pattern

Today begins me twirly. It is light, I concede, but a greenish light, not a full morning blast from Father Sun. Even when he, Father Sun, is cloud compromised, the ok morning light is still His and when I see it frame my blackout curtains that don’t quite fit, I know it isn’t twirly. Not 4 am. As I flip back the covers, knowing, just knowing that there is no more sleep here for me in this little room, I wonder what I will feel when Winter grabs the world by the goolies and holds tight till April has deferred to May. No matter. This is so not a goodly thought for this lime green morning. I go downstairs leaving the wee dog curled like a donut and as asleep as I wish I was. Coffee, music, lights on, warm and deluding with me that the day is begun in a normal sort of way. I sit in the semi dark conservatory and peer out. I can see the outside, more or less. It looks eerie, sleepy. Now it is 4.15. Good lord, how on earth am I going to fill the hours? I make a plan, writing confidently on my pad. I will this and I will that. This one is something I have to do sometime today because last evening in a moment of enthusiasm, I thawed some prawns. Risotto, I decide and ferret about for the ingredients, lining them up like soldiers for when I am dressed. Of course, I could easily make a prawn risotto in my jim-jams but it doesn’t feel right somehow. I am too professional for such sloppiness.

Now wait a minute. Who said that? Why can’t I slop my way through a prawn risotto? Like, who says I cannot? After all, the outside of me has little to do with my culinary skills. Is my dead mother here? My dead father? Well, no. So who is talking at me as if I was a child? Oh, it is me. It is I. Well something needs to be done about that, but what? This voice, these voices of judgement seem to have travelled with me right up to now and my now is a 68 year old woman of considerable strength and skill. Just saying. I speak it out loud and turn around to face my ‘judges’ but they have gone, disappeared. Oh. Ah. Now what? Well I will tell you Now What. If I cook in my jim-jams and fluffy dressing gown, it will be impossible to affix my pinny around the extra bulk. In my frocks, no matter how many layers, I can affix with ease and affixing is important because I always splash, spill, pepper and blob myself when cooking. I am way too enthusiastic with the process and now I know why chefs wear whites. So I trip upstairs to find the light yellowing nicely around the ill fitting blackouts and the little dog still being a donut. As I wheech back the curtains, she opens one eye and I tell her, Stay. I am just going to make a prawn risotto at, now let me see, 5 am. She lifts herself, rearranges, curls again and slumps down with a warm sigh to sleep some more. Prawn risotto is not her thing.

I am quite alone in this evolution of light, from lime green to yellow warm, cooking with garlic and wine and herbs whilst the rest of the lucky world are either deep in slumber or waking twirly and dreaming of bacon rolls or Eggs Benedict or muesli and fruit. The prawn risotto is not pleasant once complete and I consider the vile coloured mess of rice and prawns, tasting and rejecting, adding and rejecting. I have invested much thought and considerable imagination into finding some way of ‘saving’ it. There is no saving. Now it laughs me and also fragments me. Once I would cook this in jim-jams or frocks because it would have been a meal to share. Now there is no share. I know it is the way it is but after so many years of sharing, I can get it wrong. Actually I am delighted I got this one wrong because it is a huge pan of risotto and there is only me and a very small drawer offering a freeze. I will offer it to the hungry creatures out there and they will be grateful.

Alone is strange to me. It also frees me. Like a mosaic of fragments, it will show me a pattern. One day.

One morning I awaken with a lightness in my step once I have connected my feets with the new carpet, found my ground and elevated into my height. I know it isn’t a dizzy height, but it is mine and I know where I start and where I end and that is completely fine with me. It is also reassuring, because the frocks in my wardrobe only fit the me I know and were the me I know to grow or diminish overnight, we would both be confounded, the frocks and me. Thankfully, this scenario only belongs in one of my fiction stories, the ones where worlds merge because some eejit has found a portal into another one and gone through leaving everyone else behind wondering whether or not said eejit will be home in time for tea. I have yet to be that eejit despite locating portals all over the place. Moving on.

