He leaves two strong wonderful men, his sons. I know them so I know.
I knew him too, held him tight a few months ago at the death of his beloved wife, my longtime friend.
Now he is gone. The music man, the gatherer of voices, the conductor, the shy man, quiet, gentle, loving, the nothing left of the something he once was. A tryst. A perfect melody. I hope he finds her out there somewhere. Actually, I know he will.
I never can find the source of my newly thinks, they just come. Chances are someone says something that stops me in my tracks, or I notice something, a chance glimpse of an encounter without words but with smoke rising above the both of them. Could be the times that tourists haven’t acknowledged that I have snaked my way back in a very competent reverse around at least four corners whilst they, in a big four wheel drive thing as big as a starship, sit and look at me, and, then, when the driver, the man, stares straight ahead as he zooms past and never thanks nor smiles, I. know that’s when the think rose in me. I know you, I thought. I never want you again in my life, not that I did, not in my marriage, but all around us lived out these men and, it seems, still they do and in freedom.
I am not just a woman. I am more than an excellent cook, a skill I honed and refined over years, not just because I wanted to please, because I did, but more, because, when I gave up my dreams, being the centre of the need, the giver and lover, the supplier of nourishment, the one to bring smiles and full bellies and gentle sleep, my skills meant everything.
As children grew, as a community dynamic shifts, I got it. I moved with the viable, with the awkward, the times when my man hid away. I got my role. Never signed up for it, had no clue, but there I was, all young body, long hair, still with a dream whispy in my head. It dies. No, it doesn’t. I still have it, still believe in my dream.
A man. My choice. However, and in my experience, there were only about 3 who ever asked me, and listened, about what I wanted in life. I told them. I am a fiery, terrified, strong, weak, beautiful, ugly, competent, useless, woman. I am not my body, and I am my body. I am gentle and very strong. I am wild, spontaneous, awkward, bloody-minded, but not fixed in any of those. I am rainbow coloured and I am soft shell beach colours. I am the storm, the sunrise, the set, the pull of a tide, the stop of boats, the lift of cloud, the sunshift, the turning of the world. I am the moon as she wakes, loud in a starry sky, pulsing power. I am unsleep, I am warm cuddles, I am immediate, I am distant.
I am not just a woman.
Today is Friday 13th December. I know you know that. For some, both the date and the day bring collywobbles. Such a lost word, and a good one. Moving on. It is memoric for me, for our family, because it is a birthday. This boy was born in a frickin snowstorm and in an old folks home on an island because that is what there was. He spent his first few days in Matron’s bottom drawer. He survived all of that and is now a spectacular man, husband, father, although I leave his family to qualify any of that.
As for us, the we in Africa, in the sunshine, far distant from the birthday man, from the minus degree thing that’s going on in the homeland, we moved easy. An early walk, barefoot and skimpy clad to the Indian Ocean, to watch the Luck Dragon/ big dog bound and bond with a load of other dogs and owners as the whapshuck of light-lit waves, the height of walls, pounded onto a slop sand beach. Boom, and boom as the cusp curved and smashed against shell and stone, rounding into gentle . Such is a massive ocean, whispered in, or blocked by the resolute rocks of centuries, and the ocean will respond, raunchy and irritable, banging against resistance, with an attitude I wish I had learned.
We did our own work for a while, a morning while. Let’s walk again. This time among trees. I get that, the need for trees, and not the scrub trees of the bush, bent into an apology, but the huge wide-spread oaks and fever trees and pines and others with fat trunks and an eye on the sky. It’s Friday and we just can go, permission given. And we do. We load up the Luck Dragon and we head for the trees. It’s a drive, traffic is a Friday thug, but we get there and we walk through the space and the silence and the water and the trees and we forget the traffic and the tension and the demands of life and we grow silent. We watch the Luck Dragon welcome every other dog, enchant everyone who sees his smile and his permanently wagging tail.
And we drive home, the echoes of our time under the trees, beside the water, within the peace, still holding us in stasis.
