Old

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Island Blog – Still Curtseying

I went to work today on my day off and here’s why. I skinny through, that’s what I do. In these days of living alone, there is just so much of it anyone can do without demise. As a child I thought that meant ‘curtsey’ and I probably did, living in the times of bad girl, good girl, behave girl, don’t speak out of turn girl, look away girl, say nothing, got it, nothing. Those times. Now I see it more as demist (to clear condensation, cloudal blindness, anything that stops me seeing the next thing or anything pretty much thus preventing clarity). Ok, I made the last up, but there are a few thinks there, little birds fluttering, lifting, looking squinty at me.

I don’t curtsey anymore. Wish I’d learned it years ago. That obedient (not) befrocked girl is ready for anything. I can see ahead. To be honest, it’s the olding times for me and I am fine with that, the feist in me strong, the play, the humour, the yes to life and to all her moments, all her offerings. Yes, yes.

I watch the play out with the generation below me. I read the rants, the shouting at the stars, I hear the local chat. I hear the disappointment, the childhood neglect and worse, I smell the burning, the decay, see the curtseying. I see the tough fight for independence, for recognition, for allowance, for acceptance, for love. I don’t know if it’s just me, or if all us oldies feel this. I just want every single human being to be who they are, without fear of judgement. An old dreamer, maybe, but I can remember feeling this strong when I was 16, when I was powerless, and still curtseying.

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Island Blog – The Mary Thing

I’m home and back into a precious silence, just the birds, the gulls screeching like a mother who is way past tolerance, urgent, a call that cuts like glass. I’m watching the shift-light, the white skinny, almost saying something. Blue sits fat and patchy, here and there, confident in its canopy control. I am always here, but playing hide and seek and damn good at it. I’ve been hours away this day, caught and captured into a gathering. That’s what we call it here. A gathering can occur on a hillside, within the walls of a completely unprepared cottage in the middle of nowhere, a sudden thing. But, this one was ready for itself. We all knew it was coming, the date set.

I was unsure about what to wear as all of my clothing fits a rainbow and this was a sad gathering, no matter the celebration of life thing. A very long life lived, a load of children, a big team of grandkids and a football stadium of great grandlings. 97 or so years of twinkling and working like not many women would these days. I knew her, a bit, but in talking with one of her grandsons (so handsome, as they all are) about body language and the words we say without saying a single word, I felt I suddenly knew her better. She was a generation above me, ahead of me, but she was so approachable, so welcoming, so naughty, perhaps not all by herself, but there was that sparkle in her eyes that told me she was up for anything. A very gracious lady, and I mean Lady.

We laid her to rest this day in the old graveyard, her beloveds, spanning generations, lowering her into the ground beside the love of her life, gone some years before, above the bay, with cloud dip, slight rain (very polite and thank you) and a lot of old, young, very young, all there for her. She leaves with them, her inspiration, her encouragement and acceptance and a lot of tears and laughter. And Billy, who brought her home was as he has always been, respectful, working with whatever a family chooses, so compassionate, so professional.

What a legacy Mary. You leave that with them, with me, with all of us who remember you now, and who will talk about you for frickin ages.

Thank you.

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Island Blog – Thinkscape

I’ve done a few things today. In an elemental olding, I am guessing a few things amount to much. It thinks me. Some, no many, don’t get this far and there are times I wish I hadn’t. Not many, though, to be honest. I meet and greet young people, and I see my own young life, the way nobody can take this away thing. I love to see the tipsy don’t-care attitude. I remember it. Nobody should ever tamp out that flame.

What I have learned, through copious reading in a zillion genres, in talking to others, has taught me fire. I meet, and daily, awful stuff in my age group. I see, and did today, in a short, happy conversation with a woman who dressed so sassy, so wild, so beautiful, that I could not guess her years nor that she is facing a lot of something. We lit a fire between us, like we were young again and checking each other out. It was a few minutes, but I saw her and she saw me.