I decide on an outfit. It is quite a sassy one for me, given that I have chosen full flowing billow-skirts for a longtime. It is cooler this morning, circa 10 degrees and I needs must address the coolth #scottishword. Pantaloons of a black and white scarpy slash pattern, elasticated just below the knee; long tee-shirt beneath longer frock in an arguing design; overlay, a thin unequally hemmed jersey, also not matching and a wrap-around tartan knee-length skirt fashioned from almost the same amount of fabric required for a kilt, which is, for the sassenachs, about 20 yards in old money. I need safety pins to secure the connecting lengths having lost weight since being widowed. I blame Himself for that. The finishing touch is a bead belt, hip hugging yet loose and well, quite the thing. I pose before my old cracked mirror and think, Yes, You Will Do, and scoot down stairs for a boiled egg.

It takes only 30 minutes for me to realise this outfit is not a long term thing. The bead belt keeps shucking up to my waist and I can bear nothing around my waist. Then the safety pins ping apart and stick my skin. I sit down to eat my breakfast and the skirt tangles with my body. The underneath tee rumples quietly beneath the frock and I now look like an un-made bed. I tolerate and breathe deeply. I know, as does my sassy outfit and my mirror that I will be seeing no-one today, not one soul and that this is all about me and how I feel about me, but that is not what confounds me, is not the thing that twirls me fastly back upstairs to wheech the whole thing off in a rather dramatic fling and to begin all over again with a more considered approach. No. It is that moment I need a pee. The undoing process of wrap around skirt, safety pins, layered tee beneath frock and pantaloons, no matter what the flaming pattern, all conspire to confound and I know when I am beat. T’is now. My dressing up is not working today.

It thinks me, reminds me of happy happy girl days and my absolute favourite of all games. Dressing up. My mum had a chest, or trunk filled to busting with outfits and these outfits were not made of paper or plastic. They were sewn quality and lasting and beautiful. I was Gypsy, my favourite, and mum would darken my face to a Norfolk tan with her powder (she was able to take dark, unlike freckled white skin me) and affix the hoop earrings somehow and I would flash my eye whites into the moment and dance and jingle the bracelets and anklets for hours. I also recall being the fairy, the clothing white and laced and cotton and fitted and beautiful and with wings. There was a sailor outfit but I ignored that one. I became the gypsy then, or the fairy. My friend Angela had to be queen and as I was not even remotely interested in being a monarch there was no contest. I remember watching her walk across the grass on a summer afternoon, straight-backed and completely absorbed in her queen-ness whilst I finagled around the shadows planning gypsy/fairy anklet jangling mischief. It worked for a long time. I think it still does.

So, after the wheeching myself out of the conflictions of an outfit that looked frickin great as long as I would spend the entire day standing still before my cracked mirror, I move towards my frock wardrobe with both interest and trepidation. I don’t want to lose the devil-may-care-let’s-astound-the-wildlife thingy but I do want to be able to move freely. Moving freely is a big thing for me. If I feel contained at any point on my body or in my mind I have this desire to explode. I haven’t done it yet and it could be messy but I am super aware of the exploding gene that figgles about in my DNA and which, if DNA could encompass feelings, would show in my ancestry, I am certain. So, choosing not the sameold and yet poking about with fingers of curiosity, I locate a layering option. Let’s try you, I say, kindly, because I am aware that this particular underlayer has not seen light of day for a while. It is quite hard to get it right for my mood, I say, muffled beneath the foof of the material as it falls over my head and lands around me. We look at each other, the underlayer and me. We agree. Okay so far. I go back again to the dark depths of the wardrobe and flip the hangers along. No, no, maybe but no, hmmm, okay, how about you? I can hear the excited squeak and I love it even as all my abundant frocks know the rules. I hate to disappoint but this may not be your day. Once selection is made I can go about my business. I still will meet nobody, and the frocks know this but together we swing through the day, through the ups and downs and all is well in our world.

I did wonder, only this morning, does everyone else have this much fun in such ordinary moments?