life

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Island Blog – RIP Old Friend

I knew it was coming but not when. Meantime, not knowing the ‘when’ part, my days continued ordinary and soft, although the sadness lifted my ruffles from time to time making me shiver. Those around his bed would know more, I knew that, just as we had known as we watched our own ‘him’ move invisibly towards that other place whence no-one ever returns. He was ill, he was dying and yet the hold on life seems to me to defy even intense pain and the desire for it all to end, for a life to end. Life is a strong force indeed, no matter how careless we may be around the years we live it. We hold on and hold on and why, when it is clear to everyone, to ourselves, that death is in the room patiently waiting for our fingers to let go.

I picture an image of those children, now with children of their own, of my friend, his wife, around his last bed. I know the taste of exhaustion, the longing for it to be over, the fear of just that. I know the smell of dying, the sound of it in raspy and hesitant breaths, the lift of gallows humour among the watchers, laughter flying around the room, small fry defence against the enormity of what lies before them all. A whole long life almost gone but not quite, no, another breath, the rise of it a sinking inside the room. Let him go. Let. Him. Go. But he defies the wish and breathes on and on and on and the night watchers watch and there is tea and coffee for staying awake and stories to fill the room. Remember This? Remember when he, when we, that time on the beach, on the farm, during the thunder storm, when the dog died, that party, my wedding, my wedding, my wedding?

And his wife of over 50 years will be numb. What do you do after over 50 years as a man’s wife, as mother to his children? Does anybody know the answer to that? You were a young beauty back then, full of hope and sparkles and dreams, a real catch, they said, lucky him, they said, and he was. To be a farmer’s wife is no easy task. Nobody takes shifts, you just both shift and often at the drop of a hat, or a piglet or a calf. You rise from slumber because you have to. There is nobody else will take this job, not at this hour when night is still heavy black and dawn is miles away enjoying herself. You take it all on. So what happens to your dreams and hopes and sparkles? Ah…….good question, and here comes strength and spirit and the life force within and she has plenty of that, this new widow, my old friend.

I know what it is like to be a widow and I also know it has taken me over two years to even like myself in my solo role, one I yearned for so many times but had no clue about until he breathed his last. It was a relief, at first. Nobody wants to watch suffering after all, but that doesn’t last. I know that she will be busy and organised at first, dealing with admin and people and responding to sympathy cards et lala , but about two months in, it hits like a demolition ball, wheeching the feet out from under and with just cold ground on which to land. I wish I could wish this away for her but I cannot. I know the impact of this explosion will be huge for his children but not in the same way. She is now alone in her lovely cottage and no amount of warmth from the range and the fires will un-chill her, because, and I am only observing here, her marriage, like my own, was a traditional one (although she is a lot feistier that I) and he will have taken care of things she never had to learn.

And so, it is. It makes no difference at all that he was of a ‘good age’ as if that makes it acceptable. The death of a life is never that. A whole person is gone, all of the irritations, all of the expectations, frustrations, criticisms, encouragements, smiles, rejections, affection and direction has hit the final buffers. We are now arriving at Death Station where this train will terminate. Just like that. Just today. He is gone. RIP old friend.

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Island Blog – If you Choose, then Dig.

Today the hooligan is blindways with a sideway slant of rain and wind. It’s from the South West which makes it okay enough, in that it won’t cut the legs off me when I walk out, nor skin the lips off my mouth, nor turn my eyeballs to ice. It’s irritating nonetheless. I slew right into the punch of it and hear the skitter upset of sparrows inside the rhododendron infiltratus, their safe house. There are many of them in there, all a-chatter, all talking at once. It wonders me that anything finds resolution in the sparrow world. There seems to be no leader, calling order, order, order. I move on watching puddles ripple as the wind skids across their surface, the sink holes, those birthed from the recent frosts, deep as ditches overnight. Cautious you drivers, gaw canny over this track. In my boots I have time and unfrozen eyeballs enough to avoid a sink, even though I do look, I do peer down, wondering if the old track I used to know way back is fighting its way back up to reveal itself, to have a voice in this cover-everything-over world.

