life

by

Island Blog – Find your Guide

On the theme of Help, I have something to say. We, I ,have discovered over endless years, that everyone resists it. I can do this all by myself, they say, or indicate with a shovel full of all that they have achieved before this Help thing moved in like a drift of autumn leaves. Not welcome. But we change. Of course we do. I remember himself saying to me, more than once, bless him, that he had never changed, refused to change, would not change. I was too young to see this as a serious condition, latterly I did. We all change because life changes, life changes us. Our power lies in acknowledging this change, this transformation, this dynamic twist and swirl to the person we believe we are, a challenge to transist, new word. Mine, obviously.

I found my hands less able to lift and stack wood. I looked out, asked for help and it came, big time. All wood lifted and stacked and also the joy of half an hour over coffee with a delicious young man, friend of my lads. However, and there is always one of those, as my eyes scan the past, my past, when I was all NO! I can do this all by myself, I can hear the offers of help. So, why did I resist? Why did I do the everything of everything until it made me ill, depressed, anorexic?

I have no answer to that. I also notice that my young, my extended family young, all say the same thing. I can do this, no help required. Perhaps it is a human thing, or, perhaps it is all about our current culture of succeed or fail and the pressure is immense, in a career, in being a mother, a father, there’s no escape from any of it. It’s like a push to your back, a hiding from what is not good, a protection from loved ones, a split from reality. But how can our young see this reality thing, so far from gathering whelks, firewood, fircones for kindling? So very far. In an urban situ, the roads busy, the boss bossy, the troubled teens online upstairs, money the driving force, what hope? Well, I ask this, but don’t you ask this because I believe that a gazillion youngs are working this out. Just be there. Doesn’t matter where you live. Where they live. They are brilliant human beings, loving, caring, watching, learning. And, here’s Granny……

Ask for help, for guidance, if that works better. We are a human team. Find your guide, for now.

by

Island Blog – The Jousting Woman

Women used to joust, you know, back in the jousting days. Needless to say, they had to look like men, breasts bound. But, coated in gmail, no, chainmail, sorry, all they needed were huge biceps, strong thighs for clamping a horse, hands free, great eye-arm precision and bloody mindedness; a Boudicca sort of attitude and a kick ass determination to be a fighter, regardless of their sex. Altough jousting was fast and furious, it rarely ended in tragedy, but only in collapsed pride. Women, wiry and flexible are less rigid, less stuck in the ways of men and, more importantly, less encumbered by ego and swagger. In fact, swaggering is not what we bother with at all. Wrong shape for starters.

I will get the call tomorrow, the one from my wonderful surgeon, the one who will tell me the wotwot of my nexting. I will hear that only radiotherapy is next, after Christmas, and for one week. Or, I will hear that more surgery is required and, then, the radiotherapy. I have said I refuse chemo. I’ve seen too many of my community go for it, only to lose a year, at least, in sickness and pale-faceless and loss of self-confidence, and then, for some, to fade away anyway. No bloody thanks. However, if I was 40 (loved that birthday) I might have chosen differently, but I am not, I am 70 and that’s a fricken long life. I have lived like nobody else has lived. I have adventured every single day, dealt with chaos, damage, disaster and celebrations which everyone who came would agree were the best. Me and the old bugger were excellent party hosts. Just saying.

Not that I am going under. Whatever my results are, I am ready and peaceful. I cannot control the most of it, but I can control me and my attitude and. my thankfulness and my humour and that mischievous imp behind my eyes and in my throat. I can do that because life is the most wonderful thing. My life is the most wonderful thing. So, btw, is yours because without it, there is nothing much.

So, although I began with jousting, I still like the thought of Joan of Arc-ing myself up to meet the stranger which is Cancer. I doubt I could hold the chainmail, nor clamp the horse, hands free, but there is something about flying there, about letting go, and not just of the joust pole; like a spirited game-on thingy, the pounding of hooves, the tension, the timing, the invisibility.

