed, engaged in private moments, slept and went again. When I left I reflected on it all, the whole colour wheel in captured glances at how it was, that singular catch, the legacy of it. I drove back at my own speed. I am not slow but I’m not fast neither, or is it either? And this this thinks me into intelligent adaptation. Maybe a big jump but stay with me. I have 3 hours for thinks.

In my sudden (for death is always sudden, no matter how expected) widowhood, I find an identity. Initially I was a puddle. For a long time. Now, not. I want to be known as me, unpuddled and rising into a lift of wild water, connectable with the rain that falls from the great Up There. I never knew me. I never was me. I was daughter and then wife. ‘Me’ was for decades irrelevant and unremarkable, as if she didn’t deserve noticing much beyond her physical presence. And, although I have made many adaptations over time I didn’t really know my way through it and, to be honest, I am glad I didn’t. It would have caused fire without available extinguishers. Instead I just kept moving on, learning, adapting and repeat. But now, now that when I go away I come back to just-the-way-I-left-it; when I can go out without saying anything at all; when I can plan new encounters, new commitments, new anything, I feel a quandary of contradictions. I know the old way but that way is dead now whereas I live on inside this loneliness, this freedom, this nothing, this everything, this, this, this.

How to work with the hoo-ha of such contradictions? Intelligent Adaptation. That’s how. Oh, I sound so smart but I am not smart at all, not on this lonely road, not on any road. But I have learned that it is eminently possible to move on from circumstances and situations only if a human wants to. In my journey, particularly through the older years, I find myself the moving on person. It saddens me because I know that there are wonderful people stuck inside the dead past, unable, unwilling to accept the new. Not me. Don’t let it be you. Isn’t this intelligent adaptation? What I went through is peanuts to many. I don’t need to say anything because, and this matters, I found someone professional to talk things out. Private. Secure. My regrets, my pain, my fear, all of it conversationed in the right place; thus I can walk towards the village, watching eagles fly pre buying broccoli et la la, tossing my Hallo into the day, knowing that my very private angst is in safe hands.

I called my bank today. I was welcomed with Hallo Mrs Fairbairns. It jarred me. I am not Mrs anymore and never will be. Many thinks around that one. I think about intelligent adaptation and I know that I can adapt and then rise into the me of me. However, the online thing requires a title. Mrs, Miss, Ms. No. Captain, Brigadier, Princess…… No. Each one of those titles sound like ownership. I was Mrs. I am no longer. Titles bother me, labels confound. It’s probably my issue but I doubt this affects only me. Being boxed, labelled, leaves many of us on lonely streets, wandering, wondering who we are now and where we might choose to belong or to whom. And the wandering is of import because it is not possible to adapt to a whole new life in the wake of the old and familiar one. I might feel lost at times, probably will, over and over, but I am finding my way. My Way. I won’t inwardly growl at being labelled as Mrs because I know the title to be one of respect. I also know that our language is archaic in such an area as this. I want my first name and then my second. But, wait. My second name is now my married name, which is not my name but a gift from the rule book of Traditional Marriagitis. So I continue wandering, the conundrums flitting about me like swallows. Whether or not a definite answer comes, it doesn’t really matter because I am building the new me from the inside out, using intelligent adaptation as my thought and reasoning process.

If all this sounds confusing, it is. Even to me.

by

Island Blog – What I Miss and Then What

Freedom to travel. Not anywhere in particular. Even going up the track or down the road invites caution, even fear. I never knew that before, and nor did you, pre covid. It limits. A man sawing a fallen tree, a walker, a passing car that halts to expend greetings for health and well-being. All that breath. Anyone who turns towards me, even a metre or two away, brings a shrink. I can feel it. And it works not naturally with me. I halter, falter, dither and the questions in my head look like a wealthcome of a nervous system, as I always see in images. I might have said Spaghetti Junction but I will not, because that place is all about finites and endings and beginnings we can actually see, however lost we may become during the dive into its complex depths and twists. This is different. This is confusion and random chaos. This twangle diverts and complicates and migrates and deviates in an attempt to founder our race, to bring us to our knees. We can run to books on wisdom. The dictionary; Roget’s thesaurus; innovative books written in their times that yet speak truths we understand, for they still apply. But this is Dante’s Inferno, for us, now.