In the waiting, the olding, there are a lot of Thinks. Time rolls slow, or it can. Those of us previously agile and in some way compromised and let me say this out loud, and as a challenge to them, youneed to stretch more, to reach more, to find more, to do more. It is so easy to sit and to give up, ‘bring me this, get me that’. If the ‘more’ is not an option, that’s good enough. It has to be enough for me in a day when I am doing little else. And the reason for this doolittle, not-much bollix? Ah, now there’s a thinkscape . A tinder burn of a long life, a fire burn of memories, of dances on sand, under moonlight, with a band who never knew when to stop; when the morning arose long before me and brought a ferry in to lift me over a bumpy tidal flow, when i honestly thought this would go on forever. I like the Thinkscape. Takes me above land, under sky, halted for a few moments in memories.

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Island Blog – Wet baskets and Thinks

I have returned to the most wonderful artwork in my home, on the ceiling above a recessed window, in the halfwayupthestairs wall, in the bathroom, no longer (and sadly) containing a bath. The colours are eliptic, shaplular, interesting. I know why they are there, and what they would mean to anyone but me, obviously. They show water ingress. But I have lived with water ingress for most of my adult life, all of it, actually, and have become friends with it, interested, even. In a home 117 years older than I, expectations are definitely a mistake, particularly in our current world of covering every damn thing up with paint and walls and pretence. In those old days, sentient folk followed water courses and with respect. They just knew what they were up against. Nature. Now, well, now that intelligence is considered obsolete.

I’m watching the ingress right now. It comes every winter, and every spring when the winter king has finally let go of control, I call a plasterer to cover up what will always be there in this ancient stone build, my home. Through my windows, i am watching big cloud talk and I am not surprised. They know there is a huge gale coming in on Friday, and they are bunching up, holding tight, shouting it out, running for cover, for those who recognise sky conversation. Fishermen may not be out on Friday. Ferry may not appear on Friday. But those of us who live here, who know the gales will come, who know that, accept and batten down. The wood won’t burn. The rain comes in. The wind takes your wheelie. And, and, there is shared laughter in that.

When I come into my ancient home, all tripled glazed and with underfloor heating, I smell wet baskets. I think. Or, is it mice? I think mice smell like wet baskets. I don’t like opening my door to the smell of wet baskets, nor mice. I want to come in to fresh and welcoming. Too many years of this place smelling like an old folks home, and I so wish I didn’t have to say that. Maybe that’s an ingress, maybe from the old bones of the old stories, I don’t know. Perhaps rain ingress smells like wet baskets, or mice?

A lot of thinks. For now, I’ll go with finding supper.

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Island Blog – A Man, a Horsefly and the Itch.

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.

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Island Blog – Past, Last, Elastoplast, Vast

Listening to a singer songwriter, Irish, a beautiful voice, I remember singing her songs way back when I had confidence, long chestnut hair and strong limbs. They said I sounded like her, this beautiful Irish singer, and, at times, I could hear that. Just a glimpse, but a glimpse, nonetheless. I knew how to get lost in the words, the music, the glory of good musicians backing me, and a pub full of folk listening. I am so glad I knew those days, the arriving, setting up of mikes and baffles and wotwot. Walking down from Tapselteerie House, once my kids were (almost) in bed and all the dishes were washed, there I was, just me, wild and excited, nervous and alone. Each week we gathered, played Irish, Scottish, Gaelic, blue grass, anything that just came in the moment, no script. Then I would make the walk home down the unlit village street, on and up onto the dark track for well over a mile, high on music and laughter and strong and wild. I do remember arriving (quietly) through the kitchen door, shushing the dogs, grabbing water and going to bed wherein I could not sleep till almost dawn and HALLO wee ones, and Hallo guests expecting the full Scottish. I didn’t mind one bit, had the energy for all of it, just for that buzz, that wonderful buzz of music, song and just me away from the domestic demands for an evening.