Whatever I hear tomorrow will take me forward, and forward is the only way for a jousting woman.

by

Island Blog – A Wonderful Thing

I’ve decided. I may have breast cancer and wotwot, but the knowledge has kicked my wobbly butt. I used to think that bereavement and loneliness was a fricking big deal not so long ago. Then I was Nearly Dead for a couple of weeks and now cancer is my new companion, offering a new perspective. It thinks me. How Life twist and tapselteeries us, what a tumbler, a flipdoodle, and once a simple human using a minute percentage of her huge brain has come to some sort of agreement with all this twisting, tumbling, flipdoodling thingy, there remains a think or two. So much of it all is way beyond my control, but there are snippets of life or self, over which I have complete control. So that is the country in which I have landed. It is new territory, for sure. I have sat on said wobbly butt for almost 3 years now and you can tell. I refuse to run anywhere for fear of setting off a landslide. Looking out at Life through windows is no way to live, even if the looker cannot see any side of Life to which he or she belongs any more. Once, she was this busy, rushing, active, caring woman and now, well now, she is a blob, a pointless one. It isn’t that she misses the man to whom she was married, because she doesn’t. He was wonderful and infuriating. He was everything to her and he drove her to distraction. He reached his Sell By date most timely. She was done with caring for him. And yet, and yet, his presence was something she thought she could live without and with ease and, in that, she was delusional. His company, his very self had merged with her own, dammit. She knows that now. It took that horsefly bite, that collapse into Nearly Deadness and the subsequent cancer Hallo, to sharpen her wits, to tell her that she is now her own purpose and that knowledge requires action.

So, I call the local swimming pool. Local! ha! It is 23 winding miles away, a real shlep and I do not like swimming pools, no thank you. However, my wobbly butt tells me it needs attention and not the unwanted sort. I, through 3 years of sitting on it, writing, sewing, hiding, reading, are done. I had to go for a chest Xray this morning and that takes me very close, dangerously so, to the damn swimming pool. So, I clear my throat and call. I speak to Nadia, delightful, and she tells me there are no lessons on a Friday. I explain, overly so, that I must build up muscle tone having lost it all somewhere, although I couldn’t tell her where. X ray complete, no metal, no, hold this, rest your chin, done, thanks Helen. The sun is warm, ditto the wind. Glorious. Well no excuse now. Damnit again. I arrive, book in, swim, hating the first two lengths and then, and then, I get into my stride. Instead of jerking and splashing and hating it, I begin to flow. Well, sort of. After I spend a while chatting with the girls at reception and we laugh and connect and now I have to go again next week because I said I would.

I swing my sassy mini out of the car park and drive home. My energy level is up. It hasn’t been anywhere near the Up thing for 3 years. I grab a mushroom omelet for lunch and decide to take the barky terrier (bored) to Calgary beach, ignoring the usual flaps about No Parking Spaces, or Meeting The Bus on That Tiny Road (especially on corners) and we are off! I feel wild again, my favourite feeling. No jumper required. Only a poo bag and a my phone for photos. The sky is as blue as my hair, the tide way out (Blue Moon) and it is lunchtime so the sands are almost empty. The bay is huge and we walk it, in and out of the warm saltwater. Geese fly overhead and I almost fall over watching them. Life. Life. Life abounds, and in me too.

Home again but still fizzing with NRG, I decide to wander to the shore to gather sloes for gin, even as I have no gin, yet. I balance cautiously, on the rickety rocks of the shore, and gather the beautiful blue berries. I hear seabirds, the rush of a changing tide, the laughter of children somewhere across the sealoch. I wander home as leaves fall around me. The faithful old trees are heading for a long sleep, and Autumn is in full and fine fettle holding up blue skies and clouds, stars, Lady Moon and Father Sun. The circle of Life circles on, as I move gently through memories and hurts and joys and promises of more to come. I don’t know what, of course, but just the knowing is a wonderful thing.

by

Island Blog – We Got This

And, then, today. Children, including Little Boots, to school for nine (the older girls), and a new nursery for LB. A new nursery, strange people, other kids, unknown space and all, but she was in like she already knew the lot. How must it be for someone so wee? Looking up noses, level pegging with knees and hip bones. I don’t remember it, thankfully.

