Eighteenth of January

Every year on the 18th of January I post about my marriage anniversary. This year I forgot. I can’t remember what I was doing. Rushing about like a headless chicken, probably. My husband worked late, I recall. It was our Big Ten. A decade of marriage.

I am not soppy or sappy. A pragmatist, I think. I enjoy romance but not too much of it, and romantic gestures make me want to laugh. I think proposals are silly and believe public proclamations of love to be suspicious. I like romance to be intimate and personal. Only for those involved.

My husband thinks I want him to be Mr Darcy, and after re-reading Pride and Prejudice this year I decided that I very much do not want him to be Mr Darcy. I am perfectly happy with his flaws, thank you, and prefer them over the perfection of storybook heroes. Not that Mr Darcy is portrayed to be perfect by any means.

I am content with our differing tastes in films and books. I am happy that he enjoys laughing at things I shudder at. I can lie next to him reading Wuthering Heights while he chuckles himself silly over an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, both of us in our separate worlds, but happy in each other’s company. I don’t even mind him doing irritating things like mixing coffee with chicory – and I came to the conclusion that although he drives me insanely mad, I enjoy having him around to be mad at.

I think that is what it boils down to really.

Image Credit

Love Letters #48

This photo

Gives me a strange ache

In my chest

Some would say it is my heart.

But does a heart have feelings? Or is it just the brain projecting?

And why do the most emotive of sensations make themselves felt in the chest?

I don’t know why this photo has such an impact on me.

Something about summer, and roses.

It reminds me of my grandmother. She had a kaleidoscope of roses in her garden, plants all over her home. Silence ringing through rooms, interrupted with the soft tick-tick-tick of a clock, gentle chirping outside, the distant buzz of a lawnmower. Sunlight flooding through tall windows.

Knitting needles, clicking.

One leg crossed, over the other. Face knotted in concentration, but never frowning.

All that hurt in her heart, but always a smile.

All that pain in her body, but always patience.

Now I am going through a very similar physical pain, and I don’t know how she managed to do it. To give so much, so effortlessly, with all that burden on her heart.

So when I came across this photo today, my heart thumped painfully in my chest, probably because my brain told it to.

Because it reminds me of my childhood in her garden, her love and patience and life,

Enveloping me in warm comfort.

She was a mother to her own children, and a mother to their children too. A mother in the deepest, most emotional sense of the word.

And what is lost can never be returned.

The credit for this image goes to this blog on Tumblr. 

Love Letters

Dear Pip,

Penelope.

Penny.

Pip, I have known you for approximately six years. And forty seven days. And three and a half hours (at the time of writing this).

We met the day I met with my fate. My fate was you, of course. Didn’t you know?

We were both looking at the same teapot. It was yellow and had blue spots on and I remember thinking you had to be a certain kind of person with a certain kind of taste to like such a teapot because let me tell you, it was hideous.

But there was only one of them left and you said, ‘Oh, you have it.’

And I said, ‘Please, no, you have it.’ Because I didn’t even want it in the first place.

And you said, ‘Oh, no, I was only looking. You have it.’

And I said, ‘I wouldn’t be a gentleman if I took it when a young lady has her eye on it. It would be daylight robbery.’

And you snorted and said, ‘Well how about we halfsies it and then share it.’

‘What, like, monthly swaps?’ I asked, ‘or shall we cut it in half?’

‘Sure.’ You were nonchalant. Casual. You even shrugged and that is when I noticed the apple green jacket you are wearing. It was hideous also. (Please don’t hate me. We have discussed the ways colours are worn. And apple green blazers were out of the question. I even made a graph. Please see attached piece of paper for reference.)

‘Well,’ I said very carefully, ‘that then means, of course, that we shall have to swap details.’

‘Let’s buy this thing.’ You picked it up gently and as I reached into my pocket to take out my wallet my elbow jerked yours and it slipped out of your hands and fell down, down down onto the brightly polished John Lewis floors.

We both stared at it.