I have been wondering, to be honest, why I sort of float through the days In Africa. Heretofore, I would not have defined myself as ‘floaty’, although I definitely can be at times, as if I have momentarily lost my way, looking about me in the hopes that my way will de-mist itself and reveal. Those times might have occurred in vast, and, as yet, unvisited, railway stations or when I walk up to the woods behind my home and can’t remember why until I do. The former is understandable. I am a very small and lost old woman in what feels like a panic zone and the only way to remain upright and in control of my luggage is to stand well back whilst I mind the gaps. The latter is considerably more pleasant. After all, I am at home (ish) and it is a simple task for me to turn, return to where I was when i chose to go up into the woods, relocate my purpose which is always on the other side of a doorway, and begin the process again.
There is no such logic in Africa, not for me. I believe it is because I am constantly awed, by the people, the languages and their percussive melodic phrasing, by the build of summer colours, smells, sounds and the suddenness of encounters on pavements, beaches, everywhere. Let us say we are travelling somewhere to get something. A perfectly normal thing. In the passenger seat I observe that very few drivers indicate. In fact, I wonder why the car manufacturers bother with the expense of indicators, so infrequently are they employed by the driver. A car, truck, fire engine, police car, woman, man, black, white, just drift left or right as if there were’nt another 450 vehicles swapping lanes all around them. There seems to be no car rage at all, if you don’t count the swearing within the vehicle nor the swerving and a lengthy comment by the car horn.
I’m watching bougainvillea scoot by on a high wall, crisped up with very sharp, security, knife blades, hibiscus the width and breadth of a small Scottish cottage, palm trees holding fragile bird nests, black faces, white faces, sun-burned skin, half naked tourists, the flash of white teeth in black faces: pavements too sizzly for dog paws, boats floating, ocean waves rising all turquoise and white-topped to crash down on laughing swimmers. Endless big homes, gated, locked, secured, beautified with spectacular colours; dwellings of tin and plastic, bunched together, a community. A seaside town, brightly painted, quirky, vibrant, offering fabulous food so cheap, everything fresh, great service, tiny bill. Colourful clothing. Africa. We arrive to buy the thing and I drift into the Exit until called back. I was watching the people, the movement, the whatever. I’m ok with it.
It isn’t the same as it was last time, up in Kruger Park with the definite chance of meeting a giraffe on the walk to dinner, and the absolute…….no walking after dark #leopard. Do I miss that? At first I did, but then I remind myself how completely terrificated I was just taking the puppy out for a pee in the morning. I could have met snakes of all varieties, warthogs (grumpy shits with big tusks and barely a brain between them) giraffes (don’t mess with that neck of steel). But, to be honest, none of that happened. My imagination has always got me into trouble. I can make a tiny thing into the end of the world as we know it, in a nanosecond. It isn’t a gift. So when my son called out, in this Capetown garden, whilst we played a gentle game of scrabble with no rules……oh look, a Cobra! I leaped onto the stoep, my heart playing jambells and dissonance.
Then I heard the throaty roar and saw the damn thing shoot by. Told you my imagination was trouble.
He came into my life like a complete surprise, as, I believe, I was for him. A random and unlinear sequence of events collided us. It was exciting and wild. For a week. He spoke of a possible future, at least while we got to know each other. A mid country meet here, a trip away there. We laughed a lot, moved easily around each other, shared many interests, and appeared to be on the first part of a journey. We are not teenagers, not fools, both with a long and, at times, uncomfortable past, a lot of which we shared. I felt a flicker of hope, the chance for a new adventure with, possibly, him. I had believed that my life with a lover died with my husband. So many years of caring, of being mummy and nurse to a man who, once, could just look at me and I would melt. I had tidied her away, that ‘on fire’ woman, that reckless abandoner of anything sensible. My body worked as she should, but she was just functioning. I had even resigned myself to a lonely old woman line of same-old, making myself rise to bright and bubbly, to being the clown around those who needed a laugh, to uplifting everyone, even though my trudge boots shouted at me to chuck them in the sea-loch, just to put them out of their misery. I didn’t dance so much, rarely sang at all, performed domestic tasks with a sigh. Who needs this getting old and lonely thing? I would ask my Marigolds, my blue hoover, the birds in my garden. I found it, at best, tiresome and quite unnecessary. We should be shot at such a stage in life and if another person tells me that I have a lot yet to give, I just might be arrested for my response.