The day, as it does for young mums and dads, pulls away like a bolting horse. There is breakfast to wash up, a dicey floor food scrap mosaic for Henry to guzzle up, two cats to feed, washing to wash, dinner to consider and prep, plans to make for later, the swim lessons some miles away, the snacks to make for the journey to appease tired girls, hangry girls. We found the swim pool, swimmed, came home again, home again, jiggetty jig. There is allotted time for ‘devices’, an allotted time that is always way too short for the players, then a wee snack, a peek at the Night Garden and off up the stairs to bedlington. In theory, there’s a night of sleep ahead, but this is never guaranteed, for there be dragons in the dark, as I remember well. Life rolls on, bolts on, lurches from dance class through swim, play dates, parties and athletics, all a drive away, all with a timeline. The time these parents spend in parking slots waiting, and waiting is just a bit part in the huge production of young parenthood. I watch it, and I remember, but vaguely. At Tapselteerie we had no television reception, no devices, no computers, no mobile phones and, do you know what? I am so very glad because I would never have had the patience for what is the norm today. Never.

Cooler now, and I think of home, of my friend up there living in a home with underfloor heating off, a range off, looking after my wee Poppy dog who looks quite the thing on rocks by the shore, all fluffy and not bothered with the coolth of these days. It is as if I left in one season and will return in the next, which is true, I will. The missing of that change in my own place, my home place, my bone place, my roots, always comes like a stranger to me. It did in those times I went to Africa one month and returned 2 later to snow boots and waterproofs when I only carried a light jumper, sneakers and a piddly jacket to cover my upper echelons. Waiting for the bus at Glasgow airport, I stood out like a fairy in Buchanan Street. It laughed me somewhat, through the grinning shivers.

As I do this waiting thing, I laugh and chuckle with a scatterdore of children. I watch the parents duck and dive, consider, negotiate, and sensitively, oh so sensitively, work with the new generation, to grow them into strong, unbiased, feisty individuals. I, perhaps, did the same, we did, because it took mum and dad to do this, at least, for us and for ours. It sure looks like we did ok, as I observe the five results out there doing this living thing, in the now of now. I wonder if he noticed this, the dead dad of 3 years tomorrow. He didn’t talk much about it, about how our children ‘turned out’, but I believe he was impressed with the way they grew far beyond us, way outside our understanding, our ‘norm’. He smiled a lot around our young, got grumpy with the noise of young-ness, felt, I am guessing, de trop with a lot of their lives, as I can myself. Too many girls, he would growl. 8 of them and just one boy, nine girls now and only 2 boys. A fractal world in his mind.

So, tomorrow, old sea dog, we will remember the day you died. It was lunchtime, ish. The boys laid bets on the time. It was gallows humour, and anyone who has witnessed the dying of a parent will understand that humour.

And then we move on. We got this.

by

Island Blog – Hallo and Thank you

Today I woke too early, my head full of monsters. Will I have major or minor surgery? Will I be strong enough to deal with it all? What will be the treatment after? Will I forget my headphones? (locate my headphones), or miss the ferry because the milk lorry has capsized in the Glen? Will I arrive, as I did for the Nearly Dead hospital visit, with one nightie, no cardy and no tweezers? Tweezers? Seriously? Will my little beloved dog fall ill when I’m away, and how long will I be away? Will the chimney sweep come, will the garden go to riot because I’m not watching it? Okay, you get the monsters. They all say YES, to all of the above, of course they do, the negative bastards.