A past now, but a last too, for I can still feel the thrill. I can smile at the remembering, and I can let it ribbon into my past. However, I may still bring back the light of those days should one of my children, or their children ask me to tell about me, not the facts, but the feelings. My own do this, but is that because I ask them to hear what my life was like at their age, no matter what they think they saw and understood? Perhaps. I know I have sat at the ancient feet of someone decades older than I and asked a question, that led to another question, that lit something in that old body and faltering mind, and I have heard stories way wilder than mine. I am glad of it. To imagine this shaky set of bones living a bonkers life, full of fun and mischief and crazy is, for me, a truth. Of course they did. They lived through two wars, real threats, real deprivation, not just two years of Covid lockdown, not that I want to minimise that, but I’m just inviting a perspective shakeup.

What I have learned of said fun, mischief and crazy from those old bones has laughed me into hope. They may be falling apart in a way that is overly ghastly, but they did really live. They were wild, once, crazy, full of fun and mischief and, ok, not all of them, but oh so many. They have stories they seriously believe no young person would ever want to hear. Ask them. Because I did, I learned coping mechanisms I would never have learned otherwise, domestic survival tactics, the way to keep bloody going when every sinew said I’m Done.

We can put an Elastoplast on our past, hoping it might heal. It won’t. Our past is what it was. Although I love and celebrate the current culture within which all those in dire mental pain, survivors of everything shocking and horribly wrong finally have a voice, I really hope that family, support and intelligent healers are ready to help a move beyond. I have no experience of such, thus, no voice in this space. From my fortunate place, I would fight for all freedoms, all areas, all colours, all sexuality, all of it. The past of us is not just my personal past, where I had bacon and eggs on Sundays, and cleaned the car on Wednesday afternoons. We have blasted way beyond this. I might get the terminology wrong as we all move, bumpily into a future, with all the wrong words, and wonky limbs and the mischief always at the ready.

I remember coming home at the ten o’clock curfew, my Dad (bless him) would not sleep till I was safely home. I waited some beats, heard the phew of silence and then escaped through the sitting room window, had a ball, and arrived home on the 5 am milk float. Who knew this? Well, you do now. It was my past and is my lasting memory, oh so many of them and mostly out of hours, on the dance floor, out there, out there, the vast of what was. And I was colourful, I was psychedelic, although I never took drugs, and then the comes in as it always does. See the stories?

I met someone today, a woman I respect and love, and she has dementia, and I saw it. Ask the stories now, right now, let the grandchildren ask, encourage it. This woman, that man, they really lived. Once. They walked back from the pub after a session, a song, a lift for a few hours from the dire of their lives. They all had, have a voice, have stories that will make your perspective shake into a whole new shape. Trust me.

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Island Blog – To Risk

This distraction thing…….well, this one is a wonderful one. No, I’m not telling, nor spelling it out, but it is far beyond cancer or insect bites, has nothing to do with hospitals nor scary journeys with too many questions in my mind, too many fears. This one is magical and hopeful and exciting and I feel wilder, free-er and it just looks as if the being of 71 is suddenly not the slow slide into an ending. Of course, there will always be that ending wotwot, we can’t avoid that, but if it’s possible to shout Wahooo on that slide, I am in. I didn’t think it was mine, however, just a short 3 weeks ago. No. I sat with coffee and my spectacular view and the birds dafting away around the feeders, watching other people living out their lives in a snapshot as they careened by (young) or wandered (older) and I reconciled, reluctantly to what seemed inevitable. In my experience, from what I can remember of those long ago days when my reddish chestnut hair was long enough to sit on and my body obeyed me and my eyes were light bright, twinkly and challenging, the next generation up seemed ancient. Perms and blue rinses (good god) and with shoes matching handbags, and the men, jowly and rotund, not that there is anything wrong with any of that, but I confess to thinking, oh very dear. Please not me. I said (I did) please take me around 60 when I still have control of my bladder and my footsteps. Obviously that fell on deaf ears! And now I am where I am, and, by the way, I still challenge anyone to stay longer than me on the dance floor, with breaks now and then, of course.

Do you remember a time when something, or someone happened, and that connection, so random, so unexpected, made a deep shift in everything, when thoughts, confused by this happenstance, swirled like a whole frickin twister as it just ran right through you? Sensibilities are unsensibled in a moment, and it takes some time to settle the unsettlers. But it seems to be a good thing, after decades of self-protection, fuelled by fear and doubt. We immediately doubt and question, after a lifetime of caution and routines that uphold, define and confine, until this normal is normal, even if we don’t like it one bit. We accept and perform as we are expected to, and, to a degree, that’s a good thing, until the roots go miles down like blades, cutting through the fragile connections to self.

