Archives for posts with tag: Star Trek

Where the Limit Approaches Infinity

September 18, 2018 //
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September 17th

Our son is waiting for the 7:51 to town along with all the other morning faces. It’s 8:04 and everyone looks to the right in anticipation, they fidget and flick through their phones. And I’m waiting in today for balloons, the huge ones that arrive in a box, the silver numbers that will fill our lounge with their shapes.

Eighteen years ago, we were waiting. I remember I’d had a bad night, was helped to the toilet and then onto the bed, contractions had set off the spasms in my back and in the morning, this morning back then, while our son waits for his bus in the now, in the back then I was hanging on a little more. It was a Sunday then and the surgeons were away and so, after four days of waiting, when I’d let go of all thoughts of a natural birth, when I craved the theatre and our baby in my arms, I had to wait. One more day, just one more.

And now our son is on his way, the bus heavy and swollen with early workers, waddles its way into town, hot and heaving, lumbering to its destination, ready to spill its contents at the station, to release the people to the day. And our son will be there, birthed from the bus into daylight with the others, hurrying up the hill.

And so, it goes. Another day. The day before, the memories filling up and bursting, then filling up again and I prepare.

And our son, nearly there now, with an algebra test ahead of him, with his world spreading wide, makes his way to college.

And I can’t find the words and that’s my puzzle, my test that I am frowning over. I’ve been thinking about this post for a while. What themes will come up, which metaphors to use. What to reveal, what to keep to myself and I’m stuck. Right now, I’m bound up in the webs on my window, I’m spun in silk and cannot move. But it’s ok.

How can I find the right words to express what I feel, and yet it is ok? I keep reminding myself of that. Like the beautiful form that was curled tight inside me, like the potential waiting for air, it waits. The thoughts and feelings and words nestling low down, not quite ready for the outside world. But they will come.

Just one more day. I must be patient.

I watch the spider on my window frame. She knows what to do. And every day she starts again, every day she fires silk from her hard-outer shell and weaves again.  New, fresh webs to hold the food, while her babies wait in a sac, warm and protected from the outside world, looked after until they can do it for themselves. And she spins, every day, a new pattern, adapting to the weather and the places where her web was torn apart. She builds again, with babies safe on her back, their tiny legs wriggling until they’re ready to come out and I watch her move.

She’s waiting for food. I’m waiting for balloons and our son is waiting for the test to begin.

Tomorrow will come.

September 18th

And I watch as he strides off, his longer hair whipping in the autumn bluster. The long hot summer seems to be over today and I’m glad of clouds, of battered leaves. As he waits for the bus, I see moments of me, as they try to get the needle in my back, fragments of us flip and clatter up the panes and it’s so familiar somehow. Our son, on his busy day, with little time to think until tonight and me with baking and wrapping ahead, like I always did, like I do.

His bus is late again (like I was back then, two and half weeks to be exact) and now, eighteen years later when I look at him, when I look into his eyes, the eyes that looked at us for the first time, I see every hour. I see our lives reflected back, our stories in the sparkled flecks on steely blue.

I lie and wait back then, faces all around me, a succession of people to help me on my way. I’m still.

And now, he sits on the bus, with multi various calculus in his mind, he integrates and differentiates and under the gravitational constant his possibilities open up. And while he works on proofs, I see us in the comfort of autumn, in every leaf, I see a second of our life. Leaves fall, my weather changes and we go around again.

Our baby, our son, this man. I blinked and he grew up.

For the mathematician on the bus. Such love. Such pride.

xxx

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Categories cycles, Grief, Loss, parenting, Uncategorized

To Seek Out

June 21, 2017 //
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June 18th 2017

I prepared his lunchbox for the last of the school days, the penultimate exam, the final full day and I secured the sandwich in the tired out plastic box. And as I did, I recounted the changing faces of the vessels over the years. The turquoise Thomas box bought at a day out with a friend when the steam made our eyes run and we chuffed down the rails and after the Reception class came Spider-Man in primary coloured nylon as he learned how to write. Year 2 was Lazy Town, a soft cover which caught the crumbs before a Year 3 army camo box with a matching water bottle. Year 4 saw us chugging up the hill with Toy Story, with Buzz at his side, falling with style and it was this lunch bag which I stuffed with cold fish fingers when we rushed back to the relatives room, to sit and wait, to watch the walls close in around us in Year 5. And afterwards his Sponge-Bob garish lemon shape turned up, it grinned at us for the rest of the year when our muscles forgot how to smile and into the final Primary walks with a tin box ordered from Amazon, flown over from the USA with Star Trek on its side.

