present

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Island Blog – The Present

There you are, on a train, a bus, a plane, heading to in-laws, friends, relations, and with so many thoughts in your head. The delay on the train, bus or plane. Do iI want to be doing this, going there, at all? The confuddle rising in your head. What will I find beyond what I found before? How will I be judged, accepted? Do I have the right gifts, or, horribly, the absolute wrong gifts, and how will I feel if I see that disappointment? Oh I remember all of this.

And then I grew up. Took me 50 odd years btw. Christmas is not about scoring, even if it still sings that song. I wonder if, with old age, I learn things I wish I had learned at 40,50. In the childhood of a parental life, in the scurvy of tradition within a family, we can become lost, feeling fat and inconsequential and almost invisible. I remember that, too.

Thankfully, I am now beyond all of this, but, and but, again, I still want to give the right thing. This year I cannot, like most of us. I do think of those young parents with wide-eyed children who hope for a new bike, an iPad, roller blades or whatever is the thing out there now, and I wince for you. You know about January and February bills, you know the cold, the trimester of the year, all ice-toothed and with no compassion.

But, and however, for now, we have Christmas and it’s all about lights and fun and Father Cristmas. The aftermath will be as it is. Let us dance in the Present. Salut. x

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Island Blog. – Present, Alone and Safe

Oh how I love my home, the warm, cozy, safe happiness of these four stone walls surrounding me and my wee dog. Since himself upped and died, I have not felt safe here, concerned about loneliness and boredom and the fact that those who needed me, every single minute of every day, every month, every year, no longer do. It has taken all this time to be comfortable with that. At first, it felt like abandonment, I was abandoned, and I was, abandoned. I remember thinking, as each child left home, that gut twisting ouch, like a punch, that one of my beloveds had chosen to leave me. It sounds mawdling, arrogant, even, but what loving mother feels it any other way? I dont know if himself felt it too, but I do know that he still had me and that was enough for him, but he wasn’t enough for me, and that’s my raw truth. When they left, I longed to go with them, even as I knew I never could, nor would. A young life must learn through living it out, and a mother in tow was never going to be me. I knew one of those, my mother-in-law, and much as I respected and needed her, I didn’t admire her hold on himself, not once he had a wife and family. However, reflecting, this was a two way need. I get that.

It rained today. No big deal. T’is the norm in this glorious place, the wettest in the whole of the country, and that is saying something. To be the Best Wet……. goodness, demands a medal, or, maybe several medals distributed among all of we islanders, not that you would ever see them beneath the layering of wools and waterproofs. The rain can be slanty or stick straight. The clouds must be exhausted, or perhaps not. Perhaps this place is the only one offering regular employment, and clouds are fantastic creatures, lifting, shifting, colouring, turning Colgate white, spreading out their arms to each other, conjoining, merging, changing, always changing. Clouds can teach us a thing or two, at the mercy of Nigel or whatever daft and ordinary name the weather folk have decided to give a force of nature that begs no name at all. It is just a gale, I want to tell them, just a wild creature of magnificence and power, and you want to what……turn it into a small thing, a something you can label and tidy away once it has moved on? It ridiculouses me.

I finished a jigsaw, started another one. No, that’s a big fat lie. I laid out the 1000 pieces, covering most of my big oak dining table, tiny pieces, god so bloody tiny and dark, darker than the bright picture on the box. I left them overnight, studied them this morning, these pellets of impossibility, and snorted. There is no way I will, would, want to, enjoy putting you together. In fact, you are a big fat chore and I don’t want one of those. I gathered all the pieces up and returned them to the box without a moment of guilt. I shall take this one to the library. And it thinks me.

As I move beyond the loneliness and the boredom, and the pointlessness of me, I find a strength, a new confidence. Had I been the old, bored, lonely and pointless me of just a few months ago, I might well have battled with that horrible jigsaw, out of a sense of duty and because it might, just might, have filled in an hour or two. But not now. Now I can feel the amazon (not the company, but the woman) awakening. I can, and will, choose what I will do and what I will not do. 50 years of not having much choice about anything much is becoming my past. I will put myself together in a new way, even if the pieces confound me at first, and it will be I who choose the picture. And my head is full of colour and light and clouds and skies and fairies and walks in the woods. I can feel the Atlantic swell in my heart, and she calls me, the minx that she is, and I find myself yearning for that wildness, the not knowing and not understanding, the turbulence, the storms, the sudden calms, the snow geese flight overhead, the swans coming in, the autumn bluster. It all chuckles me. I am woman. I am strong and, I am rising up to laugh at the days to come for I am made of cloud, woods, ocean, light and dark, and I am here, present, alone and safe.

