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Island Blog – 3 Day Streaker

My blog tells me I am on a 3 day streak. After 14 years of writing blogs, this is a disappointment, and feels like a sort of criticism or judgement, as if not being ‘there’ once or twice or even thrice is a failure. Reminds me of childhood, of school when if I or my peers weren’t constantly ‘there’, failure was subtly suggested, the outfall inviting judgement. You found yourself in landfall, smelling bad and very unsure. I know enough, now, of the confusulation in such forums, in the anywheres of social media, to ignore such trite nonsense. But, and here’s an admission, it still sets me back a step. It seems that what others think or how others judge matters and possibly a bit too much. This thinks me. It does matter in all the right ways, but in the possibly wrong ways it, the mattering thing, can become confusive, and here, where all I deal with is my daily blog fight with grammar, spacing and comments or judgements, I do have to laugh at myself. Out there in the Out There, ordinary women are fighting for life, saving flooded homes, grieving at the loss of everything. I know this, we all know this, but it is too much to take in when something assaults a life, here, now. My irritata on a robotic comment, in the aforesaid light is embarrassing to be honest, but I don’t believe it should be denied, swiped away as nothingmuch because it matters to me in the right now of now and it has an effect.

And this is my point. I feel the judgement because of some ridonculous conclusion I came to. What brought me here? It should be a laugh, a coffee, a fix, a nothing. Ah……not nothing, oh no. Childhood and child experience is a raised head here. I see the rise, the face, my young face, and she is me some decades ago, no freedom of speech and no idea what to say, no idea who I was, no confidence, no voice beyond the one which got me into a big dose of trouble and more than once. Just a rebel, they said, she’ll calm down. I didn’t lose the rebel, but I did ‘calm down’, did learn to conform, to fit the space proffered and allowed. I birthed five children, I was mother of this number before I was 30. It was all I wanted, even though, I am sure, I was way less than the ideal mother. I was absent/still in the room. Disasters came daily, mostly out there in the ‘Out There’, man overboard, calls to search for a missing canoeist, a life possibly lost on the arse-side of Tiree or Gunna; or the woodburner going on fire, pipes burning, rattling, and guests panicking and me flapping everything down with the promise of scones, a warm fire and my competent husband who made everything better and with such inner confidence.

He saw me. He left me to deal with damn well everything a lot of the time, fixing, in a state of immediacy, always en pointe. Always. I’m not sure he was aware of the exhaustion, nor the legacy it left. I remember being told, in my childhood and often, to look after the Little Ones, my wee sisters. We might have been packing to go north for our summer holiday, or anywhere. Look after the Little Ones. It’s loud in my memoric ears. It’s what big sisters do, isn’t it? It’s what you do. But, not once, not ever, did either of my parents ask how that felt for me. A tip for parents nowadays. It’s often the older kids who get lost in the mist of whatever ‘disaster’ goes on in a family. The expectations weigh like tons and the older kid gets lonely, feels invisible. And ‘invisible lonely’ grows. It has a voice which won’t shutup.

On a good note, when I began this after recovering from the slap of judgement, I noticed that spacing went wild, twice here, thrice there, and letters jumbled, making interesting words now and then. I fixed it.

Still off-pissing for a 3 day streaker blog. I’m still here.

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Island Blog – Just Flying On

I did my own housework today. It’s so damn boring, my own housework, whereas I am like a woman on fire when it comes to someone else’s. I am can-do, let’s do this, even if the job appears magnifluent with horribleness. What is that all about? I ask myself this as I lug stuff for washing to the washing thing. No answer comes beyond the flip dash of swallows madly encouraging their second brood to fly, ffs. I feel for them, not that I ever knew resistance from my kids, as they almost went without a lookback. I pulled myself back to myself, as they say in SA, and grabbed a hoover, then a bucket and mop and sorted things that needed sorting. I like my home to be clean even if nobody ever sees most of it. This is about me and how I care about me, my personal standards.

Bring that back, roll it right back to the core. I have standards, yes, but just for myself. I feel no judgement when I meet others who don’t share what I choose to be my level pegs. It doesn’t annoy me. I cock my head at this. Really? Well, yes, probably, but I contain it. I have five grown children with five grown partners. I have met walls and fences. I have learned. What haveI learned? Acceptance, obviously. Was that easy? No. So How did it become the normal in those relationships? Did you remember yourself in these new dynamics? Not always, no, although once I got to know the partners, I found myself loving them and that was me being me. How did you do that? Asking questions without agenda, just interested in their life, their own thoughts, the she or he of she or he. And, I interrupt my questioner, of continuing that through the years. Instead of the easy homey conversations with primal children, elevation is required, I have found. To show interest and to ask about the partner of my beloved, the one, let’s be honest, who took that beloved out of the maternal/paternal sphere and into a new ellipsis.

