Bluebell Woods

It’s bluebell season, or rather, the start of it. My son wanted to hunt for a carpet of bluebells under a canopy of sparse spring foliage so off we went. Meandered through several villages, stopped by a couple of cafes and village shops in the sloping hills of the cheshire countryside to ask if anybody knew where we could find bluebells.

One kind lady drew us a map and we parked our car next to a quaint little church and made our way over a stile and into a pine wood. My kids moaned and complained about the steep climbs and the many holes in the ground – badger setts? Fox dens?

Oh they WHINGED and it got on my NERVES and I told them so! My son was afraid of a little fluffy white dog and I told him not to be such a baby which was really mean in hindsight, given that he was attacked by some dogs when he was two and still harbours a (sensibly healthy!!!) fear of canines. I feel awful about it to be honest. The frustration with the moaning, the lack of patience with the fear….

But we found bluebells. Carpets and carpets of them, flowing and rippling in the wind over little slopes in the wood. My son picked a bunch and said they were for me because I was the most beautiful and best Mama ever. See? So much guilt. Why can’t I just be what he says I am. Why do I have to be such a witch sometimes!

Then when we had our fill of bluebells we drove to the ruins of a castle, climbed up a steep hill to the top (more moaning, more whingeing), and then the children’s screams of laughter and joy on the windy summit, the glorious view of sunny Cheshire all around us, oat crackers and grapes in hand – and suddenly it was all worth it.

Is it all worth it? I asked my five year old.

He asked to sit on my lap and I said no, but you can lean on me.

So he leant on me and I stoked his hair and he said it was so amazing up here.

There’s guilt and joy and sadness and regret and guilt and then so much joy and love in their presence and being and existence… and then there is me promising myself, after they are in bed, to be more patient, more kind, more lenient, more validating, more wholesome….

Tomorrow we walk to the library (I expect more whingeing but they must learn to walk long distances!) and then to the hospital for an appointment, and then perhaps stop at the shops on the way home for some seeds and laundry detergent.

Hopefully my phone will be out of sight and mind, I will be more patient (despite knowing i will need to nag a million times to get their toys put away and their shoes put on), and I will be more accepting of my children as they are in their own precious little spaces.

Because dear God I love them.

NOT my photo! This photo was taken from here.

Space

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.

27. Winter Joy

It’s cold and it’s cold and it’s cold. I have the blues and it’s cold. It’s the time of year where darkness comes suddenly, overpoweringly, menacingly. Days are grey and they blend into nights and you just want to hibernate but you can’t.

You’re solely responsible, you see. For others. Their education. Their morals. Their diets. Their exercise. Their mental health. All on your shoulders. So you pick it up, whatever it is that you are supposed to be shouldering, and you drape it over your shoulders and carry on.

Even as the peircing air drives blades into your nose and prickles at your eyes. And the grey days highlight the dirtiness this modern world has become, and reminds you of horrible teenage days driven down and beaten by depression and manipulative psychopaths.

Sunday blues, but it’s Monday.

Traversing the earth no longer seems appealing, as you dip another biscuit into a hot cup of tea, and your eyelids grow heavy with the inactivity of your brain.

It’s depressing, winter is.

What did people do to stave off the dreariness of these sombre months, in the days of yore?

I like to fancy that they did not suffer the moroseness this dank, grey weather carries with it. I like to think lives and lifestyles were acquainted with the seasons and greeted each like an old friend. Perhaps they had customs in the winter months which, when adhered to, enabled them to carry on with their lives with as much cheer and joy as what would come easy to one in the summer months.

Perhaps.

What is the secret to getting through winter in one happy, non-dreary piece? For I fear pieces of me are scattered everywhere this season much like the dead and rotting leaves I have let settle around my garden.

On Things

Hello! (Said in a voice like Izzy. Loud, there is an upwards inflection on the ‘o’ at the end, it’s cheerful, but there is a hint of trying something – too hard?)

It’s March! (Said in a voice like ME. A GIRL. No. Not a girl. A WOMAN. The child me cringes at that word, I used to think a ‘woman’ was an awful thing. I always wanted to be a ‘lady’. The woman me cringes at ‘lady’. Seems to me that to be a ‘lady’ is a patriarchal invention. To keep the WOMEN looking pretty for the male gaze. Staying prim in their kitchens and nurseries and painting pictures and filling their heads with frills. A WOMAN hoes onions. Hoovers stairs. Lifts two children with her solid, muscular arms. Works hard. Loves fiercely. Fills her mind with knowledge. Whatever it may be. She writes and reads and [read the following as verbs] mothers and daughters and sisters and wifes [no not wives – she VERB wife’s] and she is an entity in and of herself and…. I DIGRESS!).

it’s march.

the month I adore.

mainly because I was born in march.

i was loved when I was born. i was loved till I was 8 or 9, and then I was just… there.