‘Ah well,’ you said, ‘I was only looking at it because I was curious about something so ugly. Good riddance, I say! I’m Pip. What’s your name?’

I stared at you in pleasant surprise and I felt my lips stretching out my face of their own accord.

‘James.’ I said, and then, ‘let us look for more ugly teapots.’

Of course we had to pay for that ugly yellow polka dot tea pot. It was atrocious. And then for your birthday present a year later I got you a similar teapot which you use for your indoor geraniums. You killed yourself laughing at it and told me I was a money waster because there was no way you would use that for anybody. It could never grace your table.

I remember asking you all wounded, like, ‘What, not even for the reason that it was graced by my hands?’ I was also slightly flirting even though we were firm friends by then, but I could not resist. I can never resist you, Pip.

‘Nope.’ You were very firm.

I am writing to tell you that I want to marry you. I can’t say it to your face because you have beautiful eyes and I know exactly how they will look at me and I will not be able to help myself because I will kiss you and then I will be done for. I know you will be impatient with that and tell me that is nonsense and of course I can help myself but I will not want to. Help myself. At all.

Also I asked my aunt if she read those French books I gave her and she said yes, they were lovely books. You were right. She didn’t read them. Else she would have called me to lecture me horrendously about them. Lovely books indeed. She asks about you a lot and tells me I should marry you quicktimes before you grow too old to have kids.

So back to my fate. You are my fate either way. If you say yes then it will have been a good fate and if you say no I will be broken hearted forever and when I do eventually heal and marry somebody for realsies I will still remember you as the first ever woman who broke my heart. Truly, broke it.

You know love is a strange thing. So strange. I used to think I loved a woman before. I was seventeen. She wasn’t particularly beautiful but I was infatuated by her and loved her to pieces but she always treated me badly. And one day she went too far and I discovered she was sleeping with a right old tramp of a fellow {he was not, he was a respectable LAWYER, but to me in my hurt he was a tramp], but I forgave her. Well I told her I did but I don’t think I really did. Something inside of me snapped that day. She walked on me one too many times. And three miserable months of forced smiles and fake kisses later I met you and the day afterwards she wanted to see me and I called her and I said, ‘I can’t. I can’t do this anymore.’

And when I was with her I thought there could never be anyone else because she was my first love. But it was meagre and ridiculous and pathetic and also desperate. Compared to what I feel about you. I am crazy about you. I look at you and I see my future. And I want to spend all my time with you and walk home from work with you and call you every single day but I stop myself because I don’t want you to get sick of me. I also want to kiss your forehead. It is so gentle and smooth and beautiful.

But see, if we were married I could call you everyday and it wouldn’t be weird, right? I could also kiss your forehead and it would be comfortable.

So, what do you say, Pip?

Yours sincerely and faithfully and truly,

Jim

 

 

 

This image was generated for me by DALL.E 3 – the latest AI photo-generating software. Ahh me. We no longer need to whip out the watercolours to demonstrate the painted thoughts in our heads.

Nineties

I love nineties movies.

That’s such a globalised thing to say.

The way old me – the me not tainted by the internet and TUMBLR – would put it is ‘I love films made in the nineties’.

I do.

They make me nostalgic.

Which is funny because my life in the early nineties didn’t exist. I was just an egg.

Then in the mid-nineties I was born.

I was really a child and adolescent of the naughties.

But I do rather much prefer the nineties.

It was like the teetering cusp.

Of what?

Old and new, I suppose.

Archaic traditions marrying new age technological revolution but we were still mostly analogue so there was a lot of purity left in the world.

Now I peer out at my world through pixellated curtains and it’s a burning shambles is what it is.

But I don’t want to talk about all that. While I can, I sometimes like to hunker down under three blankets (it’s cold in my part of the world. Spring blossom appears on trees but it’s below freezing and there is frost on the grass in the mornings) and watch films made in the early 1990s.

The hair.

The clothes.

The speech.

The lack of identity politics. The lack of fury for the sake of fury.

Just people livin’ their lives – ‘unproblematically’.

