Token of Affection

I went to the Foundling Museum yesterday. It's the place where the orphans, the abandoned children were taken.  When mothers took their illegitimate babies to be cared for, they were asked to leave a token to identify the child in case their circumstances changed and they were able to reclaim them later.  They left coins and keys, hairpins and pebbles. When they had nothing to leave as a token, they snipped a piece of fabric from their skirt or from the baby's robe. So many babies were taken here that the Museum's squares of everyday dress material now comprise the largest collection of 18th century fabrics in the world. 

The displays of these small, poor items are heart-wrenching. So little, yet covering every meaning of their word. 

Noun: a thing serving as a visible or tangible representation of a fact, quality or feeling.
Noun: a voucher that can be exchanged for goods or services. 
Adj:  done as a symbolic gesture.

A token is an item that stands for something else. Once you know what it stands for, the item can be anything at all. In this way, shells or small discs of metal become a currency, a slip of paper can be exchanged in store for a gift, a small white stone is a declaration of love. 

We all wind up as orphans sooner or later - this is the way of the world. We are of an age now where, one by one of us, we are losing then burying our parents. As adults, as parents ourselves, we are wise enough and weary enough to know how this is done.  The phone calls, the paperwork, the practical tasks, the triage of items that made up a life. The tokens we choose to keep are not the important things, the valuable things. They are chosen not for merit but for meaning - a meaning that we have created for ourselves. 

And although we are wise enough, and weary enough, and old enough and adult enough now to haul ourselves through this time - we are still children, their children. Whether they leave us at 5 months or 5 years old or 50, no one is quite ready to be an orphan, to hold that token and know it can't swap back for the person who is gone. 

Motherlode

It's Mother's Day. And my mother, who is in good physical health at 76, is slipping away from us with dementia.  I went home last weekend to work on a memory-book with her, to try and capture some of the history before it's too late - and it will soon be too late. I've been horrified at the speed of her deterioration, and we will have to start working on some concrete plans for the next stage (whatever the next stage is). 

My dad, who is not a patient man at the best of times, drinks heavily every evening now, which must affect his mornings too. I imagine a person more confused than my mum might need a lot of help going to bed and getting up.  Neither of them really ought to be driving anywhere, but both of them still are. There's a high chance they will hurt or kill themselves - or god forbid, someone else, in an accident so that needs to be addressed too. 

I don't know quite how this help and sorting is going to work out - other than that it will fall to me.  My brother is busy with his terminally-ill child and my sister lives in Australia.  And I'm the oldest, so I am kind of in charge I suppose. 

I've had a difficult relationship with my mum from my early teens through to my thirties, but it's much better now. Becoming a mum and finally growing up myself has helped me to forgive and even understand some of the things she said and did so they don't matter so much now.  She has been a lovely granny to the girls and I know that she loves us all, in her own strange only-child way.  She will be gone while she's still here, like her father before her, so I kind of know what to expect.  It won't be fun, but we will still find the fun in the days that we have, just as we have learned to do with my nephew.  Where there is love there are always smiles. 

I don't usually post poetry on here, but as it's Mother's Day, here's one from a couple of years ago that I'm editing at the moment.  It's not quite ready for submission, in my view, but it's getting there.  I was thinking about it when we were doing the memory book, and she was talking about all women in her family who were named after flowers. Her parents were not in favour of showing emotion, and it must have been a funny old life, just the three of them. As my granny often used to point out, my mum stuck out like a sore thumb - an exotic looking child with her striking red hair in a family of mouse-brown. 

Marion: I

Born in the summer of the gathering storm,

Soothed each night by the rhythmic thud

Of bombs falling on the Glaxo plant
She Listened With Mother
All dozy and cosy in the Andersen shelter
Watched over by the eyes in the potatoes
Studding their soil sky like stars;
Spiders were her night time friends.

Endlessly re-knitting jumper into scarf
They also served who sat and waited
Picking balsa-wood pips from their teeth
In the pretend-jam sandwiches of birthday teas
Barrage balloons hung cheerily along the Thames
Just for her – bomb-site fire-flower

In the family bouquet of Rose, Daisy, Violet & May.

  

Marion: II

Ernest as his name, father was away
Beating the Nazis with the neatness of his inventories
Seasick, then homesick, then sick of it all
Counting the cost of the ruins of Germany
Lodged with a family just like his
Where another girl with plaits and a too-small dress
Knits the same scarf, thumps the same piano scales
Laughs at spiders and the same stained moon.