Right, you lot, I said, startling the small dog into barks and a leap from her bed. Right! No, Wrong! You is NOT getting me in a right fankle at 04.30 whilst still inside my nightie (take 3, maybe four, do I have four?) and with my eyes barely focussed, you is not. We all rose from the tangle of duvet and I did try to leave them upstairs but they had a different plan. We watched the early birds, the light spreading over the sea-loch, over my garden, over the land, like a new story. Heretofore, this has given me a new vision, a new day, a new dawn, but this morning, no. The damn monsters of fear and anxiety, of a still resident exhaustion in my battle to be undead, kept up their clatter-chatter. It is a longtime since I had to fight them in this way. I tell myself, it is okay to feel these feelings, but it isn’t okay at all because they give me indigestion and backache and a squiffy head and no inner peace. I tell myself that anyone else would feel this way, but that doesn’t help either.

Do I not appreciate the support and love from my family, friends and blog readers? Yes, I do very much. So, why isn’t that enough? It thinks me, a lot and those thinks lead me to the (possible) conclusion that, no matter how many are around us, surround us, we ultimately sail alone. We need to manage our own craft across all sorts of dodgy oceans. In the knowing of that, I managed the hours of today, just. I rested a lot, read a whole book, walked into Tapselteerie and met not one soul, something that would normally delight me, but not today. Today I wished for an encounter, just a wee hallo and a passing chat. I went to the shop for a few bits now that my ‘recovery’ and ‘preparation’ demands a whole load of dark green vegetables, pulses, seeds and probiotics. I didn’t even know what that meant before now. I just cooked and ate.

I have decided that this living alone thing is not much fun, not when you want a Resident Familiar to proffer balance in the face of inner monsters. That smile, that joke, that ‘come on, let’s go out for coffee’, or to the beach, or something. Although my Resident Familiar left the relationship a long time ago when dementia arrived to take up residence, he was still here, a sometimes warm, living Familiar. I don’t want him back, but that is not the point. When a girl is swept off her feet at just 18 when she still has no idea about life beyond the parental home, she can be forgiven for feeling somewhat lost after 50 bonkers years of marriage to a dominant male and on the adventure of a lifetime. Being alone means I have to instigate everything and others, who have a Resident Familiar, are, well, busy until next Tuesday. I get that. I was always busy till next Tuesday, and for decades. But, on the other side of that, being alone is marvellous, so freeing, so uplifting, so damn new. How bizarre.

I am not moaning. Tomorrow will come and will proffer a new set of ideas, new feelings. Today is just today. So why do I write a blog? Should I not, instead, keep all of this to myself so as to spare whoever reads these words? Possibly, but I have been a polite girl/woman for a very long time and right now I feel raw and bloody and honest and congruent. I don’t want phone chats, don’t want visitors, don’t want anything at all, in truth, other than for these feelings to melt away. I am effortlessly positive as a rule because that is how I see this gift of a life. Perhaps, then, I am simply in a place I do not recognise, one that upskittles me, tries to trip me right over. Yes, that’s it. I don’t know this terrain and it is hostile. Simples. And it really helps to write and to post. Really, it does. In writing out my feelings about whatever is going on, and to send it into the ether, whatever that is, my spirits lift into a reassurance, that no face to face contact can give me. I think of you all, in Canada, In the States, in Englandshire, in Scotland, on islands across the world, and I reach out, saying, through my own stories, Hallo and Thank you for being there, for clicking on the ‘follow’ link to my blog, for reading my words. I also imagine your lives, tough at times, maybe many many times, easy here and there, the infuriations, the lifts, the shocks, the abundance and the lack. The bones of a life, the flesh and the guts of an ordinary/extraordinary time on this goodly earth. Life, I love you. I truly do.