Call me ‘old fashioned’. Because yes I know each time period comes with its own set of problems. But – the heart yearns for what it yearns for.

I would like to hunker down with a mug of earl grey tea with some milk and no sugar and watch films made in the nineties.

And read books written by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

And lose myself in lost lands.

Love Letters #17

I have a little secret. But shhhh. Don’t tell anybody.

Is it a glamorous secret? Dripping with intrigue and diamonds?

No, more like a sombre, deadly secret. One you might divulge by accident, and the other party laughs after a moment of hesitation because they think you are joking, and you just go along with it.

Oooh. Sounds juicy, darling. Do tell me more, I am dying to hear it.

I bet you are.

Don’t hold out on me!

Well, and I do really mean it when I say keep absolutely mum about what I’m about to tell you – well– it turns out, I am actually, erhhm, well, WELL…

Oh for goodness sake out with it. I’m half off my face anyway so it’s not like I will remember any of this tomorrow.

Okay, you know Peter Grimstone?

Yes of course I do. He is my cousin’s husband.

Oh, well in that case –

But my cousin and I are positively enemies. She’s so catty, I couldn’t-

No, sorry, this is ridiculous. I don’t know why I even –

Please, John, you can’t – you have to finish what you started – 

WELL – it turns out old Pete is a dark horse and a half, you know.

What sort of filthy secret is he hiding, then?

Not filthy so much as – well, make up your own mind when I tell you –

Come on, you’re killing me.

Alright, I’m getting to it. Jeez, Lorna, you’re so impatient –

I –

Anyway, like I was saying, he is the darkest horse of the lot. Back in the days when I used to hang around with Drake’s crew, we knew this guy who we all called Red. I say we knew him but we didn’t really, none of us had ever seen him. He would pass our goods on to us wearing a hooded cape and his face was covered like an assassin – but his eyes were always there and they were not the sort of eyes you’d forget, really. Striking blue and really electric.

Mhmm – so why did you call him Red?

I’m getting to that. He told us he was Red and nothing else, and we were all wondering why he was a Red and not a Blue or a Black – maybe red is more dangerous, who knows – anyway one day we were coming back to Drake’s flat where we used to hang out most nights, and half of us had just got off work so we were really looking forward to a night of just unwinding –

Oh, you naughty boys.

We were young, Lorna, young and free.

I’ll bet you were.

And we were coming home and Drake tells us Red is dropping some things by, and one of the boys, Dodge, we called him, says, ‘how abouts we pull that Red’s mask off to see what is lurking under that cape’ and we all jeer at him because it’s never occurred to any of us to do that, although we’d all been wondering for so long who the heck this guy was. ‘Nah, it’s too dangerous’ Drake says, and we laugh him out of the ballpark for that because there were seven of us and one of him – I don’t know, though, it seemed dangerous and none of us knew why. As far as we knew he was a one man show.

Go on.

Well, Dodge told us he would do it since none of the others wanted to. And sure enough, in the alley by Drake’s flat there was Red, leaning against the wall, and he reached his gloved hand into his cape and brought out the goods, and Dodge went for it, and as he reached out his hand to take them, he jerked quickly and grabbed at Red’s hood, seizing the guy’s head because – would you believe it – the hood wouldn’t come off! And the guy was just standing there and none of us said anything because we’re not confrontational like that, and Dodge stood back, kind of bewildered because his plan failed and what to do next?

What did you do next?

Nothing. Red took off his mask and there was no face under there, then he slowly put the goods back in his cape and his face was staring at us and it was like this cave of darkness under his hood and he spoke, he said, ‘Goodbye, fellas.’ and then walked away and we never heard from him again.

That is odd. What’s that got to do with Peter?

Well the other night, I was at Peter’s place –

I didn’t know you were all pally with Peter!

We haven’t been together long, Lorna.

But he is my cousin’s husband!

So you said.

I just thought you might have told me.

Peter and I met at your brother’s wedding.

Humph.

