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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.

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Island Blog – Can you see me, hear me?

I repot the Money Tree. I’ve had it for decades and in the same pot, the escaping roots lifting it all wonkychops. I cannot think how long that feisty wee bonsai darling has allowed the wonky. It thinks me, about wonky, I mean. I had heard it ask for a repot, for a long time, but, as happens to us all, I was just too busy with the what now of pretty much everything so that its asking floated into the air until I couldn’t hear it above the insistent demands of each day. Until I did, hear it ask again. It now stands in a slightly bigger pot, roots tended and loosened, wonky no more.

I think about re-potting, about asking and about not being heard. Today I had no work and I was very tired, all bog-eyes and rising from a very restless sleep, if sleep came at all. The dynamic in work is a great place to learn, about others, about the space, about the levels, about wonky. My mind scoots back to the times I have listened to the angst in a workplace, the strife of it all spilling from another’s lips, the obvious wonky. Having lived this long, I know that it is natural to look for a solution outside of oneself; the wrong dynamic, the wrong allocation of duties, the member of staff who is so in your face that you just can’t find a way to work with them. The ones who avoid duties leaving them to you. The getting away with it just because they are who they are, damn good at their job but not able to work with emotional intelligence within a team. I’ve heard it all. It’s wonky.

I have also learned that love, compassion, a listening ear and recognition of another is key to solution. It takes humility, yes. It asks for a choice to make something work, together. There are many people, all awkward with their things, who cannot communicate as perhaps I or you can. They just cannot. Nonetheless they are asking to be seen, heard, loved, kept safe, and, if that is determinedly acknowledged, the wonky can find a level. Not their wonky, but the one of the whole. Imbalance is a sea thing. God, don’t I know it, out there where each wave blocked out the whole sky. I know it in a bumpy marriage, a tricky parentage, an uncomfortable time with my own children. There is wonky everywhere. But here’s the thing. It isn’t about being perfect, or, maybe it is, because not one of us can aspire to that, but being the one who allows, who befriends, supports, nourishes, even if another is a complete alien in our perception, that one can actively prevent a serious wonk, one which just might tip the whole thing over into disaster. If we all stopped thinking so much about ourselves and our own wants and needs ALL of the time, we might hear the little voice asking.

Can you see me, hear me?

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Island Blog – Three Keys in My Hand

I have one, no, two meetings this week. One on Tuesday, a zoom with a writer friend, and one on Wednesday with my counsellor. In my opinion, many of us need to find someone just a bit more above things than we are. I have always found that a hand reaching down is a huge help, despite the initial shame I felt at asking for it. And there’s a thing. As this lockdown keeps us stuck/imprisoned/safe, there are many who are finding it super tough, whose mental stability is being seriously challenged. I get it. As one who has always been mentally turmoiled to a degree, and who sees that last week was Mental Health Week (as if one week would ever be enough) I am more than happy that the world is getting it, or, at least, the slowmovingrulemakers are thinking wider, perhaps. In my life I have met many who could flower but cannot flower within the confines of stigmatism and of what is socially acceptable. Hence the hidden pain. And the most destructive judge of all lives within. We are all flawed, broken to varying degrees, doing out very best to fit in without sticking out in ways that might draw attention to our faults.

Looking out upon the natural world is key, but we must also look within. As I have been a student of self-improvement for decades, I have absorbed a million positive phrases and still found myself not quite at home with myself, no matter how bright the epiphany. However, I am finally beginning to understand that time holds the second key and time requires my patience, my faith in the strength of a human spirit and my trust that the goodly gods are working for me, and not against me. When the world demands something I do not want or cannot give, I need this trust. If we were all meant to be the same we would be mere automatons. We are far from that, thank goodness. Although we are currently required to live as such, it will pass eventually. Confined to home, required to wash our hands a hundred times a day, separated from loved ones, stuck in the wrong country and so on, we have this time to reflect on who we are and on the life we want for ourselves once we are freed from the chains that bind. Think on that.

