There is a time in my day which isn’t what it was. Once, it was flaming chaos. Now it is chaos for endless others, but not for me. The time spans, approximately, the 4.30 to 6pm tilt towards lunacy. It was home from school, food preparation, feeding dogs, lambs., children, workers. It was welcoming guests back home all drippy, flush faced, possibly contused, all requiring reassurance, warm guidance, hot bath, drying room, dinner by the fire. All of that. I don’t miss it, but I am so glad I was there with the drippy, questioning, angry kids, food, endless food, thing.

That thing is no longer active. And, does anyone get this, it’s a huge empty space? Oh, we fill it with rememberings but there is small, if any, gravitas in rememberings. None of us want to go back, to relive, but and, that but is a butt in my thinking, there is an empty. In approaching this, I know about fixing. I know about that Elastoplast being totally inadequate when faced with a scarple of a wound. And I don’t just talk of my long family experience. What of the loss of a relationship, the abandonment? What of parental rejection? What of a whole lot more? The Gap is there. What we did, once. What filled this space, gone. It is scary, and we have to fill it all by ourselves. Well, that is so shit, btw. I recall running like a hare through the tilt towards lunacy, knowing that, eventually, it would calm, to a degree. Food. Always works.

So what to do, what to think, as that damn gap moves ever closer, as the clock ticks on? Well, I am no guru, but, I have found that being thankful for the laugh memories in my life, pulling them up, has changed my thinks. We did have such fun, such naughtiness, such crazy. Such lucks penny.

Today, I went to pull out a big pan to cook a curry. I pulled out the drawer. A wee mouse, raised, terrified, looked at me from within the big pan. I pulled back, whispered, I mean you no harm. She, it will have been a ‘she’, (only the ‘Shes do the hunting, just saying) rose up, her wee paws held together. A few seconds before she took off. Obviously, I scoured the pan and cooked on, but there was a gift in that encounter, and I call it lucks penny. Which, I have learned in this island place means a gift unexpected. I like that.