Anyway – I was at Peter’s and we were watching the news because of all the tension lately and he wanted to prove a point about something, so we were watching and then the phone rang, and he glanced at me and asked if I minded and I said no, so he got up and went into a room next to the TV room, not a bedroom, like a tiny study or something, and he speaks in a suspiciously low voice and I saw him look out at me once or twice, and then he closed the door but it bounced a bit open and I saw him take a black cape with a hood out of his wardrobe –

-Gasp-

And he shoved it in a tiny backpack and then he came out to me and told me he was going out really quickly to get milk and did I want anything. I said no I better get going anyway – and we walked out together and he saw me off but when I turned the corner I waited for a few seconds and tried to follow him.

And?

He vanished.

That’s weird.

I know, right?

Do you think he is Red?

I don’t know what to think.

Shifty. But, he didn’t recognise you then from the time your friend tried to take his hood off? Also, he has brown eyes.

Apparently not. And I know! Right?

Unless he did recognise you, and is biding his time?

He’s your cousin’s husband!

I don’t like my cousin.

Good point. Good point. Say, Lorna?

Yes?

Will you marry me?

 

 

 

 

 

Love Letters #49

Let me set the scene for you.

A candid evening. Why candid? I don’t know. Candles around the drawing room. Laura in her peach dress, flowing gently from her shoulders. Golden curls pinned up; it was the evening, she would unpin them soon. Aunt Abigail had rung the bell for supper. She would join Laura after seeing to her roses in the conservatory.

Laura gently arranged the pillows, setting the tables straight. She was purposeful in every movement, as though she wanted time to tick by slowly.

They had left in a hurry; John had a patient to see to and Mary wanted to go in the carriage so she could bundle the little puddings into their own beds. Hugs and kisses, sloppy ones from the darling angels, a sweet one from Mary, a squeeze on the arm, a murmur that she would see her soon. A hug for her brother, tall and grim, lips taut. He had a patient to get to.

Laura straightened up, sighed. There was a soft knock on the drawing room door. Supper.

‘Come in,’ she said, turning to the window to pull the drapes against the darkness outside.

She heard the door open so she turned around with a smile on her face – which then froze, lips halfway there, dimples just beginning to form. A painful drop in her heart. A throb in her chest. Tightening so she caught her breath. Then she composed herself quickly, one hand on her hair, the other to her neck. Her eyes didn’t meet his, they rested somewhere on his collar.

‘Hello, Tom.’ She smiled properly, moving towards the settee. Something else to look at.

‘Miss Smith.’

Another painful throb. She could die. In fact she would. Right there. That would show him.

‘Miss Smith? Come now!’ she smiled again, ‘How could you?’ a teasing lilt in her voice. She kept her smile, dimples dancing, and sat down, arranging her skirts around her as she did so.

‘Laura, then. I.. how are you?’

‘Oh, very well thank you. John and Mary left only moments ago. Did you not see them?’

‘I did. John was in a hurry to get to old Mrs Pettiforte.’

‘Yes, indeed.’

‘And my sister frazzled, as always.’

She heard, rather than saw, the smile on his face.

‘As is Mary’s way,’ Laura agreed. ‘We were not expecting you for another year,’ she said then, abruptly. Her eyes lifted to his face. He was looking directly at her, into her soul, even. Piercing, green. His face, so familiar, so different. Older, more tired. Drawn. Something in his look compelled her to look away again.

‘I know.’ He opened his mouth to say more. She saw him swallow, hard, search her face until she flushed. She waited for him to give her more information. She didn’t know what to ask. How to ask. She could not ask. So she looked at her sleeve and picked at it.

‘Aunt Abigail and I will have a light supper here by the fire,’ she said, after a short pause. ‘Please join us.’

‘With pleasure,’ he said. She felt the settee bend as he sat down next to her.

Supper arrived, as did Aunt Abigail. Larger than life, sailing into the room and immediately taking command. Fawning over Tom as though he were her own nephew, she took control of the conversation. She enquired after his studies and his work abroad. She lamented on the Medical profession, in turns berating it for taking Tom away from them all for such a long time, and praising him for his medical feats, saving lives and relieving discomfort. Laura was quiet through supper. She kept her eyes on the bread; thick slices with a beautiful golden crust. The butter spread generously on top. Beautifully cut slices of cheese, rich and deliciously fresh tomatoes from the vegetable garden. Her tea was milky and sweet. A nice meal.