A week of holding hands, of walking on the beach, of lunches out, coffee in the sunshine, a nice Rose at sundown; an emotional sadness at leaving. His. Then, nothing, but the odd text. Still, I knew he was working, and in areas without mobile reception. I knew that, because that is what he told me, and, the dutiful little woman understood. In fact, this dutiful little woman, on reflection, missed a lot of hints, but, with hindsight, it is often easy to join dots dismissed at the time as just dots. After work was completed and I still believed in the ‘let’s meet mid country’ or the ‘we could go away for a few days on a trip’ I was firmly dumped via a text, one I have deleted. It was so teenage, so self-absorbed, so dismissive and disrespectful and did not justify any response at all beyond a snort of laughter. However, this is a first response. I know that others will follow, anger, sadness, the confirmation that I am a complete idiot for believing at all that any man would find me attractive at 71. Etcetera.
But, and there is always one of those, all this teaches me, and teaches me well. I don’t mean the nonsense I have heard from the man haters, because I do not hate men at all. I think they are wonderful, love to be with them, hug them, laugh with them, listen to them, and the latter is how it was with this man because he only ever talked about himself and, I recall, rarely asked me a question about me, my loves, my passions, my dreams and hopes. Man is man, for sure, working very differently to women, but most men I know are strong, sensitive, and emotionally intelligent creatures, even if they cannot find the words for good communication beyond golf, boats, science, things that function with a motor and the vagiaries of spotlights, cars, politics, economics and how bluetooth works, to name but a few. And they can learn to ask questions and to listen.
Last year a horsefly bit me. That bite, as you may remember, led to danger, to cellulitis and possible sepsis, and then to the revelation of breast cancer. Had that horsefly not carelessly bitten me, I would, definitely, be growing a cancer right now, one that doesn’t show in a lump, but in a silent spread. Since then I have embarked on a fitness programme, the right food, exercise, and, most importantly, a re-understanding of how precious my life is to me. This man inspired the same, the man, the horsefly, the catalyst, a lead into more and better and, importantly, a reset of boundaries and the opening of, heretofore closed, doors. I dance again, suddenly, sing more, feel alive and beautiful. And, I am.
The horsefly and the man. Both bit me. But I grow stronger for those bites, however much they itch.
Well, today was an experience and a half! I had, previously, attempted to light the Esse oil-fired range, the mama of the kitchen, the heartbeat of my home. She has been resting for many months, but, I need to know that, for my friend who will be staying here and looking after little boots (small dog), and who knows how long, that the warm kitchen mother will be a comfort and a welcome when the days snap your feet off and challenge your attitude. So I did. Light her up. She coughed and spluttered and pushed out fumes and a very small attempt at the whole Light Up thingy. I shut her down and called the calmest man on the island, who happens to be a friend, first, and second, my chimney sweep. He came. And, that may sound like a small thing but it isn’t, not here, maybe not anywhere. Those with trade skills are so in demand that they are probably old before their time and so in demand that they begin to question why on earth they didn’t try for the bar.
So, the kitchen mama cold and quiet, he came. Shall we light her, even though the last time I did it, dancing like a demented fairy, holding the oil soaked lighting whatsit and flicking the match and thinking that this may be my last moment on this earth because, although I have done this so many times before, she puffed like a dragon and made smoke and then gave me the cold shoulder and I was alone in the home. However, I am now the dancing fairy, alone and fearful and it is high time I pulled on my boots and racked up. I should probably have a question mark there. But I have lost it. So, he came, the calmest man on the island and we lit her up and oh my godness ,the flames came from everywhere and not one of them in the right place. He asked for water, as I stood like a fool, and I obliged. He delivered said water. I profered fire blanket, extinguisher, even offers to call 999. He said, it’s ok. For now. I watched the flames. Even extinguished, they lifted again. Down inside the belly of the mama, through the light hole thingy, out on the floor of my kitchen. Terrifying. But only I was terrified. He wasnt. We flapped out the flames, turned off the oil, shut everything down.