Then victory was ours, and he came back
A stranger to his daughter
"When's that man going home?" she hissed.
He was not a one to pull her to his knee
Throw her in the sky and catch her in his arms
With a joyous shout; she held the basket
As he pruned and told the names of all his roses,
Secateurs held gently as a child’s hand.

The Anniversary Waltz

If I had stuck it out with Husband # 1 I'd have just passed my 20th wedding anniversary now. What a strange thought  - for many reasons. I don't feel old enough to have been doing anything for twenty years, although actually I've been running my business for more than fifteen so I guess it must be true. That first wedding seems a world away  -  I'm a completely different person now, and so, I imagine, is he. No wonder we're not still together.

But lots of people still are, aren't they? How many of them, do you think, choose to stay together because they have grown up and outwards in the same direction, and love each other and love to be together? 

And how many are together for the children? Or, children up and gone, are still together through inertia? Well, these are the questions we don't ask. Facades must be maintained at all times, otherwise our nice middle-class professional world will implode.

My twentieth wedding anniversary should have been celebrated with the gift of China. I imagine after twenty years you've stopped giving each other decent, touching, personal gifts. Or maybe you are chucking so much china around that a replacement batch would be timely.  Luckily I scored the Royal Doulton in my divorce settlement. However he got the cutlery so I had to wait till my second wedding to get some decent knives and forks.

I'd be in the run-up (miserable slip-and-slide?) to my 25th, my Silver Wedding, now.  21 years is Nickel or Brass apparently (so old now that you are collecting crappy fireside ornaments?) 22 is Copper (likewise, maybe a little pikey kettle to go on your hearth?) 23 Silver Plate (replacing your wedding cutlery, I suppose?) 24 is Musical Instruments (nearly at retirement, time to take up a new hobby?) and then your 25th which is Silver, as any fule kno.  Maybe a trophy for having made it to a quarter of a century without killing each other or yourselves.

Are you gonna make it that far?

I of course am on the second spin of the roundabout, and only recently. Talk about the triumph of hope over experience.  My first anniversary, which passed in the summer, was Paper. Since the whole shebang was prompted by tax and inheritance issues, and was therefore a business deal, how very very appropriate.  My second will be Cotton. Bandages, maybe? 

Taking me up to the Seven Year Itch (otherwise known as Woop!!! The moment when Child # 2 goes to college and I am free!!) we can celebrate year 3 with Leather (interesting....), 4 is Fruit or Flowers (see, giving in so early with crap gifts  -  banana, anyone?), 5 is Wood, 6 is Iron and 7 is Wool or Copper. Enough said.

Child #1 asked me the other day "Mummy, next time you get married, I will be your chief bridesmaid, won't I?"

I explained that I wasn't thinking of getting married again (oh so many reasons).  "But you should, you really should!" she urged.

"Oh look!" I exclaimed. "I think that's a chaffinch on the bird-feeder".  Sometimes it's best just to change the subject.

Dumbstruck

Now that I'm firmly locked back into my submarine, I'm thinking maybe I should stop blogging. Or at least, all elements that include self-reflection, intimations of weakness and chinks in the armour, any personal thoughts that don't fit in with everything being fine, fine, fine.

On the one hand, even considering the possiblity of not being totally dandy and breezy at all times may compromise the impermeability of the vacuum pack. On the other hand, maybe I will only be able to maintain a decent facade if I have some sort of opportunity to write out all the stuff that won't be coming out any other way. I wonder whether it's true that the unexamined life is not worth living, or whether it's better take the advice in the song and keep on dancing through life ("life is painless, for the brainless...")

I'm not sure what's best.  I was also repelled by a website I looked at last week, which was so self-obsessed and self-aggrandising it made me retch. Then when I'd finished retching it made me think this blog is like that too. Me me me me me. Blah blah blah blah blah. Zzzzzz.

Notwithstanding. I suppose I might as well blog while I'm deciding.  I am feeling autumnal and reflective. Lots of time to think.  And this is what made me think that too much thinking might not be good.

I was away for two weeks and three of my friends lost a parent. I'm forty-four. I was going to say, perhaps half way through my life. But realistically given the givens, more like two thirds,four-fifths, nine-tenths? I'm not where I wanted to be in a lot of ways. No books written. Every day I look more dreadful. I have pleasures: the girls, my friends..... The girls are growing up.....I am growing older and uglier by the moment, it appears.......what will there be to look forward to? Not next week, or the week after, but in the longer run?

I am afraid that if I wait for the right juncture to start the next stage of my life, I will find that I've run out of time.  That this now is all that I will have.  It's all just there, beyond my fingertips, so near and yet not attainable...

"Ah but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" Good question. And if like me you're concerned about this life, here and now, there is no easy answer.