See? I feel better now, just writing this. Hallo you all. And Thankyou.

by

Island Blog – Thanks to a Horsefly

I’m here, back home and in the wealth of warmth. Well, warm, eventually, as the mornings can be sharp and bitey, requiring jumpers and leg coverings and a very good attitude to the shivers that challenge a mug of hot coffee. The afternoons sprawl wealthy on the bed of confidence, no leg coverings required, in fact, bring on the fans please. T’is weird and the way it is. By noon, I am overly clad and fighting my morning garb for the sudden, and somewhat desperate freedom from all that morning hoo-ha, which I abandon on the stairs. Jumper, leg cladding, even wrist warmers for the day is in pieces up here. Where once, we knew how the day would be, might be, the wise cautionaries telling us to keep our semets (vests with buttons and much restriction) on for months to come, now there is disarray and not only in the vest, leg cladding, jumper department. Weather steers moods. Cold rain, warm rain, just rain. Promise of sun, hope of sun, arrival of sun. It all guides us from pissed off to delighted, from a confirmed ‘there’s no hope’ to the one who is alert and watching the cloud shift, is accepting climate change, is actually the one in the game. And the game is more than weather. The game is one we play together and alone. Many of us have been assaulted by massive loss, like a sudden death. I almost cannot follow that sentence. It is too catastrophic. Too alone.

I find this next bit quite hard to say, as if I feel that what is going on with me palls by comparison to the catastrophic and sudden loss, one I have been close to this last week, and a timeline I can never be a part of, beyond the paltry can give.

But I am saying it. My time in hospital, whilst I fought to be not dead, has thrown up something important. With Cellulitis, there is a lot of swelling and one lymph gland remaind high despite the massive doses of antibiotics that saved my life, and after which, my consultant, Isobel, God bless her, sent me for a mammogram and biopsy and ultra sound. She was right. I have breast cancer, an unusual one, called Invasive Lobular Cancer. She, the cancer, is quiet, not necessarily presenting in lumps, although they did, eventually find one, the half size of a frozen pea. She appears in the right breast for the first time, as I have had at least five no problem lumps in the left.

What I feel is scared, unsure, and thankful for a horsefly bite. Beyond all those intitial feelings I am unsure about being in the garden. Thankyou friend Winnie for guiding me to big ass protection. Thank you to my ex breast cancer sisters who guide me to probiotics and dark green veg. I will leave island in a week for consultation and biopsy and mammogram and MRI and a whole load of questions and decisions. I don’t know whether it will be a lumpectomy or a complete wheech off of breasts. But what I do know is the strength of my family, my siblings.

I am suddenly cautious coming downstairs, cautious about walking out without a kick ass protection slathered over me. I am aware of my age, and that seemed to come overnight. Slower to move, all of that shit. But, for now I am watching eider duck on the sealoch, divers, geese, and the sun is creating diamonds on the salty surface.

And I am eternally grateful to a horsefly.

by

Island Blog – Forward into Life

It feels like ages since I last wrote a blog, and it is, ages. So where have I been? Into a strange world, one I have never visited before, one I cannot locate on a map, a whole new country.

Perhaps I should start at the beginning.

Two, or more, weeks ago, I felt weary and lethargic, two feelings alien to me, two that begged investigation and not by me alone. I was aching and sore, my arms unable to reach for anything without a wince of pain. I was un-hungry and found it hard to get comfortable in bed. A friend drove me to my doctor’s appointment and within minutes she called the local hospital to admit me. As a thankfully healthy woman with little experience of hospitals beyond the birthing of babies, I was surprised but acquiescent, feeling as unwell as I did. Once there, the doctor checked me out, focussing on an insect bite on my back, around which was a raised pink swelling. Two days later I was moved to the mainland, to a bigger hospital.

Over the next 4 hours the red spread and I was pretty much out of it. Pumped full of super strong antibiotics, drip fed, and trying to get comfortable, the days and nights passed in a blur, interrupted only by regular checks on my state of health and the nightly delivery of other souls into a hospital bed. These women, frightened, most of whom had fallen, all who lived alone, were quieted eventually by the excellent and compassionate nursing team.

