swans

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Island Blog – Tidal Curve

Such days of glorious Autumn, dry, sunny, coloured up like blood, gold, emeralds and fox. Folk wander, stop to watch a silken swirl of thrushes, Mistle, Song and Fieldfares, all dinging about the blue in search of berries. They can strip a tree in 20 minutes, working as a team, even though they don’t gather like this at any other time of the year. There appears no discord, no fighting, no chest bumping, just a ribbony swirl like the wash of a boat, lifting over treetops, diving into branches, all a-twitter. I walk out into this, into the fairy woods, under a shelter of trees hundreds of years old. What stories they could tell me, if only I spoke ‘tree’. The sealoch is speckled with diamonds, stealers of sunlight, reflectors, the surface broken by the rise of an otter, busy with the salmon run and mighty with cubs to feed and protect. Herons bicker and shriek, divers fly in silent until they settle on the surface and call out in ‘loon’, their velvet voices schmoozing the air, and me.

I watch Arctic Swans, various of them, push past the wind and into the lee of the loch, where the tidal flow comes smack bang up against a right bloody push of rainwater. The flood against the tide. I go out to watch the meeting. It’s like a Scot meeting an Englishman. The rise of wild bubbles tells me much. There is no way out of this. I know it, as do they. I watch them curve away from each other but there is no escape, not with those damn hills and rocks and wotwot hemming them in. They have to bond. It thinks me.

Not of cabbages and kings, nor of how to service a chainsaw, nor, even, whether or not I ought to deal with the extraordinary wonderfulness of spider spin that fills most of my corners. In this sunlight, they look like hope, connection, determination and strength. I watch them rainbow, lift and move with any breeze, almost breathing. In my before cancer life, around this time of year, I would be flapping a cloth or cobweb thingy through these webs and strings and connections, always very cautious not to hurt the spider. Sometimes, if I reckoned the spider to be a very tiny one, or couldn’t see it with the naked eye, I would employ binoculars. No. I am not anal. This is when they’re ‘in’, and they are my friends. Now that I know my cancer is, colloquially, known as The Spider, for it does not pronounce itself in a lump, more a spread, I feel a kind of safety, as if all those gazillions of spiders I have saved and relocated and freed, have returned to me. This reads bonkers, is bonkers, but allow me please, for it helps me to find the positive in all this interminable waiting, in the sleepless weeks, the slash of early waking fears, the exhaustion of keeping myself upright, fed, excercised and washed. That’s on the bright side. On the other side, I feel scared and lost and exhausted. I might tell you this and I bet, I absolutely bet, that you, like so many others, will respond with a ‘but’ and place a lovely new Patch on the coverlet of my life, a glorious one with no fraying and with colours that will last for ever and ever, Amen. Don’t do this. Not to anyone. If I could, personally, remove the word ‘But’ from the dictionary, trust me, I would. It is a fixer, like the freshwater is to the tidal flow and yet, which is the wild one, at the beck and call of the moon and the four winds, the storms, the violence of volcanic eruption, the dying of an iceberg the size of Brazil?

Feelings come unbidden, unasked for, unsought. They just come, like a tidal flow. We attempt, because, (if we don’t we are counted weird, odd, unmanageable (?) and ‘difficult’), to process our feelings into a palatable presentation, delivered over the phone, on the street, at work, in a relationship, among family members. I have not learned, yet, to butt against the ‘buts’, and, maybe like the tidal flow, a pisces me, I can just curve. Maybe bending to the butt of the world is exactly the way to continue a flow. That thinks me too. And, to be honest, I am weary of being a standup in my life. Perhaps this cancer is proffering me a curve, the layback into the care of others, short term, and, perhaps, there is a sweetness therein, like the ribbony flow of the thrush family, who only conjoin at a time when the collective brings power and success. I can go with that.

My baby boy, well over 6 feet of him, is flying over from SA to bring me home. Number OneSon will drive us to a ferry which may, or may not, run for a load of reasons, not many of which make sense. We will home ourselves, and we will celebrate when we do. It is always a birdlift of relief when we do, when I do, when anyone does, cross the water, and land. At times, oftentimes, we have to curve, are stuck in the wrong place, no toothbrush, no jamas. This is when we might(y) take on the curve, if we decide to.

I am one, no matter the buts. I am afraid, moving into a space on which I have spare intel. It feels as if I am shoved into a time I do not recognise. I will, after.

Here comes the curve.