And then something or someone walks into my vision, yours too. How wonderful is that! Even if it is just a snapshot, it came to me, came to you, a shift in a personal tectonic plate, the underground split into a new geology. That’s something, for sure. It proffers a chance, a wild step into the unknown. If we are to live with joy, fun, light and energy, it is up to each one of us to risk.

My favourite word.

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Island Blog – Nicky and her Sass

The past few days have been all about memories. I have them, yes, but, in my current melancholy state, as I impatiently await my levitation from radiotherapy tiredness, I don’t allow myself to indulge. It’s not just the tiredness, but the aloneness, and the the Lonely. When someone gets to the beyond of 70, that someone can be forgiven for believing they are now elderly. I am not elderly. It’s quite a word, now that I look at it in print, like a kind of dismissal, or the onset of such. I hear writers name my age thus, in the kindest of ways, my grandad, my granny, the old girl next door, but for the one inside the body and mind of such labelling, it sits not easy. So what to do? I don’t know because I never, ever, thought I would get here and the here of this here seems to have blasted in very recently with handcuffs, a takeover. Perhaps this last few months of……I won’t say illness because I have never fet ill, so let’s call it astonishment. There I was, quite joco, getting on with living alone and learning with faltering steps to realise that I am my purpose now, when that feels like a whole load of shite because my purpose was, and for decades, all about others, and then came this tiredness. I am bored with hearing from others that they are tired. I am bored with myself hearing me even thinking it. Why is that? Well, I know that consistent tiredness is an ask for change. Obviously I don’t include those recovering from surgery or illness, but I meet so many who are just, well, tired of their lives. Too many, and I don’t fix, I am gentle, but my hands are itching to guide them out of their familiar, which is consistently depleting their beautiful energy. I digress.

A young friend came to stay. I haven’t seen her, as she was to us, for well over 30 years. She has grown her own family since then, been through her own troubles. She, like me, has sunk and risen and flown and sunk and risen again, and retained herself, her energy louding my little home into light and fire. She led the marine students in that faraway time of innovative benign research on marine life among the Western Isles. She was dynamic and determined, focussed and bonkers. She still is, and that is what rocked me, me, the elderly, the not needed-anymore. And, yet, I was there with her, once, inside the memories.

She loved being here. Out there, walking the old walks, covering remembered ground, at one with the weather, sun for ten, hailstorm, rain, sun again #normal, and she didn’t rest for a minute, hungry for the memories that I try to avoid. It thinks me. We did good here, me and himself. We launched many such hungry girls, and lads, and we shifted the shift in their lives. We did that. Himself with his utter and complete commitment to being at sea for as long as possible, and me with my gift of cooking barrel loads of nutrition at times when those I have spoken to, other elderlies, would have gone to bed with a not me, help yourself, thing. I never did that, not once, no matter the exhaustion. And, I am proud of that.

She is gone now and. her going has left me drained of breath. She is so vital, and that thinks me too. She sees me as, not granny, but as someone I cannot get a hold of. To her 20, I was at least 40. She calls me inspiration, naughty, out of ordinary, and more. A changer. I am working on believing that. And, these memories that haunt, the ridiculous wishing to walk back into those wild, exhausting, purposeful times, and to not be ‘elderly’ and alone, and not to cower down and hide and resist and all that bollix has led me to get forward (not back) into my frocks and bare legs, no matter the toothy north wind, and then to purchase turquoise button ankle boots.

Maybe the energy this trixy minx left here just found her sass.