After five days, I came back to life, having no idea how seriously ill I had been. Everything escalated so fast, too fast for me to comprehend but not beyond the understanding and medical intelligence of the doctors in charge. I remember walking to the window to see the pretty garden beneath, the trees, the flowering shrubs, the wheel and scatter of swifts and house martins cutting the sky in half as the bugs rose from hiding and becoming lunch. I remember feeling upright and not so sore, the joy of it, the thankfulness rising in me, a mother hug. I remember hot porridge for breakfast, the excellent meals served daily. I remember the cleaners, their smiles as they washed down the ward eveery day. I remember the can-do attitude of the nurses (lordy what a job!) and the bright light laughter from each nursing shift that skittered along the corridors, spilling into each ward to make the vulnerable smile. I remember talking to other inmates, hearing their stories, holding hands that had held so many other hands over so many years. I remember the sadness and joy of visitors around beds, the muffled conversations, the concern etched on family faces. I remember quiet conversations with a night nurse, waking me yet again for a health check, the administration of yet another drip. I remember the smiles, the reasurrances, the gentle touch of a confident hand on my own wobbly one. All will be well, the hand said, in the end. Keep fighting. Gradually, I became mobile again, walking around the hospital carpark, up to the helipad, seeing goldfinches feeding on grass seeds, their unique chatter like champagne bubbles in my ears. Everything felt new, as if I was a newborn and seeing all this life for the first time. I suspect anyone who has faced down death will know what I mean, even though I couldn’t, and still can’t, really believe it to be true for me. Severe cellulitis is dangerous. And all, it seems, from an insect bite on my back. That tiny creature, that random bite nearly did for me. And, yet, I thank it. How else could I know what it is to be newborn at 70? T’is a rare and beautiful gift indeed.

Now, as I recuperate with family, resting, building new strength into momentarily wasted muscles, while I move around the sun dappled garden, watching the dogs play and hearing the laughter of happy girls on holiday, all I feel is a daily upwelling of gratitude, for life herself, for the medical care and affection, for my family’s support and love. When I am home again among the beloved hills of the island, watching the tidal dance, hearing the sea-birds call as the fish rush in, I will remember this time, all of it, all the tiny details of such a strange journey. From nearly dead to very much alive, a moving forward into life, a new one, a gift, a second chance.

It will take me sometime to process and a forever to forget.

by

Island Blog – A Story for the Bridge

The birds wake me, for there is no other disturbance here. I know, I know, many hear the bin lorry, early traffic, noisy neighbours, those heading for work or those heading home from work, but not here, here where the biggest sounds are from Nature. And I am glad I live here. However, it is not always a treat. The sun doesn’t always shine big, bright and warm and oftentimes the birds are punched backwards by the gales that can rise in Spring, Autumn, and definitely in Winter, and Winter stays way too long. Always has. But we who have lived here longtime, have learned to love the whole of island life. We might turn blue in the endless months of rain and chill, but we know that our weather, an unique weather pattern, will, in time, turn on the sun to warm us. And we have learned how to bring a smile into any day, even if it takes a lot of physical strength to remain upright when moving from car to shop.

The garden is dry, the island is dry. A rare thing, and not so rare, historically. There is talk of a water ban. I remember one, way back in Tapselteerie days, when bowsers came over on the ferry, their big rotund bellies full of someone else’s water. Not for us, though, with our independent flow of spring water, but for others on the mains. Holiday cottages, bed and breakfasts, hotels, all flapdoodled without water. Water. The {almost} only thing we need to survive.

I am watching weeds thrive in this mini drought. It thinks me. If I had to come back as a plant I would come as a weed, a pretty one, mind, but a weed, nonetheless. These creatures are tough, survivors, invasive, yes, but they survive. What does that say about me, I wonder? I believe I am hot-wired for survival, and not just a wimpy sort of almost there sort of survival, but a pushy, strong and flowering one. I meet many of my age and on into their 70’s, and see myself as fortunate, indeed. Others have not been so lucky, as weedy me, I see, walking with sticks and supports, with hair that hasn’t seen a hairdresser for some time, who are out of breath and melting in this heat. I put up a big thank you, and pull down a blessing for each one of them. These folk are my folk. We danced in village halls together, not so very long ago, but there will be no more dancing for them.