The tram wires shimmy and shake overhead. A blackbird lands and I watch the way he, for it is an he, works his body into balance, his tail canting, a rudder in the wild of this wind. The rain, I watch it across the sea-loch as it rages right, right out to the west yearning, as water always will, to rejoin Mother Sea. I will be blown easy on the first leg of my walk and the return will be a fight. I align my frocks accordingly. I have no fear of rough weather, and great respect. Out here on the almost most westerly place before a collision with the US, I know what I am dealing with and it delights me. I can hear the stories, but not the words. I can feel the feelings of those who lived and knew this place even as I have no idea at all. My childhood, safe and not here at all, did not give me the roots I now know belong here, on the islands. It was as it was and it was a wonderful grounding, for a while, but the wild in me is home here in these capricious winds, even with climate change because it really isn’t so very different from how it always was. It was no big deal to walk down to a ceilidh and arrive soaked to the skin; no big deal to be marooned on the wrong side of the water when a gale arose like a nightmare from nowhere. We learned to adapt and I, as a Blow-In, or White Settler or whatever label was pulled forward at the time, found my home. I know, now, through research that my maternal forebears were island fold, sea-going folk, west coast folk and it thrills me for I am home. I am home.

Many of us wonder, if we do wonder, why it is we feel out of kilter, un-heard and lost. It might take a lifetime to find roots but if I was to suggest anything, I would say Go Seek. Roots run deep and deep can mean nobody digs. So, if you choose, then Dig.

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Island Blog – A Finagle, Life, Death and Beauty

I have spent many days finagling with my bird feeders. Initially I moved them, a no brainer, from the middle of the tiny front garden because my neighbour let her cats out. They are beautiful creatures, tortoiseshell and long limbed with amber eyes, a bit like the Scottish Wildcat. The male, Hamish, is particularly friendly so that I just could not squirt him with a water pistol after he leaped onto the bird table and made himself comfortable, awaiting breakfast or lunch. The female, a fast hunter was more wily. She found that to hide beneath a Pieris Japonica gave her just the chance she needed to pounce-and-claw a bird too many times. I wheeched out the bird table and cut all the lower branches of the PJ, thus un-hiding her. I still couldn’t bring myself to squirt. I am not, by nature, a squirter, preferring as I do to befriend all animals including human ones. Then there was the sparrow hawk, her dive of certain death, for she rarely misses. He, her mate, prettier by far with his red and indigo colouring is smaller, slower and more likely to be on my Christmas list, much as I respect his missus. I walked out once and it must have caught her mid dive, mid dive at 80mph from the ancient pines back of house for I felt her lift my hair, the touch of her claw on my head before she lifted up and away, no doubt in relief. The bird table, mid grass, made successful hunting all too easy and although I know sparrow hawks mun eat too, I didn’t want to feel that I was holding out a plateful of sparrows, finches, blackbirds and robins like a waitress in a restaurant.

I moved all my beautifully honed bespoke iron feeder posts, some swirls, some twists, some straight up and down to just beside the fence. I eyed the line from ancient pines to bird swipe and saw that any dive could be a disaster. My mini, parked close by and the wheelie bins in line would certainly threaten a headache at the very least. Satisfied, I watched the daily arrival of my feathered friends. A sudden throng of sparrows, maybe 20 at a time, fluttering in as a group to feed; a nervousness of goldfinch, individual robins and a bicker of blackbirds, all friendly as I walk out, staying nearby, chirping at me. I am a friend, unfeathered, slow-moving, soft spoken. There is no squirter in me, no fast diver of death and with no desire to eat any of them, and they know it. But wait. The ground feeder birds, blackbirds and robin redbreast, do not have the feets to cling as tits and goldfinch do. They need some flat base upon which to land. I eye my bird table now resting in the garage and shake my head. It’s big enough for a cat, remember? So I order online what looks like a flour sieve with a hooky thing for attachment, to what I couldn’t work out but I’m resourceful enough, so I tell myself. It arrives and I wander out barefoot in the snow (you should try it, so so so exhilarating) on a quest to find something to attach the hooky thing to. A post, yes, perfect. I find a slim post and embed it into a raised bed near to my beautifully honed bespoke iron feeder posts and wait. The first to come is the coal tit, the bravest alongside a wren and the most curious. Others follow and I am all smiles and delight, until. Like a bolt of lightning, a female sparrow hawk dives, grabs mid-air and lifts away with a sparrow. I hear its cry of alarm and pain and they are gone. Furious at myself I stomp back out to remove what, in effect, was my waitress in a restaurant offering plate. I study the line from pine to pain once again, and what I need to do is to sort of hide the tray of seed behind something, but what something? Here it is, my wrought iron sweet pea cone with nobbles and sticking up bits, all ready to stand like a solid bodyguard between life and death. So far it’s working. When the sparrow hawk comes I no longer feel outrage and fury for they must eat and their flight and accuracy is a marvel to watch, but, like a mother, I will do whatever it takes to protect those within my power to protect. If I invite birds in, I take responsibility for their safety, as best I can.