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Island Blog – Blue Tit and Game On

I drive the wee dog to Heather, for a groom. I encourage her to remain on her soft mat in the passenger footwell, the dog, not Heather, a new thing for her since the old man died. He had her on his knee, on the back shelf or jumping from front to back and all before we’d got through the village. Sent me crazy. I didn’t know, half the time, if I was changing gear on the car or the dog. But no amount of words altered his mind. His way was THE way and if I had a problem with it, well, tough shit. They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but you can and I did. She trusts me and sits quite joco on the mat, trembling like a leaf for a few hundred yards and then lying down for the journey. Heather is wonderful with her, patient and professional in her dog grooming anti-hair pinafore. I leave to visit a dear friend for coffee and a catchup. She will ask about my situation, the whole hoo-ha since June 27th, a hoo-ha that tried to get me, and failed. We talk about life, about the island, about our visitors, about adventures, about addictions and choices and being alone without ever being asked if we’re okay with the whole ‘alone’ thing. She, like me, is a widow. I think ‘weeds’. What are widow’s weeds anyway? Her man fell off a mountain, too young, too sudden. Mine took years to dwindle away, but we have the aloneness in common. She is feisty and fun, bright and lively, intelligent and wise. Perhaps I am too.

All too soon it is time for me to collect my manicured dog. Cathy and I agree to meet again, for lunch somewhere, for longer. We never naturally get to the end of our flyabout conversations, those that dart from people to places, through memories and learnings, into new understandings and a new acceptance, the acceptance of being alone and then, from that point, of finding the feet to walk it into a new sassy light. The weather is balmy, unusual for this time of year on the island. The wind is from the Serengeti, I swear it, and a stout walk feels like a bad idea, but a walk is needed. I watch bout 20 snow geese fly up the sea-loch, and marvel at their beauty. Soon the Tundra, or Trumpeter, or Bewick swans will fly in from the arctic on their way south in search of food. I hope I am watching when they come by, to hear the melody of their wingflight, to hear their soft murmurings of encouragement to each other. In the starry starry nights, in the absolute darkness of the island darkness, their sound wakes me, no matter its softness. Flying way up into the ice skyfields , I cannot see them, but I can hear and I can wish them safe passage. I am connected to the creatures of flight, know their sounds, hear them like music, like a call to find my own wings, my own feathers.

Flight. Feathers. Connection. It thinks me, and it may sound daft, for I am utterly as glued to the ground as you are, but I have an integral belief in connection, to others and to otherness. Laughed at as a child for this ‘knowing’, I am freed of that now, mostly because, my dear, I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks of me and my connection to otherness. In this time of waiting, for a decision on surgery, for the next tests next week, for the wotwot to come, I think of flight. All my many tattoos show flight. Dragonflies, musical notes, a feather, a butterfly, pegasus. Then, thanks to my son, I consider breast art after cancer. The pictures I google are many. It is, it seems, an art, and I like that. To lose a breast, or even to be altered by a lumpectomy can be a shocking shock. I will know one day for myself. To look the same as before, tempting, essential, perhaps for some, but not for me. I have had two breasts for 70 years, albeit the pair of them a tad wonkychops, one bigger than the other, but I had them and I am not a young woman any more. Had this happened when I was 30 or 40, well, I might have felt differently. I may still retain these breasts, but they may be even more wonkychops than before. For now, this is a mystery. However, and there is always one of those, I am planning a tattoo.

Robin Redbreast? I suggest to my African son. He nods, waggles his head. Better, he says, Blue Tit.

Game on.

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Island Blog – Through the Pond Weed

I am gradually growing used to city life, even as I absolutely do not wish to live in one. So many people, cars, bikes, streets, houses and windows. So much white noise, black noise too, sudden sounds of too many folk living cheek by jowl. A car bump, horns, ambulance alarms, a shouted caution or rebuke. Even the darkness falls with a clunk, although mornings slip quietly through curtains and under doors. I love mornings and today I took off for a walk around Blackford Pond, feeling the harsh resistance of pavements give way to a softer track, muddy around the stones. Benches flank the curve of the pond where I see ducks, moorhens and a family of swans with four healthy looking goslings, velvet grey, necks long, heads proud as they move with grace through the pond weed. Plaques name those long gone, etched in brass. ‘In memory of Jim and Mary, Robert and Matilda, who loved this place’. I remember this pond years ago, the banks less densely covered with spindly trees and ebullient water weeds, the body of water more visible. I exchange Good Mornings with dog walkers and joggers as we pass. each other by. The sky is white with sprachles of grey but no blue. Gulls cut through the white, a single hawk, pigeons. I miss abundant wildlife and must keep my eyes up to see any at all.