Now I have to find a heating engineer, who will be ‘too busy’, who won’t respond, who might not come. But, in my world, he just might be right there for me, before winter snaps his jaws.
Blimey, life in the city is crazy! I watch the people go by, push by, wander by heading for a collision either with a lamppost or me, busy as they are in multiple worlds, connected to a mobile phone. But everyone seems to know about both lampposts and the folk like me who dither and dance along wide pavements, all rushing us along like those moving floors in airports. Colours brighten the morning, some barely covering bodies, others caping older skeletons, tent-like. And, still an amazement to me, no two people look alike. We have two eyes, two ears, one face with a mouth and a nose and yet, and yet, we are all different. I notice when life has bowed, bent, twisted and sometimes collapsed a face, a body. I notice the focus of traverse and in the shortest possible time. And then, there’s a woman, a man, moving slow as a snail, every footstep considered and, possibly, doubted, the young dividing by like a rush of water around a big old stone. I notice bags and dogs and sticks among the careless swing of young bodies, showing midriffs taut and flat, feet holding the ground as if they believe they always will.
Perhaps I see these images more as I consider what is happening to me, the slow (I am reliably informed) growth of an invader within, an invader with intentions. Not a welcome guest, but one that is here, just the same. My sister and I wander past and through endless shops, all promoting the Beautiful, the Perfect. Faces of models, as my daughter in law was once, teeth white as snow, body perfect, full of a life taken for granted, one without end. After all, old people are not us, they seem to say. We are miles from the collapse of skin, the way a bottom slinks down legs, the way breasts, if you have them, plummet into a waistband, the way feet become unsure on steps or pavements. I was she once. Not the model, no, but nonetheless certain I would never grow old. It just wouldn’t happen. What did actually happen to me was something I gave no thought to. Olding comes suddenly and it came to me after my husband chose to leave this world. Not immediately, not when I experienced the euphoria of my own space, the way I could play music louder than a whisper, when I could crash plates, clatter cutlery, talk on the phone in my own sitting room. But that euphoria didn’t last. Its aftermath was the realisation of Olding. Now, I don’t mind growing old at all, but I wanted to do it without aches or insecurities or self doubts, without pavement angst, without cancer, tiredness, confusion and the faffing. Oh god the faffing. Do I have my specs, where are they, they were here just a minute ago? Do I know my PIN number, the code to unlock my phone (who locked the damn thing anyway?). Did I lock the car? Where IS the car? Did I pay the chimney sweep, the gardener, the window cleaner? I did? Twice? Seriously?
And so on. To be honest, the self-doubt that comes with ‘Olding’ is pants. Big Pants. And it isn’t just me. Others of my age, particularly those widowed after a generation of marital years, compromise, security and dependence to whatever degree, tell me the same story. It is as if we have no idea who the hell we are at this wobbly point in our lives, we who were so certain, so confident, bringing up children or not, working, holding down chaos, fighting fires minute by minute. We could cater for sudden add-ons, taxi every which where, and were still able to dress up for an occasion. Now we just hope no occasion will arise, ever again. We want, or think we want, empty days, a blank calendar, but we don’t really. We probably say NO to everything because we haven’t been outside of the house for weeks, or maybe we just can’t remember how to Small Talk anymore. We think we have nothing to say of interest because our time is in the past. We apologise for ourselves, for our Olding years. We watch young things dance by, remember (vaguely) our own young thing dance, and we turn away.