I miss being able to text or call a friend and to know I can meet them for lunch. I miss inviting them up for a glass on an evening when the clouds are arguing and the light is fabulous and I just want to share the whole kit and caboodle with someone who shows me light in their eyes and give me laughter from their mouths. A sky shared is a sky affirmed. It is not the same just me doing this affirming thing.

I miss saying, on a moonlit night, meet me half way. I’ll bring the wine. Lit, backlit, by Mother Moon, the single track is elevant, guiding. I find my way, as I always have. I miss sitting on a wet mossy settle and not minding at all. I miss singing songs way out into the night, across the sea-loch and out and up into the sky thinking that maybe our melody actually. meant something.

I miss seeing basalt rocks and knowing that once they were lava and sharing that. I miss the ordinary meets I always took for granted; young mums, school collections, high fives at the salad counter . I hate the fear.

I’m not going to schwack in a ‘fix’ there. I’m just saying what I miss.

However, since I wrote this, life has changed, shifted dynamic, opened her arms and whispered Come. I am coming, I am, despite my fear and all the things I miss. Although I don’t miss returning to a home inside of which I am the carer, I miss that role. It was my absolute, my resolute, my desolate. It was something. I was important, no, essential, and that essentiality was reality. It was exhausting, infuriating but it was mine, my life. Funny how when all of the tears and tares are gone, the man or woman gone, we headers for 70 or 80 find ourselves spinning in a space we never knew existed at all. Speaking recently with a good friend who is the lead actor in her own life drama, I remembered the thixotropy of what was once for me. I see she might, although this was just in my mind, be longing for release and I felt my hand on the brake. There will be relief at first, yes. Then, at some point just when you think you are flying high and wide, your wings of longed-for freedom lifting you above the clouds of your recent skies, will take you too near the sun of your joy and you will melt. There will be a fall. There always is.

These ridiculous summer days on the west is best wet wet wet of many months, the mornings begin cold. I light the fire and pull on a jumper. By midday, the sky is changing her mind about the whole wet wet wet thing and she opens her mouth to let the gunfire blast out like a million happy thoughts verbally described. She has words in there I cannot keep up with, so astonishing is the change, from gloom to something like a beach party on a beach in Jamaica, all music and a barbecue that will burn all night. The change from dark cold to warming light is eluctable. The birds flit, the sweet peas hold tight and lift. I see them lift. The sun-followers open their petals in a nanosecond, drinking deep of sun food, sun nourishment, sun happiness. Although tomorrow may begin like a teenager in a bad mood, there is this hope of midriff change.

As we who know what we know wander through our days of either caring or its outfall, we must understand that it is inevitable we find the boots for the new. Actually, it might not be boots at all. Might be barefoot, a new barefoot. Might be, will surely be, finding the courage to step out as a single when we left single behind us many decades ago. It isn’t an easy process. What process is? We might be old, feel old, look old but we are not done as long as we understand this, in the words of Martin Shaw ” Scales don’t fall off. You have to scrub them off and it hurts. A lot.”

by

Island Blog – Looking through Windows

My impatience, during this ‘grieving’ thing, oft gets the better of me. Why am I not sorted yet? After all, I knew he was going to die earlier than he might have done because dementia grabbed him by the throat. Why do my emotions swing like an overly excited pendulum, from an inner darkness to the bright light of freedom and opportunity, not once a day, not twice, but non flaming stop?

‘Ah, you humans……..don’t you know that your time is not my Time? My Time is a very different creature, one unfettered by schedules and earthly dates. You expect things to fit in with your plans but this is not how life works’. And that is that, apparently. I know it has only been just over 3 months. I know that those who have gone before me will say it will take 12 to 18 months to re-locate myself, not least because the last time I knew myself was almost 50 years ago; that time when I could say “I’ without being sternly reminded that ‘I’ is now ‘We’ and that most of that ‘We’ was on his terms of employment. To be honest, the ‘I’ I was back then was a strange creature, lost in Wonderland, curious, yes, but scared of my own shadow, unlike Alice. Understandable, then, that the promise of safety and shelter beneath the ‘We’ umbrella drew me in and out of that sharp, cold teenage rain. But now I am required to find myself again.