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Island Blog – Transitions in an Ordinary Life

A lovely blue sky morning it is and the wee girls are being nudged and encouraged through breakfast and into the car for school. I notice their natural resistance to a Monday morning which comes like a crashbang after the easy weekend. No deadlines, no shoes required, no hurried breakfast, no questions. I get it. I also remember my own young mother days when nobody thought that going to school was a good idea, in fact, it stunk. One shoe on, the other lost, in the dog’s bed, in the bike shed, anywhere but on the other foot. Teeth to brush? You are kidding, mum, it’s about 3 days climb to relocate the bathroom, this is Tapselteerie, remember? It was undoubtedly raining so the very thought of cycling down that track of potholes and potential deviations was an anathema. We are young and lively and want to play, not sit in that bus riding the switchback under the judgemental glances of the driver. We don’t want to sit in class to learn about the life of snails or the names of body parts or the history of a world we cannot begin to imagine. In fact, best not to imagine anything much because Mr This and Miss That are ancient and boring and quite without a head full of dragons that fly with fire, or trees that tip the clouds, and who don’t have a clue as to where all the wild things are, whereas we absolutely do.

Suddenly, they are gone, the silence a gasp as the front door closes between us. I know they will move beyond the transition, their little minds open to the next thing, as always, even though they resist. I also get that, the resistance, but in adult minds, it takes mental strength to live in the moment when all past, and imagined future, moments swarm together in a buzz of chaos. It seems to me that this is the primary work for us, to let go and to keep moving, through each uncomfortable transition, allowing it, just allowing it. When I wake, my head is already in connect mode, connected to every possible aspect of my life, present, past and imagined future. It is logical, of course, to divide and separate, I know this, but the chaos can overwhelm. Will I, should I, did I, can I? I know the past is ‘another country’, just as I know the future is a mystery. I can plan wee bits of it, such as my choice of clothing, my attitude, my next forward step, but the vast expanse of any future is beyond my control.

Perhaps, even as children, we know this. Perhaps this is both exciting and terrifying. Perhaps. Although I don’t remember how I dealt with my inner chaos as a child, I do remember loving a fantasy world, living in one as much as possible until I had to find my missing shoe on a Monday morning, eat breakfast quick and head off to the school bus. Actually, I would have done anything to lose both damn shoes, so miserably hard and uncomfortable were they, so clumpy, so hideous. I wanted fairy wings and ballet pumps and a lift up to another planet where greens were optional, where trees tipped the clouds, and where nobody wore shoes at all. Now, this morning, as I write into the silence left behind, I remind myself that what lies ahead is beyond my control. I must needs float along with it, listen, keep alert, ask questions, accept and then decide my attitude, for today brings in transition, the leaving of here and the moving into the next here, which is only ‘there’ for a few more hours. Not another country, not another state, just a few steps, a few miles, a few adjustments to my thinking, that’s all it is. Not a nothing, but an ok something, an inevitable something with opportunities for laughter and conversation, observation and fun, all nestled in the folds of this new day, this Monday.

Whatever you face today, I wish you fun and laughter, no matter the circumstances. There is always, always, someone out there whose transition is troubling, scary, alarming, terrifying, someone who could do with a smile, a ‘hallo’, a kindly gesture, a reminder that they are not alone in the chaos of an ordinary life.

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Island Blog – A Big Warm Friend

Once I get to know my mammoth, I find I like her. She presents as a threat, or so I perceive, but she is a big softy inside. I know about this presenting thingy, I do it myself, always upbeat, the cheerful one, the clown to smile away another’s sadness whilst my own nudges against my outer limits like there’s a whole me in there, longing to be seen, heard and acknowledged. It thinks me. However, thinking is not an action unless I I give it full attention, unless I sort the melodrama and sentimental tiddleypom from the core truth of my thinks. Hiding who I really am is often required and even appropriate at times, out there in the world. Was I to moan out my inner angst at, say, a birthday celebration for a friend, everyone would be stultified, embarrassed and at a loss for words. A meltdown on the 10 am ferry crossing would spoil the day for many folk, leaving them feeling emotionally confused and full of questions as to how I feel, at our next encounter. So, like you, I present as if my exterior is a perfect match for my core truth.