I like the way I feel, the way I act. I love being curious. I also am happy to be aware of how nature works, how life becomes death in a flash, how species need to hunt in order to survive. Garden birds are pretty, beautiful to watch, but now I can watch death without thinking it cruel. It’s normal. It is how it is. And soon, I am off to Africa for 2 months. Let us see how accepting I am of the predators out there, the leopard, lion, hyena, hunting dogs, cheetah and many more as they bring down impala, zebra, giraffe or buffalo (only I don’t recommend that one, the most ferocious of bovines). I hope not to see it happen but I might. Beautiful predators, beautiful prey. It’s a tough one for us to accept. Perhaps that is what makes us compassionate human beings. I like that. I’ll stick with that.

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Island Blog – Dreams

We all have them, dreams, the night ones, disconnected to morning sensibilities, the ones in which we fly with Pan or save a child or fall off a cliff or battle with rats. I have had them all. Then there are the dreams we deem realistic. What I want to do, to achieve, to move away from or towards; the impossible ones given present circumstances, the ones folk say we can never achieve considering our history, financial situation, lack of experience, or of our hare lip, our stumble foot, our size, our faces our lack of voice, confidence, location.

In our night dreams nothing and everything keeps us from our goal. We are omnipotent, invincible, or we are weak and warbling as we cascade the cliff. It might seem as if we have no choice over our night revels in a dream state, but I would countenance that with the face of what our life feels like to us right now. There is so so so much talk on how it is up to us to alter state, of mind and of body, so much, as if we are students in school and all we have to do is to learn the lesson taught. A night dream is an overflow, if you like, of the feelings of the day, the week, the life we lead. Yes, in the perfection of theory, if we have the courage, the means, the help to change our life, the one we don’t like and possibly haven’t for years, we have the power. But what is power faced with decades of supposed weakness, compliance and acceptance? It is a flimsy thing, a spent balloon, a scribble on a wall.

To rise like Joan of Arc is not for most of us, besides which, armour is hard to find in a shopping centre and horses are for those who can afford them, not to mention gathering an army. I might be hard pressed to gather men together for a bowls game, never mind an army of crack marksmen. I realise I say men. For now, allow me. Men are physically stronger after all. But I am not really talking about a woman leading men, more a person leading themselves. I know that just to lead myself is a frickin pain in the ass a whole load of days, and not least because of the conflict between my dreams and my ‘supposed’ realities. Back then I could not see one inch outside of my confinements. Had I challenged with my Joan of Arcness these confinements, well who knows? But I didn’t, not like her. And now, in my thinking years, the quieter days of soft reflection and occasional muddlement, of guilt assuaged and more soft landings than I ever knew before, I consider my dreams. The night ones come, and go, but I still have the daytime ones, full of ideas, aspirations and wide open thinking. However I am no fool. My time is less, my mobility less, my brain a little slower to catch up and I am okay with all of that. So I retune my myself as I might a guitar and know that I can still play a tune.