I didn’t think I was lost, not really. Despite the rollercoaster of marriage, children and rules, I knew who I was. I was a wife and a mother. I was cook and cleaner, business gofer, facilitator of others’ dreams and goals, full of sparkle and energy and quite able (a lot of the time) to ignore any inner cries for escape. Now all those memories face me through each window. Hallo, they say, noses pressed to the glass. We are all still here, you know, Mrs, not Mrs anymore. I don’t want them peering in at all. I don’t want to look out upon them all tattered and gnarled and persistent, jigging with that glee that thinks me of bullies. I could close the curtains, t’is true, but that doesn’t mean they go away. I could ignore them but, well, ditto. Apparently I just have to let them have their day and to keep walking down this new path.

I remember, well, looking through windows and wishing I could fly south with the geese. I would even have accepted ‘north’ in the darkest of times, but I am a grounded woman and we tend not to be flyers, Mary Poppins notwithstanding. However, inside a mind, the opportunities are endless. I know now that the worst failures and the best adventures happen inside a mind. In there, all choices and decisions are made. Right argues with wrong, downs argue with ups and light dances with dark. It doesn’t really matter what physically happens inside a life if the inner windows are kept clean and clear. Demons, bullies, failures, regrets come to us all and it is up to each one of us as to how we empower or disempower them. On the side of Light, we have the same choices. Although nobody can sustain a positive outlook on everything and everyone all of the time, it is possible to develop a strong reserve of endorphins so that, when the demons dance and cackle through the windows of a mind, a person can just watch without attachment or engagement.

Especially if those windows are triple glazed.

by

Island Blog – Noticing

It’s been a few weeks now, this lockdown thingy and I notice changes inside my head. Looking at what was and at what is present me with two different views of the same thing. Funny that. Back then, when I clucked through my routine life with a hen-like disinterest of my surroundings, I had no idea there was such depth to a life. Well, I suppose I did, but chose not to poke my head over the edge in case I fell into the dark. There were things to do, tasks to begin and complete and to a high (ish) standard but I didn’t really notice how I did them, nor why. The things I did notice were, if I’m honest, viewed through a negative lens. The arduous drudge of whatever chore awaited my attention denied me the excitement of options. For instance, I always washed clothes on a low energy almost cold 30 minute cycle. I never thought about it, just turned the dial and pressed play. Now I consider the pile of washing, separating the sheets from the synthetics, put on my specs, hunker down and think about what cycle to kickstart. It has brought a wild burst of fun to my life and this freedom of choice around dirty laundry has led me to notice a whole load of other things. The tasks have not changed, the routine is still in place, but I have come like the tooth fairy to swap old dentin for a shiny new sixpence.

Noticing things can be momentarily upskittling. Because the house is so quiet now, I can hear it breathe, hear the scurryings and creaks, the sound of the wind through a crack. A sudden flash of movement in a corner could be an old ghost feeling welcome. It isn’t just me who sees it. The dog does too. I watch her look up quickly then move slowly over to where I saw movement, to sniff around. Dust has changed too. When I had cleaners every fortnight, the dust was brazen. Look at me, all thick and sticking to everything, dust-motely floating in streaks of sunlight, turning white things a tawdy brown! Look at me!!! I see you, I saw you, but where are you now, now that I am cleanerless and with a merry lack of dusters in my box of cloths? I don’t see you anywhere and, going by your past behaviour, it should be impossible by now to open the sitting room door, let alone breathe deeply.

Noticing and not noticing brings a very interesting switch of womanly tactics. Where I had to brace myself, like Effie, for some unpleasant chore, I barely think about it now and, much like the giddy excitement I feel as I decide which wash cycle to employ, I am curious to learn a good deal more. When I sweep the endless supply of crumbs from the floors I paint a design with my broom. I consider its potential for flight, but it’s not a besom so I doubt it has much, and, besides, I think my flying days are over. But what I just don’t understand is why this lockdown/slowdown time is effecting such dramatic change for so many of us. Despite the threat this virus still poses, and for some long time to come, the stopping of Routine is having a profound influence on all people. Doing old things differently, seeking out new things to do, brings them all to our attention. To ask Why Am I Doing This? may never have crossed our minds, minds numbed by what we thought was normal, minds dull as hens, clucking our way through the days and weeks, questioning nothing and overly hysterical should someone pinch our grain. Now, forced onto the wasteland we have to pay attention.