However, and there is always one of those, this can become an unhealthy way to live, this cover up choice, until even I, and in private, do not acknowledge how I really feel inside, desperate to fit in to the shape I ‘appear’ to have, and for all my life. My mammoth, who is fast becoming a good friend, has literally softened as I sit before her hugeness, her tusks, not to mention that, unless she budges, I will never see my sitting room again. We talk. She teaches me about her as I teach her about me. Our languages are not the same and we both need to learn. Sometimes we say more to each other by saying nothing at all, just watching, using eye contact, body language and smiles. It is hard for a mammoth to smile, yes, but, as you know, a true smile is really seen in the eyes, a true one, that is, for we can all turn up our mouths, in rictus, in grimace, and it means nothing if it doesn’t reach our eyes. Eventually, we communicate through thought in sentences that wind, like ribbons, into a flow.

Over days and evenings, we grow closer. She reminds me of my inner self and I suggest to her that she doesn’t need to roar quite so much, and at everything, because listening is key in this world. Sometimes we listen for so long that one of us needs to check the other hasn’t died in the process. She tells me that to feel broken and beaten down is okay. But to feel unheard and unseen as the true person I am, even if my presenting as the world expects me to present has dulled my wits somewhat means I must take action. I bristle, a little, at that, even as I know she is right. So what is the answer, I ask her. She watches me watching her, our eyes locked. Ah, she says, we need to be friends. We are friends! She nods that gigantic head and suddenly I laugh at the ridiculous scene, me on the floor, she taking up the whole sofa, a mammoth in my home, a huge and hairy mammoth! She, sort of, laughs too, but its more of a forest shaking roar that blows my short hair into spikes, knocks over the candles and rattles the window. We must be friends for ever, she says, once we all calm down and I have checked the window for damage and righted the candles. Any time you are not paying attention to whom you really are, being open and honest about it, mostly to yourself, I will block your doorway, I will be your stop-and-check checker. Ok, I say. And as I say this, I see her grow smaller, just a bit. She doesn’t seem to mind, so nor do I. After saying goodnight, watching her lie down to rest, I cover her considerably smaller body, with a big blanket against the chill of the dark hours. See you in the morning, I whisper, stroking her long soft coat.

Maybe, she says, her eyes closing.

In the morning, she is gone.

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Island Blog – The Past, Reflections and a New Picture

I used to yearn for company, filling the yearn hours with distractions, music, audio stories, sweeping the floor, talking to the geraniums. The latter, allowing this for some time, like almost 3 years, have now, I notice, gone quiet. It is their winter, their rest time and my random chitchat irritates. We are resting, they say, turning their backs on me. We manage this alone and in silence. Try it, it is restful. Okay I say, their message clear. I will try, and I do and they are right. I move through my lovely home hearing only the rain, the rise of the gale, big waves of cloudwater on their crests, hear the deafening crashsplash against my windows. In the quiet times, I hear the sparrows ribbon in for seed, 50 or more of them and all at once, all easily startled. I hear geese honk their wobbly way between the fingers of the gale, wings tipping, holding place against the sudden blasts of 71mph strength. I hear the drip, drip of the leak into my leak bucket, the crackle of wood burning and feel the hug of warmth. I notice the click and thrum to life of a gas burner, the ping of a microwave, times up, the voices of brave walkers coming from where? Who knows in this capricious and shifting wind?

Silence is never silence. Everything is always in motion, even if I am not although there’s always the jingfangle of my mind and that rarely stills at all. Even in sleep I am painting pictures, fighting fears, et lala, just like everyone else. As sleep slides away, that’s when the picture becomes itself, an order to the jingfangle to settle in place. By the time I have descended the stairs, new thoughts of daylight and downstairsment take over because I am, in truth, moving from one world to another. The night may begin with the present but doesn’t the minx just flip back through a million pages as sleep velvets in, taking me back to the backside of life as much as to the seaside laughter days and why the hellikins isn’t there a filter process? It seems to me that inner work is required and I do have a guide to inner work me, not by supplying a filter for the night hooligans but more to help me reset my reset button. My inner talk requires a good hot wash cycle, I knew that, know that. How I define myself decides my beliefs. At least I think that’s right and I meet and talk with many folk who tell me they talk themselves down all the time, and, although this knowledge is mildly reassuring, in that I am no freakling, it also isn’t reassuring at all because how does anybody rise above their defining beliefs of the past, a past which is a gazillion miles away and of no relevance to this new day?