I think that is a big shame. So what to do? Who can say, who can tell? I take my inspiration from other silver foxes I notice walking by the window, determined to move, regardless of pavement angst, their emptiness in life, their Big Pants questions, all of them coated, booted and sharp looking as if they know just where they are going and are excited about getting there. So, when I breathe deep and set forth of an early morning to visit the swans on the pond, I decide to look the same way as them. I smile, I walk, I greet, I cross roads about 3 times as wide as any road back home with my heart in my mouth, but I feel better about everything once I return. Perhaps this is how to live in the Olding years. Just one thing at a time. Then another.Blimey, life in the city is crazy! I watch the people go by, push by, wander by heading for a collision either with a lamppost or me, busy as they are in multiple worlds, connected to a mobile phone. But everyone seems to know about both lampposts and the folk like me who dither and dance along wide pavements, all rushing us along like those moving floors in airports. Colours brighten the morning, some barely covering bodies, others caping older skeletons, tent-like. And, still an amazement to me, no two people look alike. We have two eyes, two ears, one face with a mouth and a nose and yet, and yet, we are all different. I notice when life has bowed, bent, twisted and sometimes collapsed a face, a body. I notice the focus of traverse and in the shortest possible time. And then, there’s a woman, a man, moving slow as a snail, every footstep considered and, possibly, doubted, the young dividing by like a rush of water around a big old stone. I notice bags and dogs and sticks among the careless swing of young bodies, showing midriffs taut and flat, feet holding the ground as if they believe they always will.
Perhaps I see these images more as I consider what is happening to me, the slow (I am reliably informed) growth of an invader within, an invader with intentions. Not a welcome guest, but one that is here, just the same. My sister and I wander past and through endless shops, all promoting the Beautiful, the Perfect. Faces of models, as my daughter in law was once, teeth white as snow, body perfect, full of a life taken for granted, one without end. After all, old people are not us, they seem to say. We are miles from the collapse of skin, the way a bottom slinks down legs, the way breasts, if you have them, plummet into a waistband, the way feet become unsure on steps or pavements. I was she once. Not the model, no, but nonetheless certain I would never grow old. It just wouldn’t happen. What did actually happen to me was something I gave no thought to. Olding comes suddenly and it came to me after my husband chose to leave this world. Not immediately, not when I experienced the euphoria of my own space, the way I could play music louder than a whisper, when I could crash plates, clatter cutlery, talk on the phone in my own sitting room. But that euphoria didn’t last. Its aftermath was the realisation of Olding. Now, I don’t mind growing old at all, but I wanted to do it without aches or insecurities or self doubts, without pavement angst, without cancer, tiredness, confusion and the faffing. Oh god the faffing. Do I have my specs, where are they, they were here just a minute ago? Do I know my PIN number, the code to unlock my phone (who locked the damn thing anyway?). Did I lock the car? Where IS the car? Did I pay the chimney sweep, the gardener, the window cleaner? I did? Twice? Seriously?
And so on. To be honest, the self-doubt that comes with ‘Olding’ is pants. Big Pants. And it isn’t just me. Others of my age, particularly those widowed after a generation of marital years, compromise, security and dependence to whatever degree, tell me the same story. It is as if we have no idea who the hell we are at this wobbly point in our lives, we who were so certain, so confident, bringing up children or not, working, holding down chaos, fighting fires minute by minute. We could cater for sudden add-ons, taxi every which where, and were still able to dress up for an occasion. Now we just hope no occasion will arise, ever again. We want, or think we want, empty days, a blank calendar, but we don’t really. We probably say NO to everything because we haven’t been outside of the house for weeks, or maybe we just can’t remember how to Small Talk anymore. We think we have nothing to say of interest because our time is in the past. We apologise for ourselves, for our Olding years. We watch young things dance by, remember (vaguely) our own young thing dance, and we turn away.
