short-story

There’s a thing about an upskittle. It, well, upskittles. And that’s okay because life is no straight line, no matter the planning. We do have to plan, of course we do, but then, all of a sudden, the incoming is not friendly. So be it. Sleepless nights ensue, the buggers, and in those hours of not sleeping, as I might imagine everyone else is, I walk through the fog, the mist of it all, and I accept. I believe that to be key. Key to what? Key to the door of acceptance.

I had a commitment today, a hair cut, a meet with a dear friend. I was cold, shivery, after all the night fog, the walking about, the cold unhug of such a longtime, and considered saying I Can’t Come Today. It’s a give-up to me, a mistake, at a time like this. It isn’t always that way. If I had scarlet fever or if the mountain river had broken its banks and flooded my home, then such a retraction would have been absolutely correct, and appropriate. That was not the case this ditzy morning, when my eyeballs worked independently and I could barely pull on my knickers, let alone the rest of my kit. Even applying eye makeup was a challenge, and I will go nowhere without that.

Time ticked on. I watched it, tick, tick, tick, the minutes not minute at all. Each one was loud and thorough with contradiction and discombobulation. To go? To not go? And then it came, as ‘it’ often does. Oh for effs sake, get on with it! Boots on and go. No excusing the fog, the missed, neither of them. I heard a sound, one I recognise, but haven’t heard for a year. I twisted up to look, as this sound came from the sky, I knew that. Five Whooper swans just outside my window, in a tight formation, in the rain, the windthrust, in the wild, in the now, going somewhere, going on, going on.

Hey, Lizzie. I said that, spoke it out loud, my breath flickering an early candle. Fly safe.

Today was a strange wandering. I’ve been here before, in this strange wandering thing. Dreams are interrupticating, waking me in a surety, which becomes a questioning, which then becomes a cold reality. What I left behind as I fell asleep, is there to greet me on waking. It’s as if I have wandered through many doorways, many dividing walls, meeting, as I do, those who no longer need shoes, nor do an earthly walking, the yesterday people. I rose, as ever, made coffee, triangulated my thoughts, pulling them into a shape I could manage, although I was never good at triangulation to be honest, even as I completely got it. However, I knew this day would be a day of challenge. I am up for this, I said, out loud, as I sipped coffee and looked out on Venus and heard the rise of another hooligan. that’s island speke for a big gale, btw.

I touch my skin, my throat. I know I still have voice, still am upstanding, still competent, still strong. Looking out into the darkling and recalcitrant sunrise, I begin to release the night, the dreams. I am here. Many are not, and I won’t be some day. However, I know how important it is to acknowledge these dividing walls, t’ween the dead and the living. I still meet my husband in doorways. I still find what I’ve lost in doorways, I remember things in doorways. The symbol of a doorway transects worlds. Have you ever walked through a doorway and felt an immediate desire to run? I certainly have.

I remember music in doorways, no matter the noise within the house, music which impacted me way back, a cathedral perhaps, the entrance to a theatre, the turn through an arch and the switch left to see African dancers on a street, the duck under an arch to find candles and a warm fire in a welcoming cottage. I remember. I know that, every single time, I walk in other’s footsteps, many thousands in some cases, a few in others, but. I feel it.

Today, as I went out, as I always do, to greet walkers with a dog or two, I was barefoot and stood on a thorn. The wind was a slam dunk, the rain cold, slicing. We laughed, talked, and I turned back to the same doorway that brought me all those smiles, that dogfest, minus the thorn.