Anyway. I adore March.

March in the UK this year is blustery, I am afraid. Cold. But we have glorious blossoms on glorious trees and my neighbours recently trimmed their apple tree and a couple of the branches fell over into our side of the garden, and I could see the buds forming on the branches so I seized them, precious things that they are, and put them in old glass jars filled with water and in my kitchen, right now, a miracle is happening. Buds are opening their delicious petals to the warmth of my oven and hob and the hum of my woman self humming as I prepare meals for my family. There is a spring in my kitchen. And it makes me so glad.

But folks, I am tired. I am on my feet from 5 am most days till about 1 am. And then I sleep a deep sleep only to be seized out of it and shaken viciously awake by a new day and my responsibilities.

I have no time to write or read. Just work. And kids.

And I am also prioritising time with my kids. To play with them and teach them. Things like fungus growing on old tree trunks and how not to slap each other when one doesn’t get their way. Things like washing one’s hands after one eats and how to not squash a ladybird to death everytime we examine one. Things like a cup full of fat juicy wriggly worms. Things like not eating soil. Things like ‘mowing the lawn’ with a pair of scissors. Things like not pulling Grandma’s cat’s tail. Things like days of the week and months of the year and years of the decade and century and what people did. Things like not wiping your hands on the chair in the same breath you use to tell me about the solar system.

Wondrous wondrous eyes.

Wondrous children.

Bittersweet, sad, joyful and frustrating.

If you are a parent, and if your child has long flown the nest, how do you manage the heartbreak? Or are you sensible about your emotions?

Life [21]

When Tom was set to leave for three years to study the first years of his Medical degree under the renowned Master Jeffman, he went to find Laura.

She was sitting with her mother in the garden, swinging her foot beneath her, a laugh seemingly frozen on her face. He paused for a few moments; the roses grew up and about the trellis surrounding her stone bench, clustered together, so numerous and nodding in the soft breeze.

He approached them with a smile, and Laura looked towards him, eyes dancing.

‘Come and sit with us, Tom,’ she said gaily, ‘we are just enjoying the roses and the sunshine. What little of it we shall have before autumn sets in.’

‘I don’t know,’ Tom looked at the sky, ‘it looks like we shall have much of this sunshine yet,’

Mrs Smith stood up, ‘I have my calls to make, dears. I’ll see you for supper, Tom?’

‘Oh no. I sha’n’t stay that long,’ he said, ‘my train leaves in an hour. I only came to say goodbye.’

‘Goodbye?! I thought… John said… he mentioned you would be travelling together?!’

‘Ah yes. I will wait for him at the Halfway Point. I have some clouds to catch.’

Twinkle in his eye.

Laura’s mother shook her head, turning back towards the house, ‘My boy,’ she laughed, ‘Don’t let those young men at Jeffman’s take your joy.’

‘I won’t.’

When she had gone, Laura patted the seat beside her.

‘Sit awhile,’ she said.

‘I don’t have much time,’ he scanned the garden, hands in pockets, then paced in front of her.

‘Laura,’ he began, then stopped abruptly.

‘Go on,’ she said gently.

‘As you know, I will be gone for three years. Four, maybe, if it goes as well as I hope,’ he looked earnestly at her then.

Her eyes were downcast, and he saw how tightly she gripped the edge of the stone seat.

He went on, ‘And I was hoping – well, it would be my greatest honour if… if you would wait for me.’

Her eyes met the brilliance of his. A sudden wind surged through the garden, and her shoulders rose up to he ears. Her eyes, usually dancing with light and laughter, brimmed with something he could not describe.

‘Tom, I..’ she began, and her voice was like a knife through his chest.

‘Just say yes,’ he whispered, defeat written all over his face.

‘I can’t promise you that, Tom,’ she said sadly.

He didn’t wait for an explanation. He could not. He did not know how he would react, whether his heart would write itself on his face, whether she would scorn him, or hold him in disdain.

‘Very well. Goodbye, Laura,’ he said, in as calm a voice as he could muster.

