On the 11th of April, or even a few days beforehand, it really started to feel like spring. I could wear a light dress and enjoy the breeze on my skin instead of shivering under a large coat. My kids walked barefoot on some grass. The smell of freshly mowed lawn hung in the air and daffodils and tulips nodded blissfully in a sunny, tolerable breeze.
No more winter coats, my daughter wore a dress with nothing on top, and my son raced about in a t-shirt. I turned thirty years old but the woman in ASDA asked me for ID because I looked under twenty five.
That joy I felt at being mistaken for being less than 25 years old made me realise that I am in fact old.
I am a parent, a mother. I had a relaxing soak in a hot bath and my muscles felt more at ease than they have in five years, and I could have sunk into my bedsheets into a deep and healing slumber afterwards but did that happen? No. Of course not. My son was up every hour with burning fever, wheezing and vomiting. I was by his side with a bucket, his inhaler and an oxygen meter. The next morning he was right as rain, ignoring a niggling cough and rushing about with his cousins like he had wings on his feet.
But we’re old. Older. My sister in law has lines around her eyes and my other one says her back is full of knots after consecutive night shifts.
Can’t fix the problems of the world but can ensure your presence in it doesn’t cause anybody any harm.
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 watched the moon rising over the sea and it was as though I had never seen the moon in my life before. I have never seen the moon like this. A great golden orb, bigger than I have ever seen the sun, and my eyes followed it hungrily as it edged its way over the watery horizon, up up up in the black starlit sky. Huge, emitting its pale warm glow, reflecting over the silent and calm sea as it rose further into the sky that spanned my place on earth.
My place on earth.
Earth swimming with the sun and the moon in the vacuum we call space.
Space because it stretches on and on and out, forever reaching the unknown infinity.
When I look at the world this way, and I think of my place in it, and the hum of life and humanity and the machines we have created of materials and ourselves, my mind stills for a moment and I realise the noise is there to distract us from the truth. Of our being. Our existence. Us on this earth, with space spinning above our heads and under our feet.
We are here.
And we won’t be soon.
So where will we go?
Where we will go.
And it’s a glorious feeling because even though we all argue here on earth about our existence and the inevitability of the end, deep down we all know the truth. Our cells and bones and souls know the truth. You call for the truth in the depths of your fear. In your deepest slumber, you know the truth.
Why, the truth is as inevitable as your beautiful death.
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.
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
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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.
On driving home from an appointment this wintry night, when frost from the morning still adorned every blade of grass and leaf, when houses breathed their heated breaths into the air from pipes protruding out their sides, when people stood like icicles at bus stops… I saw the warmest sight.
I saw on the canal a houseboat. It nestled on the furthest bank, and its little windows, sunken to a level below the walking knee, were alight. Little curtains pulled aside to reveal the warm glow of a compact living space. Much like one would see in an illustrated painting in a cosy children’s book.
I saw pictures on the walls, I saw a table adorned with candles ready for an evening meal. I saw fairy lights along the ceiling, and caught sight of a stripy jumper and a loaf of bread tucked under a stripy arm.
All in the matter of moments as my car trundled on by.
And I thought, as I traversed the icy, winding roads of the Cheshire countryside, that winter, for all its harsh dreariness, is not so bad after all.
Why, all the better to appreciate the summer with.
And the beautiful winter moon, gleaming in the dark, glistening sky.
And the magnificent sunsets, enriched only more for how fleeting they are, unlike the long drawn out goodbyes of summer ones.
It lifted my spirits a little, seeing that wink of cosiness in a houseboat on a frosty winter night.
It’s not so bad after all. The change in season is inevitable, essential.
If I were to write a diary here, I would say. I would say, dear diary, I am in love. With what, well I could not begin to tell you. I do not know for myself.
The solitude in the hour before dawn, perhaps. Listening to the wind whistle through the hole under the radiator. That coffee I have at 5:30am before the gym when my family is fast asleep in their beds and I have a few moments to just ..be.
I don’t ever ‘be’ though because my mind is elsewhere, planning for other ‘be’s which are never ‘be’s because my mind during those ‘be’s is in yet another ‘be’. What does it mean to just ‘be’?
If I were to write a diary here I would say I almost married a doctor, except I did not almost marry him, I did not entertain the thought of marrying him at all, and the man I did end up marrying, was the one I had wanted to marry since I was eleven years old. The world is old and ancient and spinning on its axis, but once every so often it catches your eye with its own rheumy ones, sighs a dreary, earthy sigh, and there. You have one of your moments to just ‘be’. It was always meant to be. The trees knew it, the mountains knew it, the tempests which curled their fingers around the waving grasses knew it.
If I were to write a diary in here today I would say that Eliza’s child gave me the most adorable hug, and kissed my cheek upon leaving my home. In the same breath she told me she was very happy to be going home as she did not want to be in my house anymore. I laughed and Eliza laughed because at three years old, the world is so very simple, and two juxtapositions can dance merrily together.
If I were to write a diary in here today I would say that I am starting to get SAD, not ‘sad’, but SAD, as the nights draw drearily closer to the mornings, as the icy winds whip and bite even though the sun shines, as the days become bitter, harsh, and turn a cold shoulder to the adventurous spirit. I would say that I don’t have enough social interaction to fill my cup, I would say that I need my house bursting with the warmth of PEOPLE, I would say that winter is a time to make warm soups and hot drinks and share food, share light bulbs, share laughter, share plants, share soil, share beds.
