well

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Island Blog – I Just Need To Be Me

I was scared, I was. The thought of an airport, just the one was enough to skirmoil me, and that was just Edinburgh. Just. Edinburgh. Change enough. For starters, I had to have the right suitcase, hand luggage, shoes, coat, stuff in handbag for all possible sniffles, awkwardness, etc. At home, I had fretted a lot about the weight of my big suitcase. I knew, yes, 23 kilos. The conversion still confounds me, being a stones and pounds girl. Noneltheless, I weighed myself, stepped off, picked up seriously heavy hold luggage and weighed again. 71 kilos. I am damned and going to hell. I am so overweight it’s not just embarrassing, it’s rude. There will be chaos at the check in desk and what will I do?

I flung out this pretty thing and that, which is all I could do as time had come to depart for the ferry. All the way down to the airport, in spite of the knowledge that my daughter would be seeing me safely off; in spite of knowing that all would be well, the tension built. How can a suitcase possibly weigh 71 kilos? There was no body in there, no stash of concrete, no lignum vitae sculpture, just frocks, knickers, teeshirts, etcetera. It was the suitcase itself, I decided, somewhere near Tyndrum, damn thing, four wheels and enough steel connections to hold up a small bridge. Why on earth did I buy it? Yes, it is hard shell, and yes, if I had to trundle the thing for miles I would need all those go-any-direction wheels and the pull-up handle, and the wherewithal of all of those will obviously require attaching somewhere in the bowels of the thing, but 71 kilos?? I’ll get rid of it, once the embarrassment of being told I am seriously overweight has passed, all those tutting people watching and judging and muttering, not to mention the suspicion on the face of the nice girl at check-in.

I am nervous as it gets to my turn. Big smile, eye contact, ever hopeful, keep moving, Good afternoon and how are you M’aam, she says, and I proffer my ticket, lifting, with extreme difficulty the damn suitcase onto the weight thingy. I can’t look. That’s fine she says and I look at the luminous digits. 19 kilos. Wait, how can that be? Does a suitcase lose weight? Mum, says my daughter. Did you subtract your weight after you both got on the scales?

Well, no, obviously. It thinks me. All that stress and tension, the sleepless night before flight, the imaginary fears of being refused boarding, punished and marginalised, or, worse, forced to open the damn thing in front of a whole airport, to hand over loads of frothy kit to my girl, or, worse still, to have to put it all on over whatever I was already wearing, was a ridonculous waste of energy and thought. I do try, and I am learning how, to tell myself that all will be well, that I am not an old fool. I accept that any big changes, such as flying alone to Capetown, will discombobulate most people. We all make mistakes and therein lies the choice to either berate self or to have a jolly good cackle about the whole thing. I choose the latter and this is why. One life, that’s what we have, in this particular time and place as this particular person. If we are all here by intention, not accident, then I am here to learn humour, to work hard, to find the fun in everything I do, to love others, to give freely, to be brave, vulnerable and humble. So I don’t need to get everything right. I don’t need to be sensible according to the bizarre expectations and rulings of the world. I don’t need to be organised, like her, or without fault as he likes to believe he is. I don’t need to make no mistakes.

I I just need to be me.

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Island Blog – Chiaroscuro

To be honest, all I think about is cancer, the lurk of it, the silent creep. At the back of my mind, of course. because the front is dead busy being marvellous and shiny and cheerful and wotwot. I still frock up, dye my old boots crazy colours, just because. I go here, go there, do this, do that, but the murmur of it is still there, murmuring. A conversation, in fact, and, I confess to no engagement at times. I want to say Go Away and be heard, and obeyed, as if I was the school marm in this classroom tangle. Which I am, obviously, not.

What are you doing, cancer, whilst I put together a jigsaw, drive to the shop, meet a friend for lunch, as I did today? I watch her face, her mouth as she speaks, the love in her eyes, and the murmur mumbles on. Another friend, all crazy and theatre and hugs, arrives and we share a few moments of chat. Her life is not a straight line. In fact it is so wonkychops right now that I want to be there for her, but this damn murmur holds me to my chair, a grounding, four legs, no, six, beneath me, support, I suppose, but I cannot move. I am bland. Words dont even stick in my throat. They don’t rise at all. The rain blatters the windows as soup arrives. A smiling deliverer explains the what of the soup, beautifully presented. I sit across from my old friend. She is not old and neither am I, but we have known each other for decades, so ‘old’ works. Hurricane Nigel is slam-dunking the island with his (her) stormy tantrum, punching muscled fist punches of wind that suddenly tips bins, (I cleared three wheelies off the road home), tree limbs, frail people. I love this time of year. Not because of the tipping thing but because of the thrill of it. The sky is as dark as the cancer growing within me and then, in a single moment, lifted into light, the chiaroscuro a perfect delight, is a gasp in my throat.