I watch the young birds fly through my little garden, feathers awry, all ruffly spot and unsure of where to land. New life learning old ways. For them, survival is the teacher. They cannot suddenly square up to a cat or challenge the dive of a sparrow hawk without almost certainly turning into lunch. But we can. If we consider our predators, our demons, our self-doubts and our fears to be in control of our lives, then they will be. Noticing every thought and questioning it is key number three. Even if I am uncertain of my path, my voice, the strength, or lack of it, of my own human spirit, if I decide to turn this thing around, to turn myself around, then wonderful things begin to happen. I don’t need to run from my doubts and fears, my thoughts and worries, I just need to about face and question. Do I really think this or is this thought thinking me? Then, if it isn’t useful, I say cheerio. I don’t need you. Every time I do this, I empower my true self. I am not controlled by my thoughts. I control them, and in this uncertain life when a single day can throw a tidal wave over my carefully constructed sandcastle, my thoughts are the only thing I can control.

I know what it is like to be in the darkness of depression. I know how overwhelming life can be. I also know how to rebuild my spirit and I am thankful for all my guides over the years. Not everyone finds their way. Some souls are lost. Most of our illnesses come from inner stress, manifesting in the physical body, sometimes destroying it. This time of reflection is a gift to us all, not only to make new ways to live for ourselves by taking a long hard look at our core values, our life choices, our work and our families, but to look and to see others who may need our clear and open friendship. Those, whom we might have dismissed before as misery guts or gloomy or bad tempered. Nobody wants to live like that. Nobody. But everybody needs somebody to lift them at some point in their lives.

There are less of us still breathing in the world today. This virus is greedy and it isn’t done with us yet. Let us make sure that the ones who will emerge back into the light of ‘normality’ even more broken, even more damaged and even more fearful of their futures, do not have to walk alone.

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Island Blog – Snow Angels

This very day I set sail, winds permitting, for the mainland. Destination the French Alps. I travel with family, kiddies and adults and am away for a week. In theory I will don ski boots and give the slopes a chance to delight and excite me, but my last efforts at maintaining the vertical in such conditions warn me that I may not continue with my lessons. Back in the day when I was a tricky teenager I really hated ski lessons. In fact, I only had one and that was enough. I am a walker by nature, taking my time, gathering no speed and certainly not at the mercy of those long Turkish slippers. In walking, I control myself.

It thinks me. Although I am not interested in gathering unnecessary speed either grounded or in elevated position, such as on the back of a horse, or inside a car, or, even, on skis, I always like to give something my best shot before saying this is not for me. It is the same with anything I do in life. To say ‘this is not for me’ without experiential knowledge of that to which I say No, is just plain foolish. How can I possibly know from the outside of anything? Of course, there are many things in this life, in any life, to which saying No is just not an option. But there are ways around that too.

Say I am stuck in a job I dislike, that doesn’t float my boat. I may dread stepping into another day of this arduous drudgery, among these people who aren’t of my tribe, who don’t respect and value my work, and yet it seems I have no choice if the bread is to be earned. There are two ways to change how this goes. Either I tell myself that these people do not define me, that I know my work is of value and that I wholly respect myself, leading me to research new work and to give in my notice, or I take a good look at my perception of the situation and work on changing it. I know, from experience that this is entirely possible when giving in notice is a million miles from possible.

Snow is both cold and exciting. If I don’t continue with my lessons there is a vast array of alternative pleasures. I could walk over it, listening to the scrunch of it beneath my feet, look back on my footprints alongside all the others of those who have walked this way before me. I could consider their lives, their size and weight, their choice of boot. I could look up to where the mountains point into the sky, imagine the cold up there, wonder who climbed so high and how it might have changed their view on life. I could see the flowers in Springtime, now sleeping beneath their winter blanket, careless of the weight of human trudge. I could hear the laughter, ride on the chairlift, laugh and play with snowballs, breathe in the ice and feel it freeze my face. I could watch the skiers and marvel at their skill, my heart in my mouth as they hurtle down the breast of this huge majestic mountain. I could even see Hannibal and his elephants and wonder at his courage.

In ordinary times, as the West Coast rain rains and rains without ceasing, it is hard to imagine that in a few hours I will be in a very different landscape. I have my writing pad, my books, my waterproof kit and, most important of all, I have me. How this holiday goes for me is down to me, no matter how many others I may share it with. In order to really ‘see’ it all, I must clear my misperceptions and step out naked, obviously not literally or I may not get home at all, and be as a child, ready for any mystery to open out before me. It is no different at home, just much harder to believe in, but it is the key to life and I have proved it over and over again. The drudge is inside a mind, not out there, as is my definition of myself, my love and respect of self, my childlike sense of mystery ahead. And, although it could be hard to make a snow angel from rain, I will give it my best shot when I get home.