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Island Blog – A Bimble

The days rove on, and, if I don’t have my specs on, they can rove on without me. I. have noticed this, waking into a Friday which suddenly became Thursday. Maybe I found this Thursday Alert in the local shop on questioning the lack of a weekly veg delivery, or perhaps I arrived for a Friday appointment a full 24 hours ahead, all dressed up and alert and toting my picnic. My life is nothing but adventurous and that’s for sure, but the difference to what was, is that it seems the adventure is heading somewhere all by itself. I can catch up, but I am not always the leader, as I once was. Who would have ever thought that things would string away from me in such a way? It laughs me, mostly. I kind of like the olding time, the way I can explode into a puzzled somewhere, all dressed right and with my picnic. Times, yes, it is mildly inconvenient, but with a mostly empty calendar, I can come back again on the right day. It thinks me.

Once (was it once….no it was not) I knew the date. School, children, business, bookings, all of that. The suddenness of old age surprises me. It may surprise others, but they are careful not to hi- light my appearing, just in case I wobble off my perch t’wirly. I remember this with my own mum, but never thought it would come to me. This old ness. No. However, it is here. I walk daily, but it is a bimble, a cautious wander over the rocky track I used to tramp beneath my boots sans thought. Perhaps this olding bollocks is a result of last year, cellulitis, cancer, beloved dog dead, perhaps. Perhaps.

But nonetheless, I will be ongoing, I will plant my feet in every day, even on the wrong date. Honestly, I believe in b**gering on. Our dad taught us that, and now I am here, all alone but living in the most beautiful place in the whole world, and with a strong community of like-minded dafties living just down the village, it doesn’t matter what day it is. A day is a day. The date matters now and then, but not much.

And, within each day there is the promise of adventure, even if I have to catch up with it.

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Island Blog – Revenance

It’s been a while, awhile. Interesting, is it not, how words play with our brains? Two words mean one thing and when conjoined, another, pulling me in to play their game, feeling me free to challenge the shapeshifters, as I oftentimes do.

I am a revenant. One who has returned, and I quote from the dictionary, ‘especially supposedly (no commas, I notice) from the dead’. I recall meeting no dead folk during the process of being nearly dead, although my day and night visions were somewhat weird. It was all cat. A cat curled into my suitcase in broad daylight as I slapped ice packs on my swollen body, hearing the fizz like a water drop on fire. Another two cats, differently coloured, walking through my hospital room, reassuring. The End. Or so I thought with the whole cat thing, fever, sick, one of the nearly dead.

Now, and now, here I am back home to the island with two big sons. One breast is, like (!) what’s the fuss all about? T’other looks like the surface of the moon. The op was a ‘wide excision’, in other words the spider legs were a distance apart. A scoop was required, and the wotwot pulled together, hence the strange shape. The old girl has the usual sag. The new girl on the block sings a different song. I wonder how she will look once she gets over this puffed up, bruised, attention-seeking thing? I smile.

I do my exercises. I am tired, rest often, keep doing what I can do which is mostly hanging my twinkly winkly lights now that the sun goes down like a crashbang. I can reconnect with my frock stash. It’s like meeting old friends and we all love the Autumn and Winter, my frocks and me. The cold brings out our colours, layers and revenance. We can carefully layer, we who refuse to go un-barefoot, always bare legged and feeling, really feeling the seasonal change. No protection. It is a choice and one I made a thousand years ago. I need to feel it, feel all of the all of it, of everything. Wild, yes, but not to me. To me it is a rising into whatever comes next.

This life with all her fears and worries, her slapdash, her punches and losses, her sharp cuts and traumas, all give us a wild card. (I have no idea what a wild card is, but ‘wild’ works for me). I will always play mine. It doesn’t matter what a soul has had to face, has come through. There is no competition. We all face shit. We all have the rising in us. All of us.

We are revenants. All of us. And, ‘Revenance’, the process, will be a word in the dictionary one day, telling out that all of us have, and still are, rising from whatever became dead to us, another, a thing, an understanding, a relationship, a valuable something. I have not met another soul who hasn’t lost something, someone, an heretofore (!) understanding. We are so shit at taking this out into the world.

In the breast cancer ward, giggling with the surgeon about a load of wotwot, pre-op, I watched a cat, white and grey, move easy away through the doorway. I don’t have a cat. Or, maybe I have four.

Let us rise. We are revenants.