little

I light myself a candle. Today was a waiting day, one that wakes me with an inner fog. Thoughts rise but fall again before I can set them in order, unlike other days when I am the one in charge. Even in a voluminous nightie, I am in charge. Even before my teeth are brushed and my dragon breath is extinguished, I am in charge. You stand here. I’ll need to think more on you. As for you, thanks but no thanks, not today. And you…..well I have no idea where you came from, perhaps a deep bog, a sinking, stinking one. Begone! However, this morning’s thoughts just swirled like whispers around me, uncatchable, turning to air whenever I reached out for a grab. The ones I haven’t mentioned? Throttled at source. I could tell, just by their colour and smell that they would serve me no purpose.

Waiting is tough. Waiting for a bus in the rain is tough. Waiting for a baby to emerge through the intense agony is tough. But this waiting, this cancer waiting, is definitely up there with the best/worst waiting thingies. I’m not surprised my thoughts have trouble thinking me straight. I am all wonky lines and inner wobbles. Even my walk down the stairs is old-lady cautious, as if my feet might miss a step regardless of all this foot attention I’m giving them. I even count the steps for goodness sake, as if, in forgetting one, I might not arrive in the same house I left on the landing. I’m not hungry, not anything much, until, that is, I hear the chatter of little girls. It is then that I recall myself, remember who I am. I may be waiting but I can do something with it, fill it, distract myself from it, begin to see through the fog of it.

I check my phone every 30 minutes. 15, actually. Just in case the consultant or nurse has called with an Oops we made a mistake you don’t have cancer after all. I read until my eyeballs threaten to abandon ship and my head can no longer sort out the protagonists of any one of the stories, merging them together until the mesolithic Scots tumble with the Harare prisoners on death row. Not a movie I’d recommend. But that doesn’t matter, the tumble of characters, because to read is to escape and I can think of less healthy ways to do that.

We, those of us not attending our first day back at school in smart green sweatshirts and black breeks, go out to visit a farm shop a short distance away. There’s a wonderful cheese counter and we ogle the selection from Stinky Blue to Not Stinky Goat and everything in between. We sit for a panini lunch whilst Little Boots, the smallest girl not yet at school, enjoys a multi-coloured lolly, on my knee, plus multicoloured drips and multicoloured chatter. I laugh. I now look like an abstract painting. This and other little distractions distract so cleverly. It thinks me, now that my head is fog-less.

I light myself, that’s what I do, that’s what I can do, all I can do whilst I am waiting. It’s me taking charge even though I am not in charge of anything outside of me. But I am in charge of that bit, and that ‘bit’ is me, the Bit Part in a huge production called Breast Cancer. I read that actors in such huge productions spend most of their time inside a trailer, waiting to be called. Waiting and waiting and who would know it once the finished film is on screen for our pleasure? It looks complete, everyone busy all the time, as if that is how it was put together. But it wasn’t like that at all. Nor is this. I will, I know, look back one day and forget the pain of waiting, the length, breadth and depth of it. It will just be mentioned in a sentence. I had to wait. That’s all. But now look at me, all bright and cancer free and filled with my usual overload of beans! And not waiting any more, not for nobody nor nothing.

I watch the candle flicker, the flame waver and wend in the airflow I create just tapping out words. I see the glow of it inside the glass jar, the shine of the melted wax, and it smiles me. This candle may snuff out, but so will the waiting, and the treatment and the anxiety and the fear and the pain. I may be a bit wonky chops when all is said and done, but I will still be in charge, of myself anyway, and that task is not for the faint-hearted, I can tell you.

As the rain and wind continue for us on the island, I hear of sunshine weather on the East. Conflicted am I in my response to this for we are so very sick of soggy sheep, no grass and battered daffydowndillies. We are now officially up-fed of jumping in muddy puddles. They have, quite simply, lost their first flush. Our wellies are as wet within as they are without. Now just listen to me! I have lived 40 plus years on this, my beloved rock of ages, and the weather has aye been thus. I say that the weather doesn’t bother me. I speak it from my mouth, let it spurt from my lips. I snort derisively at all weatherly complaints, but there are times when what comes from my mouth bears little relation to the words in my heart. This, I tell myself, is living positively. My filtration system is strong. I am in control of my words. Feelings come, despondency comes, hope escapes to warmer climes, vision blurs and I can sink into the circumstances. But not for long and this is why. I see myself. Look, there you are you eejit, with your insidely wet wellies, all puddled and, well, stupid, that’s what. First I chuckle at the very sight of me. Then I grab my puddled self by the oxters and heave. Get the flip up, and right now. The little giant in me is back in charge. I apply more mascara, blusher and liner to remind myself how I can look when I de-puddle. Not bad for an old girl. Not bad for a little giant.

I like feeling little, with potential. I don’t actually want to be a giant on the outside of me but I am more than happy to nourish the one within. She, btw, is uber strong, indomitable, open and beneficent, even to herself. She has weapons but rarely employs them. They are more for a swashbuckle show to be honest but she loves the whoosh of a razor sharp blade cutting through the air. She loves to hit bullseye. She enjoys leaping fences and boundaries if someone else is in trouble. She loves to be ready. On the outside of her, she looks as she always looked but within…….oh the within is busy honing hope into ploughshares, ready for every twist, turn and puddle of life.

However, it is very important for her not to waste time wishing she never puddled in the first place, for she is as likely to catch a chill as anyone else. It thinks me, well, both of us. We could do with getting closer to each other but not to make anyone else feel they have got it all wrong, that an innate giant comes as a gift to some and not to others. This is bullshit. The thing about the inner little giant is a simple decision to believe there is one in there somewhere, no matter how much puddling has gone before, no matter failures, mistakes, regrets, shames and lost opportunities. It makes no odds to this sleeping power how long it has been required to sleep. In fact, the longer the sleep, the more refreshed is this inner self, the one who can always be called upon, once awakened. All that matters is to awaken it, to awaken her, or him. To say a tentative ‘hallo……are you there?’ To believe in her. And, the wonderful thing is that, once awake, this little giant needs no further sleep. Not never.

‘Little’ suggests potential growth and development and this is the best news of all. We all begin little, peering up at big people, watching their every move, learning daily by example. The little giant is the same but with a twist. This little giant has already learned whilst asleep, has absorbed every single thought, feeling, action we ever made in our whole life and her only purpose is to build on our strengths. The giant is not interested in wasting time over failures, regrets, shames and lost opportunities. Poof to that load of whatever! This inner power is ready, only, to educate us in who we can become from where we are right now. We might to begin by sharpening a pencil and writing one sentence. We might choose an online course that excites and terrifies us. We might decide to embark on a healthier way to live. But whatever we choose begins with an idea, a tiny baby of a thing, with no surety of success, whatever that means. We will still puddle, we will still hear the skittering of past failures, regrets and shames across the attic of our minds, but once the little giant gains purchase, they will just run away, because there is no point remaining if they are never listened to. They will just scoot off to find someone else in a puddle.

So, the beginning is now. For me the beginning is every morning. I can still flip from puddle to sky and back again but the little giant is one hell of a woman and I want her at my side. The skitterers can not helpful to me anymore, if, indeed they ever were. Oh, I still hear them in the attic, little feets across the boards up there among old black cobwebs long devoid of living spiders. I roll my eyes and smile at my giant and, together, we frock up and descend the stairs into a new day of god knows what.