There is a bridge over our lives, one we all must traverse, at some point. It’s a swing bridge, one we don’t really trust. Half-way across, exactly, is the keystone. It lies in the middle ride, and without this keystone, we would all end up in the water. I am on it, we all are, once we hit our three score years and ten, and, because I can still dance, i can help, encourage and support others around me. Together we can laugh at the inevitable, remember our younger days and lift our long memories into play, batting them back and forth between us like shuttlecocks, because we have shared a history on this island, through all the difficult days and through all the happy ones. Only our circumstances are different. Our sense of fun is the same.

I just went to the shop to buy compost for the dry earth, readying it for a sluice of goodness. Prior to this, I had walked the hotdog to the shore for some coolth and a tiddle about on the rocks. I found a tiny shell, a twizzley one, like a minute snail. I also picked up wire, plastics, rope and twine, which would, had I left it, have rejoined the ocean at high tide. Having only two hands, I pushed the tiny sea-snail shell down my front. I would find it again, eventually. Forgetting it completely, I drove to the shop, smiled everyone up and lugged my compost into the boot. Once home, something caught my attention and I burst out laughing. This snail shell had migrated into just the wrong place, so that it looked like one nipple stood out and proud. I thought the shopkeeper had looked at me, a tad abashed.

I wish I’d had that story for the bridge.

by

Island Blog – A Mammoth and a Rant

Today was sludge. Some days just are, and not just for me, even as my own day takes on an immense importance. T’is disproportionate, I know, I bloody know. Nonetheless, it is so. I wake too early, about 5am which, I tell myself, roundly, is fine in the months of early light. My other self reminds me that winter is so very loooooooooong up here and those 5 ams are quite ghastly. An oxymoron, just for your information. Something is either ghastly or it isn’t. There is no ‘quite’ about it. Just saying. I trudge on through coffee, sweeping a floor, putting away drained dishes from my solitary supper the night before. I light the fire. In May,? Myself catches me by the arm. I want to swear at her. It is cold, I annunciate each word, my lips exaggerating ridiculously, just in case, overnight, she has suffered a demise of the brain or a loss of hearing. I eat breakfast, of sorts, and it is done and swallowed by 6. Now what? I wander through the rooms, looking for an answer. The carpet needs hoovering but it will do and, to be honest, I cannot find the energy to connect with my hoover. I shower, dress, come downstairs. 6.15. My mind heads off into loony land. What, I speak this out loud, is the point of my existence, hmmmm? My husband is dead, my children, and theirs, are all miles away and I am tired of everything. I can write, oh hell yes, I can write. I can sew, walk, watch nature, tidy, cook for one, clean out the fridge, even hoover the damn carpet/s. How exciting can a life become?

But, when will I pull on my fancy boots and be whisked away to dinner, one I don’t pay for? When will I look forward, in anticipation to a shared evening, a game of scrabble, the intercourse involved in the tricky process of preparing mango chutney from mangoes, or plum brandy for Christmas, the fun of discussing an evening with friends, the shall we do this-ness of real life, because being alone after so long is not real life. It is not. It. is survival. Who will dip the oil tank? Just me. Who will repair the faulty back door lock? Just me. Who will watch a fantabulous sunset and marvel? Just me. Eish , not enough, not by a long chalk, whatever that means. The rip asunder of a shared life, no matter the palaver of it all, is like a chasm and there are days I fall in, spending half of the next week climbing out, and for what?

A rant, on first looking, is like meeting a mammoth in a doorway. It is huge, inappropriate and tusked up. It is also, by its being there, blocking forward motion and also a massive startlement. It has to be named and addressed. There’s a mammoth in the doorway, you might say and those around and benigh you would immediately tell you there is no such mammoth. But there is. No, they say, kindly, a hand staying your pointing arm, there is just a clear and empty doorway, a way through, a clear passage. It is infuriating to be thus denied and fixed. When I am facing a mammoth, what I need is someone to believe me, whether they see said mammoth or no because if that did happen, and someone stood beside me, listened, heard and never said anything, I would disappear the beast all by myself. I would feel seen, heard and honoured, and the mammoth would, I just know it, look puzzled and confused. Oh, oops, wrong doorway, wrong timeline and way too warm. He/she would turn around and lumber off, soon distant, a natural departure. Instead, when I hear a trillium of flowery wonderments, covered as I am in slime and mud, cut and grazed from yet another climb out of the chasm, I feel unseen, unheard, dishonoured.