The he turned on his heel and walked down the path. She did not watch him go. She let the wind follow after him, she heard the wind whisper in his ears, and she strained to listen to what it said.

He asked her, and she said no.

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In the Dusk [18]

His first visit home was tinged with sadness. He came because of her sadness. He did not say so, but she knew.

She was walking in the garden when she heard the carriage pull up to the house.

Just a caller.

It was the right time for it.

Twilight in October. Days shortening rapidly. The breeze not yet cold enough to usher her indoors. Face lifted to the stars, which shone silently in the clear dusk. Distant clouds pink and purple, the surge of breeze every so often rifling through the changing leaves. Not so brittle, not so soft, so the rustle they made was like sheafs of textured paper being flipped through y invisible hands. What stories would the leaves tell?

Any moment now, her mother would call to her. Would say someone or other had called in, and she was to make herself available.

Dreary sigh.

‘Ahh, Laura. The beauty of dusk does not soothe you tonight,’

She whipped around, and there he was. Taller, if that was possible. So brown. Brown so his green eyes lit up his entire face, and the smile that did not appear on his lips beamed from his eyes.

She did not know what to do or say, so she moved towards him and flung her arms around him, hiding her face so he wouldn’t see her tears.

Furiously blinking them away, she exclaimed, ‘Tom. What are you doing here!?’

‘I was long overdue a visit to my dear mother,’ he said, and when she didn’t let go of him, he added, ‘I came straight out here to find you.’

‘How did you know I would be here?’

She stood back, finally, and her eyes glittered, but her smile took over her whole face.

‘Twilight on a clear day – I would be surprised to find you indoors.’

She sighed again. ‘It makes my heart ache,’ she murmured.

They stood a little whole longer outdoors, as the dusk turned into a clear, shimmering night.

Evening in the Garden by Jakub Schikaneder

Letters [17]

It was a mundane life she chose to lead.

Her brother was off studying to be a doctor. Her younger sister had married a sailor, and was off traversing the oceans. They received a letter from Phyllis every six months, like clockwork, detailing one grand adventure after another. Small notes in the margins to outline the many illnesses she had managed to catch, but mostly tales of escapade after escapade.

Her dearest friend; they were joined at the hip from the tender age of four, had taken herself off to university.

‘What will you become,’ Laura remarked one day, a week before Mary was set to leave.

‘Nothing,’ Mary retorted, ‘I shall become knowledgable and learned, and then marry a rich man and raise some beautiful babies.’ Her eyes danced with laughter and light.

Everything was a possibility for Mary.

Everything was possible.

But for Laura, nothing beckoned to her from the distant, shimmering paths of the years ahead. She had no plans. Her sights were set on nothing.

When they all left, one by one, and she took up her pen at her desk by the window, looking over her rose garden, a deep desolation settled on her shoulders. It shrouded her like a cloak of misery. Her eyes scanned the roses, the trees of the gardens beyond, the acres of forest behind, all with her name on it. And beyond, the hills rolling away pale and blue in the distance.

They all wrote.

John from medical school. Mary from her dorms at university. Phyllis.. yes baby Phyllis still sending bi-annual letters. The days melted into weeks, into months. The letters became scarce.

She was busy enough, of course. She taught at the school on Tuesdays. She wrote for the paper, and soon her published pieces were so numerous that Aunt Martha, her mother and Mrs Norton no longer exclaimed over them with the same gusto.

‘Oh, Laura, another piece! Well done, dear,’

Their eyes did not match their words. They scanned her. Scanned her. Expected her to do things.

They invited young males over – parading her. She said as much in one of her letters to Tom, ink spattering indignantly on her face.

And Tom, TOM, they PARADE me. Can you believe the audacity? Your own mother invited Colonel Williams one evening and then decided she had a headache and could not possibly stay to keep him company, and ‘Laura dear’ would you please be so kind as to take the good colonel out to look at your beautiful roses. YOUR MOTHER, TOM?! Of course, my own mother is no better. She informed me we would be seeing Lady Betsy and to wear my best dress, you know, with the rosebuds. So I got all het up thinking the worst. It was all a wonderful conspiracy. Lady Betsy and Mama walked arm in arm ahead while a tall, gangly fellow whose name I cannot for the life of me recall regaled me with tall tales of life in the Navy. THE NAVY?! I informed him I much preferred the life a doctor leads – the only profession I know most about, since I have a bi-monthly summary from you and my brother.