Story Stealer

It's a surprise, but one thing I have done in all this distress is write.  It made a difference, having one of my poems selected for publication on a writing website, and it made a difference getting positive feedback on this blog from people whose opinion I hold in high regard.

I found a voice. Not mine, but one that is familiar. It's flowing quite easily. The full sweep of plot is not fully formed yet, but the characters are emerging nicely, as are some key events and interactions.  I also wrote a short story, a piece of flash fiction and a poem for Bugged, although the poem was finished too late for submission. I might put it on here some time, I suppose.  I thought my restless mind could be better applied than googling (my restless body I walked into submission yesterday with over 11 miles in the rain, and it quietened down a little bit after that).

I'm stealing stories. Some of them I'd left alone until now, knowing they were great but they were not mine to have. But then I figured a story that belongs to someone that I know, is now a story that could be mine. I base this on the logic that there's a sort of Venn-diagram overlap of   -  you  -  that means I am connected in to all your triumphs and tragedies, all your characters and friends, your loves and disappointments. 

And like Frank Bascombe said, I can make them turn out the way I want them to. I can deny you the consummation to your most romantic encounter, or turn a humiliation into a golden glowing marvel.  Now I get to decide who has the happy endings.

Outside Looking In

It's a feeling I used to have a lot. The one where everyone knows the secret and I don't. Things happening around and about me that I don't understand,  a joke and everyone is laughing except me.

I felt like this all the time when I was younger, so I'm in familiar territory.

Life is out to crush me at the moment. I keep on fighting, not prepared to go down without a struggle. But I'm not sure why. Every small victory, every hellish day got through, only brings me to another one.

More of the same, more of the same. And I get more and more exhausted. And at the end of tunnel is another tunnel. And at the end of that tunnel is a couple laughing in the sunshine -  but the girl is not me.

I Feel Fine

"Who knows what you need. You're a nightmare. Get some therapy".

I shouted at the children when I found 11 socks, 3 pairs of (too obviously worn) knickers and a spilled glass of milk in the family room I have newly created for them in the former dining room. This makes me Crazy-Britney, of course. I am broken and must be fixed.

With my perspex-and-steel heart and my cold submarine impervious exterior I am cheery, I am efficient, I am fun, I am fine. Just dandy.

I know what I need, it's the same thing I've always needed. Finding it, that's been the challenge. I am doing ok I think, piecing it together in little bits, a part here, a part there. I have blossomed in the sunshine of kindness and care and that is a start.

Rolling Back The Years

Blackheath

Boots Scribbling Diary, 1 July 1989

Walked down from Lee into Blackheath to meet C. It's nice to be living near a mate now that everyone else has gone all couple-y. Actually he might come and temp at our place for a bit now he's back. He is trying to persuade his dad to buy an albino fox from the weird stuffed animal shop in the village, who knows why! Went to his parent's house to scrounge some lunch as his mum is cordon bleu cook. Lolled by the ponds smoking spliffs all afternoon. It was hot. Even though we are both skint we had a couple drinks at the pub (saw Heather) and a curry at the place with all the leaves stuck on the walls. He has a crush on an impossible girl. Also I wish I had a boyfriend.
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"How far back would you have to go", I wondered this evening, "not to end up right here?"

I wonder this a lot.

"Conception", said my friend G, with certainty. "Maybe even before".

Wow. That's a long way back. He didn't hold with the idea that there are several possible routes to here, only the actual routes that were taken and the specific choices that were made to bring us here. That's an interesting angle.

"No. You can't end up in the same place. It might seem similar but it's not the same".

I ran through my theory, that you don't make these particular choices, but you would still end up making other similar choices that would bring you to a place similar to here. Still marry a graduate, still have a family, still do the same kind of things, jobs, hang out with the same kind of people, go on the same kind of holidays, all that.

"Yes. But you might be having really hot sex with them all the time".

That would indeed be nice. However according to his theory it was already decreed that this would not happen - from birth or even before. How crap is that?! There's one good reason not to believe in God, regardless of the singing and the ecclesiastical architecture.
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14 months after that diary entry I married a friend. I knew we weren't 100% suited but I was lonely and it felt like everyone else was getting married except me. I was worried I wouldn't ever meet anyone else who would marry me. I was 24.

C's wonderful charismatic talented parents took a one way trip to the Dignitas clinic last summer. Fortunately it's recently decided he will not be prosecuted for booking their travel and going with them on the journey (well, not quite the whole way). My cousin Heather is dead too: cancer last year.

Sometimes loafing on the heath feels like a lifetime ago. Sometimes it seems like yesterday.

Family Album

Take anyone our age and their family photos look - familiar.