As a younger and foolisher woman, I aspired to the stars, to impossibilities given my situation. I ached to fly, to run, to be myself in a world of my choosing. Now, I am glad I failed myself on that one. Dreams are wonderful things, the daytime ones, and powerful too, but they need reigning in, cautioning with a big fat reality check. If you are going to be Joan of Arc, plan every single step and be very prepared for the ghastly. Dreaming into a dream is where the lost children are, those whose lives are just beginning, those who thought it was enough just to dream.

It isn’t, but then again, it is.

‘Saddle your dreams before you ride ’em’. Mary Webb. 1881-1927

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Island Blog – Langtangle and Shoe Laces

As life moves on, moves me on to my 70th year, I have time to ponder, reflect and consider. I have the mind for it too, because it seems to me that now I am looking in a different direction, one I have never known before. When young and full of family life, its accompanying chaotic joys and disasters, my eyeballs swivelled every which way, conscious of what was about to happen, what had just happened and what the hell I could do to stop it happening again. Nowadays the happening thing is mostly my own choice. Setting aside responsive reaction, say to a burst pipe or a postal delivery, I am the Happener, inhabiting endless space and time, able and sometimes unwilling, to ponder, reflect and consider. My thoughts wander over old mountains, some conquered, some the conquerors, over wild moor and vast expanses of desert sand. Some pondering lead me to old crimes, my old crimes and I squinge with discomfort as the memory builds into a certain prison sentence. I retreat quickly because I know well how false a memory can be, constructed over time, bridges built to connect two sets of circumstance that never came together at the time. It chuckles me as I banish the imaginary ghoul of mismemory. Away with you! I say. You were never thus.

This morning my thoughts, floating like tumbleweeds over tundra, billowed by a backwind, turn to what we leave behind and the list is long. Physical and metaphysical knowledge, recipes, familial data, skin flakes, nursery rhymes, stories of this and that, music, poetry, habits, opinions, demands, mistakes, gifts, DNA, clothing preferences, reactions, attitudes, diaries, kindnesses and so much more, our legacy. Such an unattractive word I think for such a potentially wonderful thing. So what do I want to leave behind when I am no longer here? A cloud of gas or a flight of light and beauty, peppered with humour and fairies? I know my answer to that and if I want to achieve such levity I must needs make certain of it because it is my choice and nobody else’s. How I choose to enter this part of my wonderfully ridiculously rambunctious life is a daily consideration. Not for me a decline into the grumps, nor the moans, nor the fatalism I had witnessed in my own now dead forbears who, bless their loving hearts, probably didn’t think they had any choice at all. My full of nonsense mother once said, and firmly, to me “There was no such thing as positive thinking in my day.” And she really believed that. However, these days we know different, that attitude is everything, regardless of circumstance, blight, long winters, loneliness, loss and no sourdough bread left in the village shop. We may not be able to ice skate upright, open jars of jam or lift a sack of potatoes but we can always laugh at ourselves, accepting that it is not our time for such shows of prowetic strength and besides we can always ask for help. Perhaps this time of quietening down is fulsome and maybe necessary for our young. In this age of Granny or Grandad, we can observe, soothe, stravaigle, consider and encourage, even if we barely understand what it must be like for young folk in this fast-paced, sometimes dangerous technological time. But we can teach observation, ask gentle questions, read together, wander over ancient ground, speak of the land, the sky, the sea, the winds with stories on their backs. We can show the mysteries of life, teach rhymes and songs, gift our time, time and more time because we have time now and they do not, not yet, not whilst life is a dash and a hurry, a fight, a competition, a langtangle of skids and slips, of leaps and crashes, of information invasion.

It was the same for us, many many years ago, and we remember the turmoil of growing up. Now we are growing down and I knew it yesterday as my eldest son walked into the church to watch the children’s nativity play. I used to be a foot taller, I thought, as he loomed over me grinning. I am shrinking. Good. That is fine with me and it means I can hide under a table with the children, with the giggles and the shushes and the chance to tie the adults shoe laces together.