I think that is a big shame. So what to do? Who can say, who can tell? I take my inspiration from other silver foxes I notice walking by the window, determined to move, regardless of pavement angst, their emptiness in life, their Big Pants questions, all of them coated, booted and sharp looking as if they know just where they are going and are excited about getting there. So, when I breathe deep and set forth of an early morning to visit the swans on the pond, I decide to look the same way as them. I smile, I walk, I greet, I cross roads about 3 times as wide as any road back home with my heart in my mouth, but I feel better about everything once I return. Perhaps this is how to live in the Olding years. Just one thing at a time. Then another.
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
The New year’s Dance. I haven’t been for many years, wanting to but encouraged to scoff at the whole hogmanay hangover/hair of the dog thing. But I did go, lifted by my kindly young neighbours and thus chaperoned and only for the Children Bit, 7-9pm. The hall was buzzing with families and those, like me, who tend towards early experiences, finiting them when the big people arrive with a long night on their minds. It was wonderful. For a while the music was disco, minus DJ and I watched the children, all fined up and flutey, the girls with sparkles and sass, the boys stuck to the walls, eyes on their shoes, the odd flicker of uplooking. I smiled at the memory of my own children at such events, way back way way back. Now I am a granny on the dance floor and don’t let anyone police me off it, oh no. I am here to boogie, to ceilidh, to absorb every single wonderful moment of freedom, not just from covid restrictions, but from life, from wife, from my children leaving, from explanations. I am aware I may well have looked like a right narnia, barefoot, dancing, as I did with another granny, a dear friend, another creative, a woman who knows what it is to have experienced the joys of gain, the pains of loss, her heart, like mine, a mosaic of cracks and craiks and smoothed over and over by her own hand, the crafter of renewal, of necessity. To be such a woman, any woman, is to learn that heart breaking is not a final act but a daily one, perhaps hourly, but nonetheless inevitable.
So we danced, we grannies, a lot. And when the ceilidh band, young men, arrived on stage, I played man to her woman and we swung and spun and giggled and bumped and it was perfect. The lights twinkled and the young, soon to be dragged home by parents for the 9pm curfew, danced faster and with wild enthusiasm. I watched their faces, caught their sparkles, saw the boys unglue from the walls as if they knew it was now or never, their pressed shirts and shone shoes a waste of effort if they didn’t just go for it, now, quick.
And then I caught sight of a young man, a friend of my eldest, a wide smile on his face. He lives away with his family, but he was here and this was now and, like the curfew children, I was leaving soon. Dance? I asked and he smiled his warmth, reaching out his arms in welcome. What is this dance? he asked. No idea, I replied (so many complicated island dances). The dancers formed a ring. Shall we middle it? I asked. Yesss! he said, and we did and the joy of dancing without knowing a single step with a young man who only had the jist of the dance was glorious. We spun and jigged, bounced and twirled and all the time he held me safe as we middled the whole wheel with absolutely no clue as to the regulation dance steps. It has been very many years since I felt that safe.
I would say, even at this late stage that I have only ever caught the jist of life, of living, not understanding most of it, and I am glad of it for life is a deep thing, and wide and way too much for resolving. But to recklessly dive into the middle of the dance of it is a glorious sparkly thing. It may not sort out heartbreak nor last into the next day but if I know I can take that barefoot step once, even at almost 70, then I can do it again, and, if I cannot, at least I did and only yesterday.
I am noticing the words that leap from my mouth sans aforethought. What I am recognising is that we women seem to feel that details are always needed, descriptions the concise and careful constructivation of a picture. This, to men, in my observation, is enough to fall them asleep where they stand, or, if they can internally justify escape, they escape. We allow it without question. It thinks me. If the question is ‘Did Sally actually meet up with Melanie that day?’ A man might respond with a Yes or a No, then sit back in his chair because his job is done. If a woman is asked that question, you are going to know what both women were wearing, what perfume they do or don’t use, the state of their nails, hair, choice of clothing, their lipstick colour, the quality of their home life, the names of all 15 kids, oh, and grandkids, the colour of their hair, teeth, front room curtains etc, their relationship with their neighbours, mother-in-law, where they live, their diet, the colour of their car if they drive one, the weather, and finally coming into land with many opinions on all of the above. Meanwhile the listener has missed the shop, her birthday and is busting for the loo. It seems we can’t help it. In fact, without we women, there would be a minimalistic view of the world. It is raining or not raining. There are sausages or not, for supper. The radio is on or off. The mother-in-law is dead or alive. The people of the world, in short, are naked, mindless and quite without character, sometimes even a name.