And then Mary’s engagement. To John. Of all people.

She had a fat juicy letter brimming with the details from Mary. A short concise letter from her brother, the few words he had so clearly carefully selected not concealing the great joy leaping out at her from beneath. Leaping at her and stabbing her right in the heart.

She ought to have been happy. So happy. Leaping over the hills happy.

But she was not.

Evening Interior by Jakub Schikaneder

Rose Garden [1]

She was a rose garden,

A prose garden,

A promising book of succulent fairytales.

Chicken soup for the soul.

She was the most dreary one of them all. Smile when it should have been a frown. Hug when he would have given a shout.

Heartache, arms deep in a bowl of dough. Kneading, kneading, raisins sprinkling.

He asked.

She said no. Not her. Never her.

She was a rose garden.

Not his rose.

To Froth

I bought myself a milk frother. Actually in today’s language that isn’t quite true. I ordered myself one. It’s a little machine whisk, the handle of which contains a battery. The whisk part is a small circle of wire with a curly wire going all over it, and it vibrates or spins when you press the button on its handle.

You can froth milk, or cream, or in my case, a teaspoon of instant coffee and a teaspoon of sugar in a tablespoon of boiling water. Froth that right up until its thick and foamy and double the size of the liquid. Then add boiling water and a teensy splash of warmed milk and there you have something delicious.

Something like a cappuccino, but lighter, frothier, tastier and way cheaper. You can have it as many times a day as your jitters will allow.

Early in the morning before your kids wake up and drag you backwards through a hedge.

Late at night when they are asleep and you’re desperately typing away at your laptop keyboard trying to get this big project done.

In the afternoon, at 3pm precisely, when a wave of deep exhaustion slaps you on both cheeks and then parks its bottom on your eyelids. Heavy heavy, limbs like lead, but you sip from that sweet foam and you’re mildly awake again, setting about to finish off the rest of your day.

I don’t know what it is about life that feels so alien.

I want to write stories and describe things and delve into humanity’s mind, I want to talk to people and explore their minds and learn things and thoughts and opinions. But I find myself on the daily repeating a tedium that is almost set in stone. Written into my soul by the generations before me.

Duty? Law?

My grandmother and her paper thin skin and brown, wrinkly hands pop into my mind often.

I was having a conversation with my husband and mother in law about something to do with children growing up and leaving and I mentioned my grandmother and my husband said, out of the blue,

‘She was very lonely, your grandmother, wasn’t she?’

It felt like a punch in the gut. I thought about her, raising three children alone in London in the 70s, divorced and heartbroken, hardworking and efficient. She packed them all off to uni and waved goodbye as they got married and travelled across the globe and country, and there she resided in her big old Victorian house on a side street in South London.

And yes.

She was incredibly lonely.

My sweet, kind, warm, loving grandmother.

And she is no longer with us. In fact, on the 22nd of July it will have been 11 years since she passed away.

And when he said that a deep sadness rose up so suddenly that I could not control myself, so I got up to go to the kitchen under the pretext of clearing the dishes away.

‘Are you doing to cry?’ he asked me.

‘No,’ I said, as the tears gathered thick and fast in my eyes and threatened to spill out onto my cheeks. I shut the kitchen door behind me and began to wash the dishes to compose myself.

My son ran in a few moments later and his eyes were huge, ‘Mama are you sad?’ he said. He had interrupted his play to check on me.

I turned and smiled at him.

‘No sweetheart, I am not sad.’

He searched my face with his eyes for a few moments and then went back to his game, evidently appeased.

And I remembered searching my own mother’s face like he did. In fact, I still do. I search her voice and her eyes and the way her chin moves.

And I thought about how she too, would do the same to her mother. My grandmother.

I don’t know what all this means or how it relates to a milk frother and being overwhelmed.

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In Retrospect

Sometimes after a big massive fight I go away to Retrospect.

And in Retrospect, my glasses become clean. Images are sharper, crisper. The air is tantalising and if I stick my tongue out, I can taste everything. The breeze, the way the birds fly, the blossom petal on a wind current. Everything.

My regret because I pushed it.

My sadness because I pulled at it. Nitpicked it. Wanted to fight at the beach. Get it off my chest. But in doing so, it was hammering his chest.

Don’t go to bed cross, they say. I never do. Maybe I need to visit Retrospect before I try to get things off my chest in the moment.

Retrospect has a fantastic way of making you make mature decisions with your tongue.

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