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Island Blog – Still a Light

I watch the days and the nights. The sharp twist of frost overnight, the sun big as a baron in his barony, wide smiled and warm as a beacon. A light to guide. Jack Frost holds on as long as he can, but even he is no match for that burning fire star. Beaten, for a few hours, Jack slinks back to Winterland for a chilly snooze, biding his time. The switchback road is icy or it looks like it despite the gritter of last night, for it is still zero degrees. The sky is cerulean with whisper clouds, the ground flat and brown and decorated with frosted grasses. Sunlight catches the icy spider webs, diamonds in the bog willow and heather. I meet no cars at all. Ah, the perfection of island life in winter!

I am driving, not Miss Daisy, god bless her and RIP. By now she may appear recycled as a sardine tin and I sigh at the thought. So not how she would ever have seen herself. She may have had rusty underpinnings and found it a bit hard to fire into life of a chilly morning, but she was a strong spirited old girl and kept going till a very definite end. Out, as they say, like a light, which she was. It thinks me, about my own life, the light of it for me and, hopefully, for others. To remain in memories long after your drive belt, or shaft, or whatever has broken is a very uplifting thought. As we grow old, with rusty underpinnings and the struggle to fire up, we have a choice. We are sentient beings, spirited and intelligent and we can make that choice, no matter how crap we might feel, no matter our anxieties, aches, botherments and tiddleypoms. And they are, for the lucky ones, very tiddley indeed. As we readers and curiositors know very well, there is always a choice on how we present ourselves. I know of those, as you do, who have faced, are facing very dire internal horribles, whose lives are actively under threat and yet who still decide to be cheerful. I have nonesuch troubles but I like the ethic and choose it for myself. Ideally, I would like to live a good long life and to have my drive belt snap politely in a beautiful place with eagles soaring overhead and close to home, inside it, ideally. Miss Daisy almost managed the latter, but not quite. Her life ended just as we turned down the hill to home, thus allowing me the relief of knowing that we could freewheel all the way into the village. It could have happened on an upward bend, in snow, with the gritter coming at me like a huge yellow monster, but it didn’t.

This day I drive Miss Pixty, a sassy mini cooper who is a bit of a speed freak if I’m honest. I need to rein her in quite often, but she is great at turning on a sixpence, parking in tiny spaces and responding immediately to whatever I need her to respond to. She will outlive me, this teenager, and we have become fast friends. She is going for her full service, which means, I tell her, that handsome mechanics will be checking her personals. She blushes. It’s okay, I say. They are good lads and it will only take an hour or so. I meet an old friend for coffee. Neither she nor I admit to ‘old’ for we know that there are doddery old 90 year olds about, but because we have known each other for over 45 years. We laugh about getting older, learning acceptance, wisdom and humour at the various small demises we both encounter such as forgetments, bent fingers, slower walking and the strong likelihood of us walking through the town with our frocks tucked into our knickers. Together we can laugh. Alone we blush with embarrassment. We agree that connectivity at such a time is reassuring, uplifting, allowing us to feel we are not the only one going through this process none of us prepared for, one that came so quick, like a thief in the night.

I wander to various shops run by those I knew as children, not five minutes ago, those who now have teenage children of their own. It wonders me. Time, though an illusion, has such power to confuse a mind. She, Time, can scoot the years whilst also managed to dawdle an hour until I am screaming for the clock to hurry up and arrive at the end of itself. The smiles of welcome are heart warming. I wonder what they see as I fankle with the door handle, burst in, laugh at my fankle bursting thing. I surreptitiously check my frock is not tucked in anywhere and straighten, re-aligning the arrangement of island made soaps and candles and creams that almost toppled at my inburst. All well. We chat, I purchase and move on. More chat, more purchase. The island shops are wonderful, offering not Scottish Tat, thank the holy grail, but island-made, inventive and inspirational and I am proud to be an islander in a world that seems to have swapped quality for plastic.