I made chappit tatties just now. It’s a Scottish thing you might need to google. I also made a salad and all of the before was delivered on Friday, fresh island produce. I can smell the island on the lettuce, salty, safe, wholesome. I love the ground of this life, the wild, the silence and darkness at night, the safety, the community, the song and strength of it, the way we move to help each other, the way we can step in or fly out when it’s an urgence. The way we understand that the earth breathes, the sea breathes, the world is changing. We don’t know what to do next beyond the fact that we don’t have a clue.

In the now of now, we are flying on.

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Island Blog – The Before of Us

I have a big pile of books on my kitchen table. If I wasn’t at work on a Tuesday, I would gather them up for a swap, but I am working and so the level rises in tales of other lands, other times, of those whose lives I have never lived, of whose pain I can only catch in sentences. Most stories talk to me in a voice from the past, of challenges and overcomings, of loss and mostly, of moving through and onwards. They all inspire me because of just one single thread, the one that securely connects most of us, all of us, to the before of us, to the insertion of a generational electoid in a daily script. I know this. I picked it up with my own children, spilling out rulings that often confounded me, as if I had no control of the spilling. As soon as the electoid had deflated, I regretted. This is how we learn. We make mistakes because we just do. Without our acceptance, or acknowledgement, we spin the same tale and, in a place of authority, we deliver it. I did. Do I regret? Oh yes. But the damage was done and flifflewaffle is redundant here. The before of us is what every generation must learn from. This one in this generation and in my experience is a lot about chasing money, no, fighting for it and against everyone; It’s about mothers at school gates looking beautiful, sharing tips on well-being spas, nail decorators, hair stylists, the answer to all internal dilemmas costing a gazillion an hour. It’s about looking beautiful. Looking. Beautiful.

Looks fade. Just saying. My book pile is fingered and bented. Some pages are blobbed, twisted, stuck together. This is life. The sun is out now after twinglerain, sharp shards of it, the sun diddling about up there between cloudal shenanigans. It’s cold, it’s hot, it’s windy, it’s a party game t’ween the weatherness and our attitude. We must adapt, move on with new tunes, new attitude, new intelligence. As we must beyond the before of us.

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Island Blog – Emerging and Engagement

We are in a seasonal change. The mornings are cool, the light less light, less strong, the mornings darker. I love such changes, all of them because it involves me and my attitude. It also reminds me of my mother’s big ottoman on the landing, wherein she would carefully fold all summer clothes, bringing out the scratchy woolen jumpers, the thicker trousers, the warmer underpinnings. Not sure we can do that anymore, even if we do own a landing big enough for an ottoman. Nonetheless, the temperature does lower as Summer gathers up her swishy skirts and dances off to Africa. Seasons don’t stop being themselves. They just move on to do their thing on the other side of the world. I love that too and it thinks me.

I hear, oh god we all hear, the moans at the loss of Summer as if nothing will ever be right ever again, as if cool mornings heralds the end of everything. Such nonsense. We have all lived some years knowing that nothing at all lasts, that everything changes and never stops doing that change thing. I suspect that too much talk of ‘loss’ can, and probably does infect a community, a workspace, a family situation, There is nothing like a single voice of misery to bring down the most dynamic team. But this subject is on no more than a change in seasonal flow. I do understand a sense of loss, nonetheless. Those heady days of frocks and bare arms, of walking for hours beneath glorious sunshine, of taking warmth for granted, leaving doors open and not shouting about it; of dry dogs after long walks, of mud solidified enough to be just dust on boots; of standing for a conversation, of sitting on a balcony with a glass of chilled something-or-other and of trusting all of the above. I get it.

The thing I have learned is that attitude makes any change shift into opportunity. As those of us who are getting old get older, it is our essential choice. As joints stiffen and shout, as it gets harder to gauge the level of bumpy land, as the cold sneaks in knife-like, as self-doubts grow mighty and decisions flounder, we cannot help but remember how vibrantly we once swashbuckled through our complex lives. A seasonal loss? Yes, definitely yes. A different seasonal change, one of a life long lived. When we began it was Winter. Then we met someone and Spring began to flower up, cautious, yes, but little blooms pushed through the cold. Then came Summer, the crazy warm long hours of sunshine, the swing of it, the fragrance of hope filling the air, the dance of it, the wild long hours of daylight, of hope, of dreams. Then Autumn, golden, still warm, the light like a chiaroscuro, elevating what was already there, sharpening its edges, pulling the distant closer, reflections brighter, calls stronger out there in the otherness. Then Winter again, but a different one from before, before the commitment to the one, to children, to family, to decades of hard work and laughter and sharing and agony and loss and gain and goodbyes and hellos.