I know, of course I do, that not everyone can get excited about a shift in washing cycles, but there will be little things to question, notice and change. Children always ask Why when told to do something. Somewhere in that ghastly and painful process of growing up, our Why gets lost. Asking why, even of self, is to notice, to be mindful. It is also poking your head over the edge to look into the dark. But, as eyes grow accustomed to it, lights shine, contours reveal themselves and there is shape and texture to appreciate. And I always find it isn’t deep at all. I can let my arm sink into the dark, feel it cool on my skin, run my fingers through it. I cannot hold it, cannot grab a handful for closer study, but it is strong and powerful despite its lack of substance. And, when I turn back to whatever nonsense I plan for my day, the light is brighter, the air clearer, the dust silent and best of all I have the time to notice everything, every thought, every action, each precious living minute.

by

Island Blog 123 Freedom is all in the mind

 

World_Scotland_Scottish_Heather_007815_

 

My favourite word is Freedom, and I have no doubt written about it before now in my blogs. I have also changed my thinking about it over the years, of all it encompasses, of where and how it is grounded, where it finds settlement, sinks its big old flag and stakes its claim.

It has zip to do with place or time, with Mr or Mrs Right, with money or lack of it, new sofas, kitchens, bathrooms, or even the four stone walls that surround me, and everything to do with that airy fairy head of mine, and yours, although I won’t presume to know the percentage of airy, or fair,y in your head.  We are taught, or do we just learn……..that the acquisition of a good education, of a good grounding in common sense or many worldy belongings should be our main aim as we walk through our life; that, if we haven’t succeeded in surrounding ourselves with all those things expected of us, that we ourselves expect of us, by a certain age, we are idlers, bad planners, twits.  The odd thing, though, is that not one single one of us finds fulfillment or deep happiness in any Things and yet, still we seek them out, stack them up, protect them with a ferocious zeal, and then plan our next move to gather more in and more.  In doing so, we imagine this Freedom thingy will come too, eventually.  The more we own, the free-er we will become.

In a word, this is pants, because Freedom, real Freedom is all in the mind, all of it and it always was and ever will be till the sand runs out.  I have read many tales on this, tales told by people who own nothing, who are locked up and enslaved, and they speak of Freedom. And yet, how can they?  Just look at their lives lived, the restraints and fences that locked them behind another’s barricade!  They were never free, were they?

Oh yes, they were.  And all because they refused to allow the fences or the bars define their state of mind.  They chose, in the face of extraordinary and unbelievable constraints, dished up daily for years, for a whole life, perhaps, not to see the mud, but to see the stars.  Most of us, so I am told, live lives of quiet desperation, trapped in some way, or many ways, and we have no real tangible understanding of these lives lived in circumstances only ever described to us on the news or in newspapers.  We ordinary folk, living however we live, may not imagine that Freedom is in our grasp.  After all, aren’t we tied in to our work, doing a job that demands most of our allotted daylight hours, and don’t we have partners, children, homes, all of which require our devotion to varying degrees?  By the time all those calls on our so called Freedom have been met to a good standard, what is left for us?

Well it all is, because Freedom is not limited unless we limit it.  I know that it is considered selfish to take for ourselves when we ought to be giving everything to others, but I don’t agree with that concept, if, indeed, it ever was a real concept in the first place.  We learn to love our neighbour as ourself.  This meant nothing to me for many years, as I most definitely did not love anything about myself.  So what does it mean?  It means I must give to myself all that I give so readily to another, and that means an equal share of Freedom, not freedom from whatever my life requires of me, but Freedom to myself.  Freedom to think, to love, to create, to consider my actions and their consequences.  I may live inside another’s boundaries, but that person cannot control my thoughts, my times of reflection, my understanding, the passions that keep my heart beating, my hopes, my dreams…..in short, my self.  No-one else can control these, and these together make me, and I am unique.  I don’t need to step on anyone else to do this, nor put another soul down, for life is not a race, but a journey.  Although we may sail alongside each other, we all sail alone.

So, when I feel controlled or constrained or forced or entrapped by another, let me understand this.  I have chosen this domination and therefore I can bring to bear the same power to change it.  And I don’t need to say one word out loud.  All that squealing and whining, all those ‘how could you’s’ just tell me that it is now I who try to dominate, to change another’s way of being, to make them more like me, and this is merely a power struggle, one nobody ever wins.