Mis Pixty awaits me and she visibly relaxes as I say hallo and take my seat. How was it? I ask her, flicking on the engine. She growls a bit, then a sassy note comes into her voice. I know that sound. Although she has suffered various underskirt poking and proddings, she has also had her throat cleared and she is raring to go. Steady, I say, Gently, I say and then Let’s Go! And we do, driving round corners, hugging the road and meeting absolutely no-one. As we pass the graveyard, where Miss Daisy died quietly I look across at where Himself lies. The sun catches the stonewords, all of them, not just his. You all lived good lives, I say. Some hard, sometimes hard, some easy, sometimes easy. You had days of dire and days of ire and days of fire and sunlight when a child’s laughter, a moment of intimate love, a glass raised at Hogmanay lifted you above and out of yourself for just a little while. You read a book that smiled you, spent an hour in the pub with a friend chewing over old time, old memories when you were someone else, younger stronger, vibrant and fluid. Then came Time to fickle you. You didn’t invite her in, nobody ever does, but she came anyway and dulled your wits, challenged your dignity, unalughed your laugh. I hope, I continue, that you chose to present the great untruth when someone asked How Are You Today? Or, more unfortunately, and please take this one very seriously, How Are We Today? Eish, never ever ask that one. And, the great untruth is a wonderful light to give out because it lightens everyone you speak to. The bumbling, faltering slide into old age is no news to we bumblers and falterers. We know it, it wakens us in the night, it reminds us of itself all through the day but my questions are these:

How do you want to be thought of right now?

How do you want to be remembered?

What do you want to say about growing old?

This last is important. Young people say they don’t want to grow old, as did I. Now I am here. And I am still a light.

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Island Blog – Roots

The first time I set foot on this island and I knew I was home, not because of his story but because of my story, yet to reveal itself to me. How very far we can wander in this life, our roots keeping faithful track. We will not let you go, they say from deep deep down in the ancestral core. I had no reason to know any of this, not at first footfall. It was simply that something seemed to rise from the rocks and the muir through my feet, into my legs and on up into my heart, my soul, as if the roots had been waiting for me a very long time, longer by far than my own time. Although it took a while for me to find my place, although life was sometimes just too hard, nothing changed my knowing. I was home. I am home, among my own people, their stories, their lives, even as I knew nothing at all about any of it. The cold, the wet, the slap and fret, the endless winter, mould growth, frozen pipes, chilblains on chilblains, hot tears, wild fears, none of these made me doubt, made me hanker for somewhere else. Guests are coming, must be Spring despite the snow still falling. But I cannot. Fall.

No hardship born, imagined or played out could change my mind. I am home. Breathe it in, suck it up, breathe, wait inside the wildness, the raw bloody wildness, fickle weather, my damaged plans, my lunatic fantasies of escape that turned to dust as quickly as they formed, all melted away by a merry lick of fire, a babble of feral children, a few of them I don’t recognise as my own. In this place my heart beats along to the rhythm of the stones, the shush of the sea, the scream of the storms, the sight of swans overhead, a whisper of wings in the sky. I dance to it, sing along to its melody, an integral part of something old, something new, something ancient. I catch the stories of lives long done, the bones buried deep in the island’s heart, never to be forgotten, held safe. Where grows the heather old feet have walked. There is old laughter in the sky and old tears rushing the burns into spate. On it goes and on and I am proud to find my forbears lived and walked the islands, knew what I know now, made the wraparound Atlantic their protector, provider and sometimes their cradle unto death.

Even as I never knew way back then, I know something now. I didn’t find this place, this home. It found me.

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Island Blog – Rememberus

This day is Remembrance Day. I know it is customary to remember on Sunday but I hook my line to the actual day. Today. I reel in those who were dead before their time, all of them. Although it is never an ok time to die, not if you are loved and still want to live just a bit more, this sharp snap of the line came anyway. So much I wanted to say, to ask, to laugh with you about, even, as in many cases, just the time to get to know you better. You could be my mother, my father, my sister, my brother, my best friend, my child. The rippling out of such grief is like a whole new wasteland beneath your feet. You wonder why the whole world hasn’t stopped, well, dead. You idle through the days feeling pointless. You were something, somebody to someone, a one you took for granted would always be there for you, a someone who made you feel that your little life really meant something, was important, powerfully influential. It’s as if that sudden death wiped out a whole carefully built beauty of experiences and secrets shared, moments that lit flames you never knew could be lit at all.

