own

Although I always awaken with Tigger bouncing in my head, even that striped loon can change shape as the morning unfolds. I never know how it will be until it decides for itself. It isn’t to do with what I do nor what I don’t. It isn’t about the weather, the season or my best laid plans. I can continue to bounce until even I get tired of the bounce thing, all the way up to evening, or I can feel myself turning grey. On the outside of me, I laugh at this. It’s the same for everyone else isn’t it you daft old eejit? Your grey slump is not new, nor is it original enough to warrant a voice. No, it is just a grey slump. Get on with it. You could, if you subscribed to self-pity, find a load of reasons to explain this. Or you can try to outrun it by attaching yourself to Blue (the marvellous hoover) or a bucket and mop or the iron or a pen. Third option. You could just stop running, stop searching for the reasons for grey, and let go. It is allowed.

I paragraphically distance myself from this conversation, as you can see. I have never been good at allowing myself such an indulgence, as I see it. Oh, I am really good at this allowing thingy with everyone else. It thinks me. Am I perfectionist? Well, maybe, because my standards for myself are as high as the sky and equally unreachable. I look up. Everything up there is doing what it does, naturally and adaptively. Clouds move because the wind moves them. Sun rises and falls, ditto the moon, all naturally. Down here it’s not so easy to adaptively flow. Our wonderful brains make mince of us if we are not in charge of them. We are also impatient and expectant and judgemental, often and mostly of our own selves. I find it reassuring to know that the grey hits each one of us, not that I wish it on a single living soul.

Today began with Tigger and became Eeyore by 0800. He’s a sad old sausage, tail gone plus other losses. Imagined? Possibly. Then I considered the stories lived out in the 100 acre wood. That is quite a wood by the way, and an opportunity to be lost for days. Moving on. Each of the friends find each other, seek each other out so that no distress remains thus for long. They are a team.

I believe that the writer fashioned each creature on the moods of a human. Winnie the Pooh, happy with everything in life, every opportunity a gift; Piglet, scared and lacking in confidence; Eeyore believing that life itself worked against him; Rabbit, tense, anxious and fearful; Kanga the mother, the carer, the soother of troubles; Roo, well, Roo is just Roo; Old Brown trying so hard to control whatever comes his way and failing and Tigger the jester. We all know all of them. We experience them all. What might trouble us, and troubles me is that I want to be always Tigger or Pooh but I cannot control that (Old Brown). Life has a life of its own and all we can do is to be okay about cloud thinking in the face of whatever wind decides to luff into power. Yes we must plan, yes we must take action, yes and yes. But when Tigger turns into Eeyore before the school run, then we might consider leaning into the grey, which, by the way, takes forever to create on the palette, more than 7 colours and in such cautious amounts that it is very easy to turn it into slump mud if distracted.

So when Tigger becomes Eeyore, call on Pooh. Always works for me.

On June 1st Jenny died.

We have been friends for over 4o years, the same as my years of marriage.

Our children knew each other as little ones and those children now have little ones of their own. We had a bet going, she and I that her daughter-in-law would give birth before my own did. The due dates hold hands, they’re so close. I will see my new grandchild, but she won’t see hers.

Over the years, our roads travelled in different directions, but we kept in touch. When she first got breast cancer, she was completely herself about the whole thing. No time for this, she said, need to sort out treatment and keep moving. She went sailing after that, for 7 months, she and her man, in a yacht to beat all other yachts with big-ass sails and comfort below deck, every comfort, and the wind in her hair and salt on her tongue, whilst I became an Island Wife. But women who connect at a wild and deep level, who recognise each other’s spirit and love it, never lose touch, even if the contact is once a year.

We sailed with them once, meeting them on a Greek island. We all wondered how it would work, four of us converging where Two Roads meet, after 30 years apart, and living in close quarters for a couple of weeks.

I could have been a big pain in the ass, I said.

You are. She replied and handed me a beer.

In the evenings, moored in a little warm harbour, we would cook, eat and make music. They taught me songs, and I them, and there was something magical about the candlelight, the warm nights, the laughter and song.

She did much with her life and was never still. She was the second woman ever to command a Royal Navy warship. A transatlantic skipper, a magistrate, a wife, mother grandmother, although that title sounds way too old for her. She adored her family, and actively showed it. She was feisty, impossible, decisive and noisy and there is a big hole left now she is gone.

But what will stay with me for ever, and this may sound selfish, is what she gave to me. She never faltered and when I did, she whooped my butt. I’m not saying, or even imagining, that she had life sussed, because I know she didn’t think that at all. I saw, at times, such sadness in her big eyes, and she might tell me, briefly, or she might not. When she knew she had only time left, she would still pick up if I called, or answer a text with humour. She came to my book launch down south in a bright pink wig after aggressive chemo. It was our last hug.

I salute her. She is a woman who challenged me to be the best I could be, just as she challenged herself.

Sail on Silver Girl.