I like the word Emerging, not that I thought for one minute I would be still doing it, not at this age, but I am and my attitude is absolutely IT on this. I don’t like being alone. I don’t like being old. I don’t know anyone who does. Ok, so that’s the bottom line. Let’s think up. I do. I wake every morning and say thankyou to my bed. I won’t say I plan my day because, unless I have work in the Best Cafe Ever, I don’t. I just wake up and that’s damn good. I wash, dress, make-up my face, eat breakfast, clean up, look out. And whatever is going on out there, I choose to go with it, up the warmth if required, call for help if I need a big gas cylinder attached, download an audio book, hoover (boring), wave to walkers, plan supper, make hummus or something like that. I have the urge to emerge.

I can’t change the loss of me, but I can rise above everything if I choose to engage with change.

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Island Blog – Brackish Waters and Swim on

In my work at the Best Cafe Ever, I am among young people, young with dreams and opinions and attitudes. They are all sure they can do it differently, as I did once, long ago. I listen to the chat about the whatevers in their lives, the doubts, self doubts mostly. I can hear the outpuff of frustration as they may or may not acknowledge expectations lowered over their heads, the fears and concerns of their parents, ages with my own children. I hear it all and smile as I shove yet another heavy load of dishes into the wishdosher. I say nothing. I am granny to them, old and brackish and I like that place. I can circle in the safety of the inlet whereas they are pushing hard into a new ocean. They are about to head out alone and somewhat scared. What will their idea of the world out there teach them, confound them, frighten them? Even the cafe owners don’t know of what’s ahead and how could they? We can have rain and a complete invasion. We can have sun and a complete invasion. We can have neither. This business is a risk and a beauty. We are here and where are you? Or, we are here and what on earth just brought so many of you in? This is how it is out there. And I remember it as I went to collect those who wanted to watch for whales. Sometimes a few keenists, sometimes an acre of humans I managed to cram into the back of the landrover, just hoping it would be ok for all of them to fit on the boat. I remember first taking my children to school, watching them go,, even tearful and turning back to business. I didn’t like it, but I did what I did.

I sense a different parentage now. Oh, I remember the dream talk when we were expecting our first. We will not be parents as ours were, not the harsh stuff, not the judgemental stuff, not the controlling expectations, none of that. And, I believe to a degree but not enough of one, that we did that. But there was a leak. Actually two. I was 29 with five kids and with a mother-in-law living down the track and she had a hold. I don’t blame her. I just remember how the father of our children gradually absorbed the old ways to a degree. We had such rebellious dreams, I thought. And yet, over time, I complied. I make no excuse. I was also of the old controls and recognised them. And yet I watched him be the father he never had, at times, but not all times.

Enough of that.

I smile a lot as I listen to the young women and I so want them to be able to absorb what they meet and yet to stand like an Amazon in the face of the old ways. I didn’t. I want them to be who I wasn’t, just to show me that it is possible to set out on an ocean,resting in brackish waters when needed and then to actually find a new shore.

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Island Blog – A Lemony Sun and a Wiggling

I look at it, the lemony sharp of it within a cushion of grey/white flat, sky closed. It almost blinds me. I see the spread of it but it has no strong voice, no instrumental reach or so I decide. Way below, the flowers remaining wiggle a bit in the breeze like unsure dancers. Reminds me of a bad DJ and a faltering wiggly floor, half lit, mostly empty. The ‘dynamic’ left earlier and moved on. However it was a work day today and there was plenty of wiggling as we served and catered for and laughed together and criticised each others’ choice of tunes for the Best Cafe Ever. It made no difference, the sky-talk out there high above us as we sorted and accommodated the world below and that thinks me.

I hear moans about the summer. Too hot in Englandshire, yes, I get that. Not enough sun in Scotland, no, I don’t get that. To live in Scotland is to choose a new map, particularly on the West Coast. We stick out, just saying, way into Neverland and take the consequences, or we don’t choose to live here. I moved my pelargoniums just today, into the flash of the lemony sun, for about 30 minutes, because they said, the pelargoniums, that they will not flower without more sun. Well, I tell them. I did. What’s wrong with your attitude?