However, to be a member of the woman clan can mean she is drowning in words, the need to tell it all a cumbersome weight. Unless she notices and refines her innate need to ‘babble’, she is unlikely to feel silent and deadly and I am keen to learn silent and deadly. But this learning thingy takes considerable mental work and a honed focus on the lips and teeth. It also begs something we women might find tricky, the pause for thought. I was not born with that particular talent but nor was I born with piano fingers. I had to learn and I am curious enough to become a student in wordage. Although it might take me the rest of my days to answer a simple yes or simple no, I do love to refine and hone. Breath is of essential value in this refine and hone palaver. Just one or two slow breaths when someone asks if Sally did actually meet up with Melanie that day can result, not in a simple yes or no because I am a newbie in this study course, but it does give me time to slough off the fact that I know Melanie can barely breathe in those support knickers or that Sally’s secret passion is to work with elephants in South Africa, or that those two women have loathed each other since primary school. All irrelephant. However, it does seem to me that the less I explain, or justify or whatever, the more powerful I feel, not over another but over my own babbling self and I like that feeling a lot.
Saying sorry is another loose lipped load of tiddleypom. Not when there is a definite culpability but all those other times, like when someone bumps into us. There is no sense in that but we do it endlessly, such as stepping into a taxi with a suitcase too heavy, in the rain and without assistance, thus keeping the lazy arse of a taxi driver waiting; asking a waiter for more water in a busy restaurant; changing an order in a bakery when the queue behind us is champing to be served; taking too long to pull out a pound coin or 3 for a bus trip with cold arthritic fingers. I have even watched a woman lift herself from a park bench with a sorry on her lips because she knew a whole family were eyeing that very bench, her own need for the whole of it a nothing much and clearly stating that she is a downright sinner for lowering her butt onto said bench in the first place.
Suspecting, as I do, that in my new land of weirdohood I think a lot more about things that never crossed my mind before, when external demands yelled for immediate attention. I am curious about behaviour, choices, patterns of old and the fractal un-patterns of the new, my creation of self now un-boundaried or even influenced by a.n.other. Sometimes questions arise that might have come from the mouth of a babe, questions deep and wandering as if I am just a little outside of everything I thought was a fact. In fact, I will question facts the most and there is a skip of mischief in my doing so. Someone says something that comes with a backdrop of irrefutable evidence. It’s even printed in a book as words are printed within the dense pages of a dictionary, their definitions set in ancient stone. And that, my friends, is where mischief finds her playground because language is always changing, developing or falling off the edge altogether. Basically I am having fun and at no-one’s expense. I am Mrs Malaprop intentionally and playing with words, turning a verb into a noun or talking like Yoda whilst still communicating the sense of my words. I am only sorry there isn’t an online course on imaginative speaking, on having fun with sentences or of finding new ways to illustrate what I want to say. Perhaps I’ll constructicate one. Sentences have rhythm, a beat, phrasing just like music and there is a wonderful freedom in playing games with what is supposedly the Right Way to Speak. The other good thing about jumbling up sentences is that my mind must be very quick indeed, well ahead in the race with my mouth, and one of the first lessons I wish to mistress is ‘Don’t say ‘sorry’ for every damn thing’. Instead I might say ‘oopsadaisy’ thus immediately bringing flowers into the situation and that is always a good thing.
I guess those diehards will be rolling their eyes at such subversion but taking life and language and a million other challengeable and changeable things too seriously just ends a face up in wrinkles. Laughter and a light touch lift mountains.
Judy Fairbairns 