Nowadays I have much time for reflection, something in the past I had to do whilst having a pee, the only time free from the demands of others. This is normal, at least it is for mothers and partners. I have no idea about men and reflectioning, how they do it and if they ever do do it. As I sit here watching hefty African rain soak the parched garden and drip most musically from the thatched overhang, I am reflecting thus:-

I did not fail. I made more mistakes than most, perhaps, and certainly more than I am happy with, not that I can recall them all and there’s a thank goodness in that. On the other side of that announcement I pause. Had I not made those mistakes, had I been the perfect daughter, wife, mother, business partner etcetera, what would I have learned? My ability to adapt (from Mull to Africa, from cold to ferocious heat, for example) might not exist at all, or at least not as dynamically as it does. It takes me 4 minutes, tops, to be ready when someone offers an adventure. I can cook a delicious meal from almost nothing. I am a woman of variables, variety and curiosity. These I learned from that past of mine, from the unfairs, the boo-hoos, the disappointments, the mistakes made by myself, by others, the skinny trappings in cold times. What would I have learned had everything been just as I wanted, needed, and all of the time? Absolutely nothing beyond the holding on to that ease and that sounds like a disappearing person to me, one who cannot, will not adapt to change and who, eventually, gets left behind by Life herself.

I am not afraid. I am afraid of everything, but, on reflection, I wish to face my fear, to allow it, to question the relevance of it in the now, in the new me and that’s what I do as a woman alone for the first time ever. I notice my spine straighten in a soft defiance as I write these words and it smiles me. There is no need for nobody to change, only me, and softly softly. I have no-one to fight anymore, only myself and that sounds like a right waste of time and energy so I won’t.

I need to be the best. At what? Best over everyone else? The word is well over-used, best seller, best at this, best at that, best within a small catch of time until someone else bests you. Pshaw to that. But I do wish to be the best me I can be and that demands a set of boundaries and parameters and a hot inner wash. Who do I want myself to be if nobody is looking? What are my ethics and are they well exercised? How others see me is a care that belongs in the past, something my mum dinned into me because she cared a lot about appearance, a practise full of hypocrisy at times or so I believed. As I rub out my ever-faint pencil past, I thank all who taught me, who fought me, who sought me out. You all created a shape that worked back then but now I have a new pencil, sharp and pointy and I hold it with my letting go fingers, ready to create a new picture.

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Island Blog – Be Present

Ooooeeee another gale, barreling in from the silence of the peaceful hours before, like a trumpet invading a gentle string quartet, or the raise of an angry voice at a child’s birthday party. A woman like me might be caught out at sea in a canoe of trust if I believed the sky. I don’t. Not any more. I have learned that what appears (or whom appears) peaceful and easy, warming and seductive, is, or can be, a big fat lie. It doesn’t make me bitter, oh no, it makes me smile, lends me awareness and I can feel my feet flex for change. Good thing too. This is our new world. I walk, listen to the trees as they angst and sing, moan and bend. Hallo my friends. I admit to a gasp beneath the ancient beeches, their limbs stretched way across my path, too way across. I A study of them, the birth mother (trunk) and the young she has sent out in search of the limited light, tells me she overstretched. A creak, and I gasp and stand stock still, just for a moment. I know what I know about trees falling. They warn you. First, they crack, then they groan. If you aren’t hot-wired to earpods, or just immersed in the shout of your inner thoughts, you will hear the warning. I am vigilant. Although I heard the tree chatter today, I knew nothing would fall. I walk under ancient trees, miles long lines of them, old ladies and old men with stories, birds, insects and tree house opportunities held in their limbs, even in outreach. And the gale blows on, as it will, at 60mph for at least 3 more days. So be it.