Attitude. So important. I read, today, a beautiful acknowledgement in our local monthly paper, of a dear friend gone. I think about her inspiraship. She was a community nurse, she was mother of four, she was a wife and homemaker, she was a friend. Her influence was never lemony. It was more a golden glow. I remember her with little kids, like my own, meeting by chance in the then Coylumbridge Hotel, on Autumn half term and joining her, laughing over drinks and stories. A fixed memory for me. Her smile, her love, her natural beauty. I had no idea, and nor did she, of what was to come.

Time passed, life demanded, it is at it is. We both saw lemony suns and found it harder to wiggle but know this. In the eyebright of anyone stays the story, held and stored and recognised, no matter the falter, no matter the doubts, the forgets. The gone of someone is never the end because lemony or not, the sun shines on that life, long lived, long-loved. I will always remember her and I was far away as a star. But I saw her shine and wiggle.

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Island Blog – Liminal Dilemma

We all have them, the dither on the cusp of a new thing. Summer and Autumn obviously feel the same. Autumn comes in with a bag of chillswag in the morning, clouding windows, cold to the touch and bringing shivers into the house, the snatch and pull of a warm cardigan around a human body. I can hear her chuckle as I do this very thing. And, as the day moves on, the temperature rises until I am here at almost 5pm barely frocked and with the sun almost burning. It thinks me.

I have dithered many, oh many times, on that cusp. Trusting that whatever I did or didn’t do would breach the void, move some situation on. I have stood there, often, skidding on the rocks of slippery, hesitant, wondering, doubting and very much alone. But there is something about being there in the first place. What brought me here? a question requiring an answer and, from what was around me at the time, nobody else was in answering mode. Is that what it comes to……..nobody but me to step across the void, to acknowledge there is no-one there at all? Perhaps. It’s lonely though.

On the obverse side of this I can see that it isn’t just me who make decisive choices plus impact and, possibly, initiating chaos. Even as a young mother, I did face all of that. I was the one who found myself, discovered myself, on the slippery rocks, and who stepped on. Looking back to my then situation, there was nobody else who would have even got there, nor wanted to, the whole maintenance of equilibrium, the status quo, being an absolute. For so many years I doubted myself, this crazy skidder on rocks, the one who yelled Enough! and worked on the change. Maybe it’s a generation thing. My peers conformed after all. I was born different. All through school I disagreed, and was silenced or expelled. Now I live with that self and can see her as before her time, the rebel, the one who actually did make a difference in so many ways, in business decisions, in the lives of my children, in the community, in my own life.

So, I recognise Autumn, the proud mother that she is, and welcome her. I also feel a great affection for Summer as she, unwillingly diminishes. I have loved her light and her warmth, but she needs her rest now. However, the combination sisterhood of these two proud seasons does bring the most glorious of surprise light. I think I love the cusp, the liminal dilemma.

Perhaps I see myself in this.

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Island Blog – Part of ‘We’.

Just made my green stuff. All the goodness. Carrot, Celery, Apple, Ginger, Broccoli, Spinach plus Turmeric. I usually make it in the early morning, but forgot. I never guarantee that I will like the taste but, as I recall from the medicine proffered decades ago, I will drink it because, apparently, it is good for me and ‘good for me’ with my sore bones and my guilty mind in mind, I decide to decide to believe in a sort of wipe-out, a cleansing, a restart. Not that I can, obviously. I remember once, driving down an even narrower lane than most on the island, late at night and legging over a fence in my long frock to hide from the police behind a nettle hedge after a riotous meal out. I have the tear in said frock to this day, although I did repair it with good needling and a heart. I think about this as I fridge my green stuff and chuckle. I could not leg over any fence now, although I probably would give it my best if nobody was watching. I am not one to readily accept the limitations within which I now live, those which might just attempt to contain me. I am not about to accept that, been too contained and for too many years. Enough on that. However, I am not interested in prowess. It’s enough for me to know that I could do what I once did, if suitably challenged.

Thing about this olding thing is that it is critically important to keep connected with other lives, with those in a younger generation who discuss things that leave me mystified. Just to connect, that’s the power of itself, and I know this first hand. Too much time alone, gazing at the beautiful view from my home, watching nature unfold, deliver and pullback is not enough. Humans are required, and not just a wave from a passer by. In my beloved cafe job, where I am looked after in ways that tell me I am respected as myself, the, at least, 33 yeasr beyond them, the granny. Here there is purpose. That’s what we can lose if alone and olding. And purpose is a thread, like a continuance in a tapestry, or a connective line in a painting, or in the way a business includes and settles. You are all important here, your difference matters, the things you bring, just you, matters. You are an integral part of ‘We’. It’s a belonging.