I notice the hold a retreating season has on it’s own, as the ‘invader’ nudges, or, in this case, bludgeons in fighting, gloves up, strong after a long rest. They’ve done this changeover thing for decades, for goodness sake, but still they hold on to their moment, their time of power, of confidence and, yes, control. I get it. If a life can be divided into seasons, birth, childhood, youth, parenthood, middle age, oldness, then I want oldness again, jaunty, a dancing old woman, upsetting nobody (mostly), happy to spend hours reading, battling 1000 piece jigsaws, god help me, wandering calmly through the woods, remembering fairies, little ones cavorting like loons, sudden capture moments, the light on raindrops, the dart of a butterfly, the hum of the bees, the wild of a storm, the ebony and ivory of my piano, the flicker light of my candles, the wave and warmth of my neighbours, my home, my dog, my view of tidal flow and my watch of migration, of arriving, of leaving, of it all. In truth, I want to hold on to the season when I thought I was well and free and well.

It lurks, the cancer. I see it as darkness inside the light of me. Chiaroscuro.

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Island Blog – Fly Right

The sealoch is flat, mirror flat, holding the sky in its belly. A lone gull skims across the surface, its wings never touching the water. How does it manage that? If I was that gull, there would undoubtedly be an error of judgement and I would tumble, wonky chops, into the brine. High overhead a young buzzard cuts the blue, chased and mocked by two gulls. I watch the slide and rise of them, the sunglow through their wing feathers, the way they tumble and flip. So free up there, it seems, but I know that’s not the truth, even if it does look glorious from where I am, stuck to the gravitous ground, pulled to the earth and destined never to fly unless inside the guts of a plane. Which won’t be happening for a long time to come. But, to watch these dalliances, these moments of sublime grace and wonder is to inhabit, just for a while, the world that is theirs, the world above my head, the world all around me, the world of nature, survival and imagined freedom.

As the day unfolds, so do I. In a good way, naturally. The thoughts I had yesterday, the things that happened, the word exchanges, the moments of understanding, release and acceptance unfurl like petals to let in the sun. I am wholly delighted to be one with faith in my higher self. Despite sinking at times into the cold watery darkness of a sea-loch, I always hold fast to the belief that all will be well in the end, and, if it isn’t well, then it isn’t the end. Not because I am so damn smart at living, but because the invisible beneficent powers of goodness are always working for me, for all of us. It isn’t down to just me, the one who could misjudge my wing flaps and tumble into the brine, and thank goodness for that. I have no illusions concerning my ability to straighten up and fly right all of the time.

When I got the call yesterday to say that we are now to ‘shield’ for another 12 weeks because of the high risk factors in this house, I sank a bit. Another 12 weeks? That’s end August. Not only that, but my weekly escape to the shop is now cancelled. Further, we are asked to separate within the home. Now that bit is impossible. Not only is this a mouse house, but I am primary carer and contact with my husband is required regularly. So, the requirement is that I go nowhere apart from my solitary walk for fresh air and exercise. Enter fear. I already knew that self-isolation is going to continue for a while yet, because my husband is very vulnerable and needs superhuman protection. But hearing it spoken out gave it gravitas and heavy boots. It was a wonky chops moment, the chance opening of a doorway allowing fear to slide in.

And then comes a new morning. The pines stand as tall as they did yesterday, backlit sunrise pink, the colour of a smile. The air show lifts my spirits and I know that fear will not survive on my watch. No matter how long this confinement, we can get through it with sparkle and laughter. The sign is outside the gate. ‘Please don’t come in’. It felt weird writing those words. I am more known for a Welcome sign, but in this time when the best I can possibly do is required on an hourly basis, I know I am not alone. I know there will be hundreds, if not thousands of people facing an extension of lockdown in order to protect someone vulnerable.

And if they can do it. Then so can I. All I need to do is fly right, most of the time.