I am playing the waiting game, but it doesn’t feel like a game. Some day soon I will receive a letter with a date on it for an MRI scan and the process will nudge forward a few steps. For now, all I can do is to build strength, rest, play and keep my imagination under firm control. If I was at home doing this waiting thing, just me with my thoughts, I doubt I would manage such control. It is good to be here, with family distractions and in a completely different environment, despite the lack of wildlife, of space, and this constant movement of mass humanity. In quiet moments I watch people walk by under the window. Mothers or fathers with wee ones, old grannies, like me, with shopping bags, stout footwear and ice white hair. What is going on in your lives, I wonder, you tiny old woman, you, jogger with a dog, you young families with laughter or angst on your unlined faces? Are you well, happy, frustrated, sad, disappointed or thankful to be upright, well fed, free to walk, supported and loved? I wish you some of your dreams, because nobody gets to live all of them. Life has her own plans, after all. And it isn’t what happens to any of us that matters, but how we deal with it. Thus we make a deal. We say, okay, I didn’t want this, ask for this, even imagine this would happen to me, but it did anyway. How will I accept, with the spirit of fight, whilst concomitantly showing to myself and to the world, that I am bigger than my circumstances, way way bigger?

In my attitude of gratitude, that’s how, my acknowledgement of all that I have, all that love and support and friendship. Priceless gifts and completely free. I hold them close and, in doing so, the waiting loses density and gravitas and I am light as the swans on the surface, effortlessly moving with grace through the pond weed.

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Island Blog – To be seen and heard

The tide is pushing out from the sea-loch in such a rush I wonder if it is late for something. As the tides change to fit the pull of Mother Moon, everything, including we humans, respond, even if we don’t know we are doing that responding thing. The light is lower in the sky, the skyscape more dynamic and suddenly there’s a chill out there, a chill of clarity. Against a Payne’s grey this afternoon, just as the rain stopped and the sun appeared, 12 hooper swans cut through the sky. Such beauty, their white wings on slow-flap, their pattern not for my pleasure but for their ease of passage. Nonetheless I can marvel at their passing as they curve the sea-loch, change leadership and fly on to God knows where. Moments like this come suddenly and, I have realised, only because I want to witness such moments, such passing beauty, and that means refusing to spend too much time inside the limitations of my own head.

A nature walk with two of my little granddaughters yesterday took us along the same track, the Tapselteerie track, the one that offers a glimpse of change every single time I set foot on it. This particular walk was one that required a deal of looking. Naturally, there were two of us who needed to run, to jump in the puddles, to throw laughter up into the Autumn air, but old granny just walked, just looked. We found acorns, beech nuts, brave wee oak saplings, rowan berries, autumn coloured leaves, lichen, old man’s beard on an alder, shells on the beach, bits of sky, reflections, a change in the wind. Some of these could be popped into their collecting bags, some just wanted to be seen, to be noticed, as we all do.

It thinks me. These little ones are already forming their view of the world as they know it. They are learning to win, to be bigger, faster, kinder, brighter than someone else. It isn’t that parents teach this. It is survival and the wee ones are hungry for it. Although they are dependent for now, they long for a degree of independence. They want to be safe and they want to be free. They want friends and to be alone and above all they want to be noticed. As I watch them and the others grow and shape themselves, I know that my role is to observe and to learn, to bear witness and to really see them, for each one is longing to be him or her self, and that self is as delicate as a candle in the wind.

On the final leg of our walk in Nature, one girl ran far ahead, the other calling for her to wait. Being the older sister she reluctantly stopped and waited only to watch her sister run right past her and on. ‘She just wants to beat me, she said. She ruins my fun.’ I thought about this, about what to say. ‘What do you want to do right now?’

‘I want to run all the way to the gate.’

‘Do it’

‘What if she cries?’ (kindness. I’m impressed)

”Let her cry.’

She took off with a big smile, running running past the wailing sister and I just watched whilst I caught up with the ‘left behind’. Holding her wee hand I told her about a snake her uncle had found in his swimming pool. Although it looked scary, it was non venomous. It’s not a snake natural to Spain, I told her and it isn’t good for the snakes that are.

She thought for a moment and looked up at me, not a tear in sight.

Maybe it came in from South America, she said, skipping along beside me.

She is five in November.