It tasted like cardboard in her mouth though. There was a pain in her chest, a lump in her throat. Her eyes glittered brightly in the firelight, her cheeks flushed from the heat of the flames. She took her tea in gulps, but the lump in her throat would not budge. It grew larger as the evening lengthened, as she watched Tom become more comfortable, as she felt his eyes look her way a few times, questioning her silence.

Finally he stood up to leave.

‘A wonderful meal,’ he said, as he bid them goodnight.

‘Laura, see the boy out,’ her aunt said.

She dragged her feet. Smiled at him, followed him out the room and down the hall. He opened the front door and stepped out into the moonlight. A gust of cold air around her, and she shivered.

‘You’d best close that door,’ he warned, ‘no use getting a chill.’

‘It was good of you to come by,’ she told him. She still did not know what he was doing home a year early.

He didn’t say anything, forcing her to look up at him. Tall, dark with the light of the moon behind him. Crisp wintry air, stars alight in the heavens. She couldn’t see his eyes, nor the expression on his face. Yet she knew he was about to say something, for there was dread in his stance. His shoulders sank with heaviness, the joy he had displayed that evening around Aunt Abigail had left him completely.

‘Laura I…’ he began.

He cleared his throat. Then, abrupt, ‘Goodnight. Be warm.’

He turned and walked down the path. She felt as though a pack of wolves ought to have been chasing him, he should race away from her, she should throw her fury at him and shock the calmness out of him. Oh she could scream! His walk was a meander. He even paused to look at the sky, then back at her. Then he raised an arm in salute.

Fingers trembling, she shut the door upon his wave and stalked upstairs to bed. Not a word to her aunt, who Laura heard humming to herself as she marched past the drawing room.

Goodnight, indeed!

March

March is a pretty month.

A fair month.

A blooming month.

March starts out grey but ends up golden, a full spectrum from bare branches to boughs dusted in pink and white. 

March is the gateway to longer days.
Brighter evenings.
Warmer rays.

March breathes and her breath is sweet.
She roars and her wind is fresh.
She beams and her sun is a ray of promise.

Image Credit

Love Letters #48

I truly think success is contentment, in whichever shape or form that takes.

For me contentment is dancing around my living room like a maniac making my ten month old bay girl laugh. She is a very smiley child. She has the most beautiful little dimples and she is forever making friends with anybody who so much as looks at her.

Contentment is wearing a tight red dress and red lipstick that I haven’t worn in nearly 3 years for a ‘date night’… in my living room. We ended up watching 15 minutes of a movie and then I was upstairs soothing a baby to sleep and he was upstairs cuddling a toddler who was afraid of ‘the bats’.

Contentment is taking my babies to the library on a Monday afternoon and choosing 8 books to take home. It’s stopping in a cafe amid the drizzly walk home and drinking a hot drink with my two year old boy. He is a wonder to behold. He is so human, with all his flaws and beautiful ways. A piece of art, I think, as he sips his warm milk and leaves a milk moustache on his upper lip, which he then proceeds to wipe away on his clean sleeve. My baby girl babbles away in the highchair, waving a croissant around and laughing at herself.

Contentment is making sliced pickled red onions and having them on a cracker with some cream cheese.

It’s tidying up the house.

It’s somebody popping round for a cup of tea.

It’s baby breath, and the warm sweet smell of a baby who has just woken up from their nap.

It’s a mother’s love, that trickles down the generations, and is felt decades and decades later, in hand-knitted cardigans and the echo of a voice telling me a smile makes the most plain face beautiful.

It’s feeling grateful for warmth at night.

It’s the catharsis of crying.

The ability to have hope that tomorrow will be better.