In an alone life with a mouthful of stories, with the scars and breaks of legging over fences, of the heart stopping awfuls of rushing to a bedside to sit all night as a child fought to breathe, of the disappointments, the leavings, the lack of communication, of the all-too-natural guilt of motherhood, I welcome the connections I have now. I can’t change the motherpast, nor make it better, but I recognise my place in the now of now. And I can smile.

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Island Blog – Ebb, Flow, On and On.

There are diamonds on the water, an incoming tide speckled with sunlight where the luff of water rises like hope. I watch a carder bee on the cornflowers, not many left now, as birds flip and flutter through the sweet peas, mostly pods now but still lifting blooms to the sky. Tangled clouds overhead, a conversation up there. The grey ones push along, but the white wins through, holding place, giving way a bit, but just a bit. They hold the sky and I admire their flexibility. They’re like good friends. Okay, I will allow you to be grey today, but not for long. I watch them, the white, flex around the grey, even as they hold the ground, or sky in their case. Sun beams in between all these cloudal shenanigans, the ultimate smile. I feel its warmth on my skin and it smiles me. A young robin jinks on the fence, the result of a second sitting, singing pure and strong. Go to the fatballs, I tell him/her. The bird twists at my voice, eyes me from the shoulder of my garden bench as if I am a right twit not speaking ‘robin’. I don’t put out seed in the summer months, much as I am tempted to, only fat balls and mealworms and I am out of the latter for now. I hear, just now the screech of angry gulls and ditto crows and just know there is a sea-eagle out and about. Then I hear the yip and see him and her lift into the now flat sky, a grey and white collusion. They soar as if it’s nothing. There is only sky for them, no wind to tilter, no other bird that high for now. The gulls splinter off, bored, the crows too and here comes the rain. I catch a white tail as they redesign the sky. They are at home up there, rain a notbother, hecklers left way behind, for now. The vista mists, the hills beyond smokey and indistinct. I love this place, this place of seasonal change, of sudden disruptions and community strength; of good people with pockets full of smiles and who are always there with a hug when the grey comes in. I see the definition of the far hills now, the shower albegone, the sky still holding shut but that could change in a heartbeat much like tunes on a playlist, shuffled.

I light the fire. I like the flames, safe inside the wood burner doors. Change again. The day is slipping away, the night-push stilling the roses, the flowers, the trees. Not yet though, but for me, the change is coming. I wake early, go to bed as others head out for dinner. It suits my situation. I like to hear the walk and chat of those walking by my closed curtains as I read, coming back from the pub or a walk. They are like night flowers, life living itself on and on, soaring, claiming space, lifting. Laughter rises like hope, just below my window, sparkling diamonds on an incoming tide. And the tide will continue thus. Ebb, flow, on and on and on.

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Island Blog – What we Give

I walked today, a bit wobbly, a bit sore, a bit doubtful. After a stupid fall, a small one ,the capital of which can make all subsequent letters lower case. It was a bump, just that, but the old of me denies a quick revival, as it might not a ten year old. I walked today, a small one and decided I would notice everything along the way. I had to get out and the sun was warm and the sky kind and my thoughts were doing me no service at all.

I started out on the Tapselteerie track, unsure, just me. Well, it is always just me so that’s not unusual. I turned at the fork and headed up the track, the original for the grand guests back in the day, and stopped to watch Painted Lady butterflies on the wild Scabious. I stood awhile, unmoving, just watching as they sipped the nectar. It thinks me. Oh I know it is instinct but go with me here.

We teach out children. Most of us think it through. Most of us us want them to learn the stuff which will help them even though we know that their generation is a somewhere we will never have the language for. Did I know that in the 70s/80s when I was mum to five? No. Even though I had the taste of the 60s, I went blind into motherhood, as if nothing would change. How incredibly stupid.

I look, now and then, at photos of me as a young mother. I don’t recognise her. I was so so young. And yet, this very day, one of my kids recognised his childhood and how we taught him. He had been through a challenging time and was so thankful for what we had taught about survival, about a can-do positive attitude, even in fear, especially in fear.

And I remembered myself, that young mother in a wild place and thought this. We don’t know what we give.