I watch the jasmine and wisteria creeper break and flap, fall and flounder. The dance of death is beautiful, I see it now, a silhouette of movement no human could replicate. The rain falls inside and out. I watch my very small bit of ceiling break and flap, fall and founder and I have my buckets at the ready. This celebrated break, fall, flap, lala of ceiling will have to come down. It is very small. When someone has lived with entire ceilings falling down, a small one feels like nothing very much. And that thinks me. Experience, experiential life is the best teacher of all. If there is the strength in a person, if that person is not too broken by whatever life has thrown his or her way, he, or she, will find it and he or she will rise into a new land. I cannot explain it, not at all, but I do know the truth of it. From panic, arm flapping and a dash to the loo, to decision and a new perspective that only ever comes from living through the shit and deciding not to stay there or even just not wanting what is – even not knowing what to do next #nomatter, even feeling lost and confused and hopeless and controlled and tiddleypom. I know tiddelypom.

So what am I saying, no, shouting, against the sergeant major voice of the battering gale, the unpredictability of whims, the slam dunk of massive blasts, the weakening fight of my last blooms of colour? I say this. Bend, like the ancient trees. Listen to what nature says. Be present whenever you are out among what grows and has grown and will grow again. Be present.

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Island Blog – Blow Back

As I write of the years, the caring years for me, the demise years for my husband, immediately a contradiction in perspective, I find my belly shouting in response, as if this old belly is hearing things anew. Did I feel the same reaction whilst caring? Perhaps, but I was too busy being whom I needed to be at any given moment, so, possibly, I flipped any belly talk away.

But now that he is gone, he is dead, he is buried up there on that wild hill where gulls wheel, eagles cant the wind and where sheep shit all over the grass, I see through a different lens. I spider-web connect with memories and moments. I can’t follow the strands, not now. They are the ones, blackened and dust-heavy I will point my Henry Hoover nozzle at just to know they’re all gone. But they are not gone, for they web again, catching me like a fly, and, I concede. And, in that concession, I find peace. It is as it is. What was, was.

Standing firmly in the present, with a strong connection to the past and to a ditherswither faltering reach out to the future, I welcome what comes at me. Sort of. I will resist but that’s my thing. Resist. Then I think. Then hmmmm, that Maybe. I love change until Change comes to me. I love Strength until it is required of me. I love an Upset to my timeline, my plan for the day until it swacks me in my ordinary.

In these days beyond him, I clear cobwebs, sell furniture I wanted to see gone for decades, old dark stuff, old dark memories that nobody ever visited, and that was weird to me. I visit them. I turn the leaves of ancient books, beautiful writings, precious memories in photo albums I can never explain to my, to our, children.

I’m blowing back, in case someone will want to catch my breath,

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Island Blog 4

Yesterday, my husband the old sea dog, turned 70.  Nobody really believes he is THAT old and he certainly doesn’t look it. When we were young, people that old were bordering on fossilisation, but we seem to be ageing differently these days, and keeping ourselves young and fit.

We had a great day, just pottering about and took a lovely walk up into the Fairy Woods with the little dog, managing to lose her during games of hide and seek! The wallow, used by the deer, was more like Lake Titicaca with all the rain we’ve had recently. We lit the fire and played scrabble and laughed a lot over tea and crumpets (or that’s what they called themselves on the packet)

 

Later, we went through to one of our boys, James (the tv star!)and his family, for a fondue and indoor fireworks.  The fondue was delicious and lasted for hours – the best sort of meal.  The Birthday Boy was truly spoiled and celebrated with the generous birthday present of five gold tickets.  I’d never heard of such a thing, but think it quite brilliant.  As the kids are dotted across the world, busy with their own lives and families, their gift to him, a whole day one to one, is a fabulous idea.  When they were little, they were a collective – inevitable when you have five and an extremely demanding work life, and, as they grew, he had to find out anew, who they are, as they did him.  They had to learn a new friendship.

 

We stayed over, and woke to play with the grandchildren on another rainy morning. Then, after a cooked breakfast (as if we needed more food) we went for the wettest walk in years, getting completely soaked, even through big ass waterproofs and we didn’t mind at all.  Once you’re wet, you’re wet!  The massive waterfall was spectacularly swollen with the rains, and the sound of it drowned out all conversation.  We just looked up and marvelled.

 

Back home, we booked our flights to London next week.  Another adventure and this one takes us to meet our littlest grand-daughter, born on Boxing Day.

Can’t wait!