They start with the baby in the receiving blanket, and then out in the park in the shade of an imposing cedar (or perhaps for us, even an elm) sitting up in an enormous Silver Cross pram with mother in a dress that you’d be thrilled to find in a funky vintage clothing boutique.

Next comes the christening, with mother and grandmother in hats, dress and matching jacket or coat, possibly even gloves depending on the season. Absolutely everyone was christened in those days , and went to Sunday school too.

Before you know it, we’re on the pier, the colours faded to pastel, keeping warm in hideous handknitted cardigans. There’s a picnic beside the Morris Traveller, making a snowman (more handknitting: mittens and balaclavas), gap-toothed school photos with messy-haired siblings, andthe inevitable rainy camping trip.

Progressing on to seniors, there’s the new bike, orchestra or football or swimming festivals and more bracing British beaches. We’re becoming more self-conscious now, looking sidelong or even away, our arms and legs too long, our features growing before the rest of our faces and leaving us feeling ungainly and awkward.

If you notice carefully, if you made a year by year photo study of a person growing up from the Sixties until now, you’d see that they don’t regain their confidence in front of the lens until very much later in life. That uncomfortable feeling from those difficult teen years takes a long time to wear off - if it ever does.

Unless you happened to be the child of a photo-journalist, any amount of study of a chronology of your life from your photo album would be a false, weird, skewed, view. If a person in a thousand years’ time tried to learn about the twentieth century from family photos, he’d think that our lives consisted principally of constructing elaborate sandcastles, wearing fancy dress, opening gifts and going on the ferry to the Isle of Wight. Our religion must include ceremonies with cakes – lighting them and blowing them out, cutting them; and with clothes - white dresses, black gowns and strange hats, little ties in a bow at the neck.

The photos don’t show many of the real turning points because we don’t photograph those. Even when we recognise them we don’t take a photo. You might have your wedding photos in there, but not the day you agreed to get engaged when you already knew it was a mistake. You won’t have your grandad’s funeral, or the day got turned down for the university you really wanted or the sports team you hoped to play for. You won’t have a picture sitting up in hospital the day you lost the baby, or throwing up on the hard shoulder of the M1 when you got so drunk after that big argument in Scarborough. And we don’t see the long, slow slide into frustration and boredom and maybe even despair – you just stop appearing in the pictures: you’re the photographer now. Observing life rather than living it.

Sometimes if you look at someone else’s photos, they’re so very similar that you start to compare notes. This was where? And when? And you were how old? Sometimes even, you work out you were in the same place at the same time. How funny! What a small world after all.

And then you have to wonder What If. Even when you never allow yourself to play that game. What if you had met that awkward-looking, self-conscious young adult, when you too were gawky and skinny and too shy to look straight on at the camera? How might things have been different? How many of those non-photographed bad parts could have been avoided? Or does the gift of making people smile and blossom and grow into themselves, to tread firmly and take the world head-on, does that only come later in life, because of all the other things?

Everything would have been different.

Well, of course it would have been. That’s obvious. But would it have been better? Or is the journey from centre-of-attention, to observer, to frustration at being a spectator, to stepping back onto the pitch and entering the game again, is that an inevitable trajectory?

I want the impossible. I want to turn back the clock. I want to meet that young man. I want to make him laugh in his photos.

From the Archive: July 1985

Boots Scribbling Diary 1985. In pencil. I hd invnted abbrv. wrtg b4 txting ws evr concvd.

Saturday 13 July 1985

Slow start. After a false start involving some tequila-fuelled dry heaving. Lovely. (I had been dancing in a rock and roll championship in Streatham the night before and had a riotous journey back on a coach late at night with my dancing partner, and the rest of the team). Have been trying to get a decent Madonna poster for Nige's birthday. That boy has such predictable taste. Had yet another discussion about The Appropriateness Of Waitressing with Dr Hunter. A man who has probably never lived outside an ancient and renowned educational establishment of some kind. Ever. I need to get a job here there are no jobs at home - I am skint I have been living on toast and cupasoup since exams. He is going to sort something out at Newnham, so he reckons. Went to watch John B & Rick play cricket up at St John's ground. It's hot, my nose has a red stripe of sunburn. We are going to a party with them tonight, there is a big live concert on TV and it will be on at the party. Dunno if is a posh boy with a TV at St John's or maybe in the JCR. Am not drinking tequila. I am resolved to pull.

Seems the party was ok but I did not pull. Five years later I married one of the cricketers - which turned out to be a mistake. I guess if I'd really fancied him, I'd have got off with him at the party. Fifteen years later to the very day I gave birth to my second daughter.