Although I write this, I have no experience of such a sudden loss. I feel the pain vicariously. To have received that telegram, that policeman at the door, that phone call, shudders me. It could have happened to me, but it didn’t. I have spoken with those who know, firsthand, this shattering agony and then watched them sink and diminish, lose their strength, their spirit, falter at what we on the outside of the inside of this awful shit might consider nothing much. Going out to buy milk: taking the dog for a walk: answering the phone: washing, eating, changing the bed, little things that overnight turn into impossible mountains stuck smack in a once familiar path. Their shoes are wrong for this terrain. They don’t recognise the face in the mirror. There is no forward.

And then, overtime, they rise, these brave, lost, scared and angry people. I’ve watched them do it. They walk now, as those women did during wartime and long after when brain shattered men and women returned damaged, in need of help and receiving none, or little. They force themselves up and out. They remind themselves that all those infuriating platitudes are meant well. Bit by bit they re-engage with small talk, very small talk, peacetime talk. The weather, local gossip, criticisms based on absolutely no information. Their eyes glaze but, politely, their shoes remain affixed to the pavement. What they know, what they have been through, is beyond our ken and forever thus.

To the ones who are destined to remain. I salute you. A lost child, a friend, a family member, a partner. You are The Brave, just because of your strong spirit, your determination to survive even when you really didn’t want to.

To the ones who were snatched away, who kept going through all the fear, who loved life enough to leap into the flames, who were caught in an accident, an incident, a tragedy, a twist of fate. You are The Brave.

Rememberus?

I do.

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Island Blog – The Dance Ahead.

That’s the Lonely banished. It took a while. I had to wrestle this demon to the ground and, although my spirit is willing, my teeth and claws still in situ, my body is a bit wonky-chops at times. I managed it, nonetheless, holding down the limbs of it, all flailing whack and kick, its big mouth wide open and full of unhelpful words such as Fail, Stuck, The End, Best You Can Hope For, etcetera. Phooey, said I, blasting breath into its face, because I plan to have fun from now on, no matter my age or situation, circumstances be damned! The Lonely finally gave in, I felt it soften in defeat, lifting myself off its grabby little body to watch it slink, yes slink, out of the door, last seen heading towards the village. I did give it the bus fare to Faraway, however. I’m not a mean woman, after all.

Since its departure I have dived into a whole lot of exciting things, such as hoovering my floors in a dance of feet and nozzle, made hummus, walked miles and sat myself sitting on a stone bridge that affords me sight of the old days. This inlet of water led out to years of exciting sea-ventures in search of whales, puffins, shags, guillemots, kittiwakes, porpoise, dolphin and gannets, to name but a few. This inlet kept our boats safe from the mighty, and bullying, blast of Atlantic fury. I remember the boats bucking like broncos on their tethering, my hair, when I had any, flying in the wind, my ears ringing from the cold. I remember the trees bending in obrigation, root strong, the hazels as bow-backed old women, saving everything that grew inside their motherly protection from a spectacular crash-bang. No greater love……….

As I walk with my memories, the good ones finally rise to the surface, delighting me. I had forgot them, I confess, but I so wished for them to return. All I could see were the dementia years and the decline before that, for I know it is true that what began as wild love and unstoppable hope morphed from exciting plans such as ‘where shall we eat tonight?’ to ‘Did you put the bins out and if not WHY NOT?’ Or, ‘It’s YOUR turn to collect the kids, bath them, read the story, wash up, cook (arf), walk the dog, do the weekly shop.’ It comes to us all. Surviving such a disappointing change and remaining together is a sign of strength; learning how to dance it in a different way, to make it fun, to laugh together about the whole daft parabola of a shared life is genius. I like that word most of all when it applies to a shared and connected forward motion. It is a life changer for everyone involved, kids, outer-space family members, each other. Did we manage that, I wonder, just as a lone stag bursts from the trees. I was so caught up in my parabola/genius thingy that I gasped and stopped dead. We eyed each other, this young 6-pointer and I with no points at all. Those brown velvet eyes, the stand of its powerful fleet legs, the proud of its neck. It was only moments, but we shared those moments. Then it was gone, like the wind, becoming the wind.