The gentle sigh, the pages of a book, the taste of tea, the sound of someone typing, the growl of hunger after a long day of physical and mental labour, the ache of loneliness, the prayer, the bright and numerous stars in an icy, black night sky.

What is contentment for you?

Dear December (in 2020)

Hello December.

You dawned frosty this year.

Coating the cars in a thin icy layer. Spreading over the grass and roads, hardening the mud that loves little hands and somehow gets into little wellies and smears itself on little socks.

Pretty, pretty frost.

Some say Jack Frost has been.

Others watch the morning clouds scud by, the steam rising from people’s pipes, cars, breath visible in the air.

Life, really.

But the sun has not risen yet.

It’s only dawn.

People still lie dreaming in their beds.

I drink your icy air, December, in the pitch blackness of winter dawn. The sunrise is in 1 hour and 24 minutes, and my fingers will freeze and my toes will fall off, but I will welcome this first sun of December… that’s if the cloud allows me to see her.

The first sun of the last month of a strange, strange year.

Did we think we would get here in one piece?

Did we think we would have our lives tipped over and tumbled out?

Resolutions made in 2019 froze 9 months ago, and now you are helping to usher in a new year. A new dawn. A new …. or not?

I won’t rush you December. I refuse to. I know how hard it feels to be rushed.

You must be feeling it this year. Many people are counting on you. People began decorating their homes and trees months ago in anticipation for you. They think you’re going to be some sort of saviour from the evil that has infiltrated the ranks of humanity.

But don’t worry, December.

You take your sweet old time. It’s not your fault you herald the turn of the year. You just keep on being you, frosty, twinkly, candy cane you. We will manage.

Love Letters #34

I didn’t know I could feel that way. That reckless abandon. That absolute peace. It felt like I was in a small bubble, and I knew it would pop at any moment, but I didn’t want to think of that until it happened.

I just wanted to enjoy the now most thoroughly.

We walked on the mountain for hours every morning, as the sun climbed higher and higher in the sky. I could feel its malignant beam on my back, scorching through my clothes, making my skin prickle uncomfortably before it broke down and wept rivers of sweat. My feet were sore by the end of the day.

We ate whatever we could get our hands on. Pineapples chopped, mangoes until the orange stickiness dribbled down our chins and under our shirts. Strawberries by the bowlful. Fruit in abundance.

We jumped in the lake straight after, with all our clothes on. You swore loudly because the water was deceivingly cold, and we glanced back at our parents, our relief palpable when we saw them laughing on the lake’s edge, oblivious to our transgression.

We cycled on old rusty bikes found in the garage, the wheels patched and pumped, the chains oiled. Our fingers were grimy with mud and grease, and the summer wind rushed on our faces and separated every strand of our sun bleached hair. You burned severely one day, and your mother smothered you in aloe vera and I rolled around laughing as you squelched outside like a giant slug, a brilliant scowl on your face.

We were bloated with lemonade and stuffed full of sugar, our feet hardened over the span of the two months we were there, browned and baked by the heat and roughened by hot ground beneath our bare soles.

It ended though, as I knew it would. My father had an office to get back to and yours had patients to dissect. Our mothers bundled us away in our respective cars, stuffed blankets down by our feet as we sweltered within, our noses pressed to the windows, watching as the adults exchanged handshakes and claps on the back, and our cars trundled on the dusty road, the distance between them growing with each second.

They didn’t spare a thought for the little people. They dragged their children along wherever they went and they didn’t think that in leaving the holiday house they seared our hearts. Well, my heart. I’d never experienced anything like the friendship we had. the fearlessness, the secrets, the tents and the battles.

There was never a summer quite like that summer. I don’t know who you are, and my parents are vague whenever I ask them. So I leave it, thinking perhaps someday in the future we may meet again and rekindle that bond between spirits.

But I know it will never be the same. I am too old to feel that surge of excitement when I think of the day ahead. Ants and beetles on the ground are nothing to me now. Your voice echoes through the years sometimes, and that summer heavily influences all of my choices and the way I respond to the world.

It’s the smallest things, sometimes. The smallest things.

Donald Zolan