If I were to write a diary in here today I would say that on the 25th of November, as Midwinter hurtles towards us with terrifying speed, as the creatures of the night roam ever closer to our periphery, as the moon looms large through the spindly ebony branches of undressed trees, I would say that I am in love with the beauty of this earth, and in the same token pained severely by the morbidity of life, and content, so so content, with the fact that we all have fates and they are all scheduled for us, and that fates are not set in stone, and so one must always gather one’s scruples, tie one’s horses, speculate on one’s plan, and get up, and carry on.
We woke up to sunshine, and when we realised the train was due in half an hour we ripped through the house, coats, shoes, scarves, hats – half on half off as we laughingly made our way to the train station. Was the front door locked? It didn’t matter, there was nothing of consequence to steal from the house anyway, unless somebody deigned to go in and usurp our residency there. They would not dare. This is the west, after all. We are civilised.
We caught our train to the city where the birds chirped the songs of robots, and the trees swayed to the tune of tram-hum. Hum drum. Our feet joining the thousands of others that battered gum-spotted pavements. The trees scattered about as an afterthought, the asphalt and cement rising around us like an enchanted concrete wood. The enchanted forest, Brenda breathed, only it was dotted with windows, sewage pipes and institutional systems.
We found the library in the end. It was nestled in between two glass towers which reflected the sun and beamed right into our eyes, distracting us, it seemed, from our literary goals. We made it, though, we always do. We made it up the ancient stone steps, the gargoyles heralding, guarding, sentinels of the treasures of the mind that lay within. We entered from light into darkness, into light again. The light of the hundreds of worlds that lay between thin leaves, that resided in the musty smell of time. The light of the voices all clamouring for attention, thousands of them, rising in unison to ensnare our minds and guide them towards the myriad of pathways to nowhere, everywhere, all the same, different.
When we left, it was dark. The sun had set. The night bore down heavily on us, too overwhelming even for the twinkling lights of the city trying its mightiest to beat away the sombre winter. Our books tucked under our arms, our laughter stilted, muffled by the bounty of knowledge we sensed we had achieved, our eyes blinking under the too-bright fluorescent lights of the train home.
Half the park was lit with the streetlamps that peppered the carpark next to it. They lent their glow to the empty playground.
But if you turned away from the light, you could see blackness spreading like ink from above. The light from behind was swallowed by it. Half a civilised world, half a void of blackness where anything could exist.
Beings don’t prowl under street lights, you see.
They don’t detach themselves from shapeless shadows, they don’t have eyes that gleam through polished modern high-rises. Beings don’t walk among the civilised man. They remain in the forests, hurtling themselves over the plains, their wails carried over moors by frantic winds. They lurk under dark lakes and in the pitch black hell holes of valley caves.
If the swing begins to swing in the dark, the part of it that reaches the light takes form, little girl laughing, but as soon as it swings back into the dark again, she turns into a bewitched child; scraggly hair, bloodcurdling scream, eyes shining devilishly in the darkness.
Beings, you see, do not walk among the well-dressed men and women of this world.
And if they did, they certainly would be ignored, for everybody is distracted from the present, looking over each others’ shoulders, looking into the ‘presents’ of others, flicking, scrolling, swiping. Next best thing.
Brightest day, brightest coin, madness, light shining through a long and narrow doorway. Pictures hung askew on the walls which were stained brown but it was not cigarette smoke. She was told something about chemicals bleeding through the paint. Too much humidity in the room. All her crying, she supposed. She was awfully emotional, prone to violent outbursts, tears and fits and a quick blow of her nose and all was calm again. Peace waves washing against a no man’s land shore.
She went to different charity shops to collect paintings she liked. Muddy watercolours of forests against a backdrop of something watery. Rivers or streams, a still lake with fir trees rippling on its surface. The stunning kaleidoscope of a cloudy sunset.
Her curtains were cream and brown, picked out by her own damn self, nobody else bothered to come.
Brown floor, cold. The cold was like a harsh creature, waiting in the drafts that blew in through the old windows and any hairline cracks it could find in the house. It seeped through two layers of socks and under the three jumpers she wore and shook a long bony finger at her which made her shiver in her chair. Nothing staved off the cold.
It was the brightest day today, though. Brightest light, cracking through her narrow front door. She was just relieved somebody had come to check on her. Her bones must be brittle by now. She had gone to so many charity shops during those freezing days, as though the warmth in the paintings she hunted down could be her blanket.
She saw the door move, slam of a boot. Loud shout. They went to get help. Silly people. Just move the blankets, it will open fine. I put them there to block out the cold.
Brightest crack of sunlight right on her face, blinding her eyes, oh if only it were closer, that sun, to warm her bones. They were so very cold.
Maybe they could make her a cup of tea. That would be fine, she had been waiting long enough. Oh. There they were again. Just push the door open, lads. It’s only me blankets.
They did.
They were shouting. One of them looked frantic. Another pushed him out again. Oh it’s only me, lads!!
One stood on the threshold, pushing the door further open, brightest of bright lights behind him sucking the saturation from his body so he was a black shape against the beam. He stood for a long time, and she couldn’t see if he looked at her, but she knew.
She knew when she saw his shoulders heave, and when he strode forward and covered her unseeing eyes with a shroud.
Ocean Bream 