If I want to be free, I just decide I am (and read good books on the subject) and get on with my day, my life. If I find chores dull and demanding, I can either sigh and moan or sing and laugh.  There is fun, even in washing dishes and I can work up a great percussive concerto all by myself, my arms sud deep, my mind entirely my own.  And my first step is to understand, and then decide, to believe that there is enough Freedom going, ad infinitum, to free every living soul.

Who out there can tell me I am wrong?

Freedom.  It’s a way of being.

by

Island Blog 70 – Life is a simple thing

Island Blog 70 - Freedom

fig: http://favim.com

It’s all about breathing in and out for decades, something that happens to us quite naturally.  We can take no credit for this and it’s not complicated, until it stops, of course, or struggles to continue.  All we have to do, as out heart beats and our lungs fill and empty a thousand times a day, is to get on with living.

Ah, you might say.  That’s the rub.  My life is so much harder than just breathing in and out and getting on with things.  My circumstances, you see…..well, life is not simple at all.

Yes, I say, it is.  It may not be easy, but it is simple, and then I draw back in case I get swiped, because why?

Because people love to complicate things, all things and especially their own things.

I know people who have come through cancer and people who have not come through.  I am not one of them.  Therefore my life is a breeze.

I know people who have lost a child.  I have not.  Therefore my life is a breeze.

I know someone disabled, paralised, in prison,bereaved,destitute and hungry.

I am none of them. Therefore….etc

At Jenny’s funeral yesterday, I listened to the tributes.  I counted 250 at least in the church.  I caught the sparkle of a woman who refused to moan, although, believe me, she had plenty of reason to. In fact, she had absolutely no time at all for moaners.

On the way to the church, down winding country lanes, I saw a land rover parked  in a driveway.  Across the top of the windscreen the words in bold black said this:-

ONE LIFE.  LIVE IT.

Jenny did.

Short or long it is the same for us all, as far as we know, although one friend whose family are fisherfolk, plans to return as a crack shot seagull.

Whatever our piddling ailments, our list of miniature disasters, we were born with laughter in our hearts and we all know it.

We might consider laughing more and particularly at ourselves.

by

Island Blog 63 – Silver Girl

Silver Girl

 

On June 1st Jenny  died.

We have been friends for over 4o years, the same as my years of marriage.

Our children knew each other as little ones and those children now have little ones of their own.  We had a bet going, she and I that her daughter-in-law would give birth before my own did.  The due dates hold hands, they’re so close.  I will see my new grandchild, but she won’t see hers.

Over the years, our roads travelled in different directions, but we kept in touch.  When she first got breast cancer, she was completely herself about the whole thing.  No time for this, she said, need to sort out treatment and keep moving.  She went sailing after that, for 7 months, she and her man, in a yacht to beat all other yachts with big-ass sails and comfort below deck, every comfort, and the wind in her hair and salt on her tongue, whilst I became an Island Wife.  But women who connect at a wild and deep level, who recognise each other’s spirit and love it, never lose touch, even if the contact is once a year.

We sailed with them once, meeting them on a Greek island.  We all wondered how it would work, four of us converging where Two Roads meet, after 30 years apart, and living in close quarters for a couple of weeks.

I could have been a big pain in the ass, I said.

You are.  She replied and handed me a beer.

In the evenings, moored in a little warm harbour, we would cook, eat and make music.  They taught me songs, and I them, and there was something magical about the candlelight, the warm nights, the laughter and song.

She did much with her life and was never still.  She was the second woman ever to command a Royal Navy warship.  A transatlantic skipper, a magistrate, a wife, mother grandmother, although that title sounds way too old for her.  She adored her family, and actively showed it.  She was feisty, impossible, decisive and noisy and there is a big hole left now she is gone.

But what will stay with me for ever, and this may sound selfish, is what she gave to me.  She never faltered and when I did, she whooped my butt.  I’m not saying, or even imagining, that she had life sussed, because I know she didn’t think that at all.  I saw, at times, such sadness in her big eyes, and she might tell me, briefly, or she might not.  When she knew she had only time left, she would still pick up if I called, or answer a text with humour.  She came to my book launch down south in a bright pink wig after aggressive chemo.  It was our last hug.

I salute her.  She is a woman who challenged me to be the best I could be, just as she challenged herself.

Sail on Silver Girl.