Back home to hoovered and well-danced floors, I checked in all the rooms for the Lonely. No sign but a thought flitted about me like a butterfly, beautiful and fleeting. T’is this. What brings in the Lonely? It isn’t that I hate living alone, my life full of choices sans explanation, justification, apologies. I am loving all of that. And then it came to me, the answer. I am addicted to love and not in absentia, but in persona. In order for me to thrive and love life I need to love. Then a second thought breezed in. If there isn’t a person right beside me, that doesn’t mean I am deprived of the opportunity to find and to feel love. I just have to learn a new way to feel love. I can love the moments, noticing everything around me. I can love my children and their children actively through texts and calls. I can love a morning, a slow afternoon, the catch of light and the soft fall of the dark. I can love myself and that’s always the hardest thing. I can love the chance that I will encounter something wonderful just by believing that it is out there somewhere so that all I need to do is to build on that belief whilst keeping myself in trim for the dance ahead. And when the Lonely comes back, I will be ready.

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Island Blog – Tatterlife

Yesterday the air was warm and still and the sun shone like a circle of fire in a right blue sky. T’is rare here and so very welcome. We, who live as islanders in the now of Now, know this and our shorts and suncream come out just like that. There is no Winter/Summer collection of clothing. We find the beach, the forest, the shore, just as the birds do. We do not presume another such day. This day the wind rises, not cold but coming from a source that will turn to South Westerly but not yet. This afternoon the wind is slanty-eyed, mean and punching and the poppies will not last the night for the accompanying rain that batters resolute. These are the days of our life up here and I remember it well, travelling back overtime when being ‘out there’ for the animals and the visitors brought a damp into the evening kitchen. Oh dear, tomorrow there will be people at our door, damp guests in need of warming food instead of the fresh salmon salad with minted new potatoes I had planned. Dawn found me making soup, a contradiction of what was yesterday as they chuckled in frocks and sunlight. But I know what you don’t know yet. I didn’t say.

And it thinks me. I wonder how those who expect Summer to be Summer or any season to be as it was, either in childhood, or just before we finally (good lord) got the hang of climate change. Resistance is futile. We know this. And we still resist. I think about that. Out here inside the sharp-toothed mouth of a volatile Atlantic Ocean, we might be wiser than we thought. After all, we have lived with a dynamic not many could ever live with and for years, no, generations. I get that island roots help and they do, a lot. My own understanding of this came once I discovered that my great grandfather was a lighthouse keeper on Skerryvore, one of the wildest and most isolated of lights and I mean so wild, even when the Atlantic was in a good mood. Ferocious waves and zilch accessibility. My great grandmother, on Tiree must have wrung her hands at every storm approaching. Or maybe not. Maybe she just got the hang of this sunshine calm/ ferocious storm dingbat thing like every other day. A boat will bring mail/people/family/food supplies. Or not. And the Not might be months.

I think we island folk, for all the moaning that goes on about ferries and poppy stripping, are pretty well equipped mentally for the way times are a’changing. I think that everyone should experience life in a wild place. Not not and not again as a holiday home but as an experience. The island, all islands are beautiful in the sunshine days. But there are zillions of poppy stripping days, of roofs lifted in sudden changes, of the slam dunk and crash of nature blasting in, of freak storms, of ferocious and terrifying gales with hours of lashing hailstones that can kill a cow, a deer, a sheep.

But I am glad to know this, to be in the mix of this. Not happy about the scary times but somehow in tune with what I have known for decades. However, this time, this climate change time does alert me like a rabbit to danger. And it is ok. If I am resistant to the change that is a glare in my headlights, then I am a fool and I am no fool. The poppies will be stripped in this sudden wind. And then I will walk out in the calm of the next day, thank them, and let them go. This is a Tatterlife. We are all living it no matter where we are, what we earn, whom we know. It isn’t that life is dying, no. Life is finally asking us to live it.