I know it is a natural desire to fix a ‘problem’ but if someone just needs to name the mammoth and you are privileged enough to be that much of a friend, just be there and say nothing. It is the quickest way to send the mammoths away.

by

Island Blog – The Tomorrowlands

This morning begins, for me, at a time that bothers me in its insistence. No! I almost shout but don’t, modifying my shout-ness, even though there is nobody else to hear, this is no longer acceptable, this 05.30 lark when even the larks are slumbering on. And, yet, my body clock ignores my remonstrations with the tenacity of a teenager. I give in and get up. The light is the right light, the morning light, and the day is dawning whether I like it or not. I do like it for I am an inveterate morning person. What does inveterate mean? I forget, but it fits because other people use it around such subjects as chips with vinegar, reading crime novels and gardening, to mention but three inveteration opportunities.

I digress. Risen and with coffee on the brew, I wander into the conservatory which is cold. The nights are cold, star-backed and sometimes frosty, a relief from the heat of the sun. I am not complaining. Sun and heat are rare gifts in this island life and nobody with a modicum of sense moans about the odd times we enjoy both of these together. Oh we know the sun is out there somewhere, behind a depth of cloud cover that could halt an entire Scottish regiment, a feat most opponents have historically failed to achieve, but the ability to get the old boy to push through has confounded us longtime. Wishing doesn’t cut it, nor do prayers. Weddings can, and have, capsized a whole bride. Nonetheless, we island on because the beauty of this lump of rock is second to none.

The day slows down as I feared it might. Some days are tortoises where they used to be hares, way back when a clamjamfrie of children, not all my own, plucked at my skirts for biscuits and pressed for attention, then disappearing alarmingly, returning just in time and in dire straits, when food was required every 30 minutes and when life had her hand in the small of my back. Move on, move quicker, MOVE! Now there are no such demands, no pressure from life, in fact she is now telling me, the skeerie minx, to slow down, to ca’ canny, to rest. But even as I dislike this sudden, for it feels sudden, lowering of my sails, it is here with me now and I must needs welcome it as I welcomed, and thanked, the spirited life in my limbs. I decide to shift the limb spirit into my mind. It seems to work. Instead of bemoaning a loss of spirit and strength, I welcome it into my thinking. It decides my thoughts which decide my feelings which decide my actions. I have learned this from life coaches, a few of whom, or is it which, are in my family, and I have imbibed the truth of it and taken it as ‘read’. Funny that word. Read sounds like ‘reed’ and we know what it means. Read sounds like ‘red’ and now we are much confused. Heaven knows how anyone can ever comprehend, pronounce or employ such tiddleypom when learning English, especially the old English, a language quite beautiful to me but if I were to launch into it in, say, a Glasgow pub, I might not get home at all.

I’m still digressing. What I wanted to communicate was and is that my day was slow. It took me half hour stretches of resistance to restlessness, holding, controlling my desire to lift, walk, move, and it thinked me of the sea, the waves on the beach, fretting at the sand as an old woman plucks at the bobbles on her old cardigan. I read a bit, walked a bit, went to the shore a bit, made a feta and spinach dip, a bit, sewed a bit and la la la. I know it is right and proper for my children to have their own lives. I celebrate that. I know that it is right that my old china is dead. I celebrate that too, because it was always going to happen and could have been so much more upsetting than it was. I know I am perfectly tickety-wotwot alone. And, I also know that there are so very many other people out there who know exactly how it all feels.

Slow days, they come, but the joy of living in this funny, clever, resourceful and dynamic community is something I treasure and will treasure again at 05.30 in the Tomorrowlands.