Then Secondary came without the merchandised logos, without the beaming smiles and we settled on the lime green nylon that supported him through the days, right up until this final year when the blue-black lunch bag was the way. I’ve just turned it inside out now, given it a symbolic good clean, old crumbs and straws tumble into our sink, the residue of things past and as it dries out I make one last sandwich and recall.

I remember dropping him in the Reception class and leaving him kneeling on the floor with things to piece together, a new track, a new map to construct and I walked away. I looked back, his hair was lighter then, his head bent down busy, engrossed as I left and I walked as the trees blurred in my path.
And now I iron the penultimate shirt, aware of the years and minutes. Feeling the hours that bought us to here.

June 19th 2017

Next door’s scaffolding should come down soon. It watches over me, grey struts at odds with the soft spikes of my bamboo, with spears that have grown over time. A bluebottle dithers, disoriented but stays outside and the garden is poised in the sunlight. It will be warm today, the soil where the roots and weeds used to be, heats up, beaks poke, legs crawl and I can see my garden to come, when the work has been finished. How like a meadow it will look with lupins with salvia and an area to walk, with places to sit and watch but for now it is waiting. We are in the lull. The old has been ripped away, bagged up and hauled onto their van but when they return, when the fence becomes solid, when the trellising goes up, then the grass seed will come, then the mulch and flower food. How dark the compost will be, rich with nutrients, particles to bind to roots, to wrap around them and hold as they grow.
And the shoots will come, sap bright, saturated with a need to pull to the sun and they will flower. There in our garden when the pond is complete, when the water flows without restriction and the stones bring balance, bring clarity.There in our garden colours will grow, earth will sustain and rain drench us all.

A magpie clattered down the roof of the summerhouse and perched on the edge. How strong the contrast in his feathers, how they pushed out, bold in black, in white, through my green and away. He paused before flight regaining himself, judging his next move. Like the old man I see on our lanes most days, with his cap and zimmer frame, out every day despite the weather, to make his journey to the shops and back again and he keeps going, keeps pulsing despite his obstacles.
And the old man on my summerhouse surveyed his land then flew, beat wings into the day with grace and power.

And I am waiting, it’s not long now. Our son head down again today.

June 21st 2017

The shadows stroke the trees, like a hand across a head, like a soothing touch against the day and pupils wander through the gates – the young ones with rucksacks almost too big for their small shoulders, the older ones, term weary weighted down by tests and work and then our son’s year – the veterans with end of school hair in their eyes, with rag-taggled uniforms  hanging on to the last. And they have the air of resignation after the build up, after the heft of expectation, they are almost there, almost done and now it’s a process to complete, a final hoop to jump through. And there goes our boy through the gates we used to know, for one more time, one last moment to follow their rules, in their system before the giddiness of the open door.

And as he sits at the desk, pen poised, waiting for the words ‘it’s 9:09, you may begin,’ I sit at my pc and pause. Outside in the park behind our house I hear the workmen’s radio and the distant throb of machines. The play-ground is being renovated and as the cement whirrs in the growing heat, they dig and prepare. There used to be bouncy tarmac out there, to soften the fall and in the places where I brushed stones from his knee, where I kissed hot skin better when I could, is a pile of silt now and the space where the climbing frame stood.

And in our home and garden as the curtain billows at the open door, I see flickers of our boy, of his countless faces, turning and changing, of his voice peeling out, giggling higher than it is now and he fills the space around me, he saturates our garden with all the children he used to be. There, as the light moves across my new bird feeder I see him running towards us shouting ‘charge!’ I see his pristine primary sweatshirt and, right now I see his broader shoulders as he marches off with all his mates.

its quiet, apart from the tweep of fledglings, apart from the flutter of wings and under the hum of machinery, I anticipate his end of school face at the door.

For our son – beyond proud.

xxx

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Categories beginnings, cycles, Loss, parenting

Pathways

May 22, 2017 //
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In the quiet morning, when the day had not yet decided if it would be warm or if it would rain, I watched his legs. From the window I could see them as they walked the path to school, as they were coated in spring leaves, dappled on his black trousers and then the branches came and covered him and took him into the tree.

A moment later, higher up and further along the path, a flash of black in the gaps and then he turned right, to our subway, to the one I painted years ago when brush strokes, not words were my way. And it will echo to his feet now and then he turns left. I feel his journey though I cannot see it, the hill he has to climb and now the brush of traffic. The cars full of aftershave, the makeup tweaked in rear view mirrors and everyone has motion, needs, relentless nature turning and by the railings with his mates, with friends, he’ll start on the cut through road.

I know these roads but never walk them with him, only sometimes on the way to a fayre, but these are his streets, the dips in the pavement and the old school we used to know. And as he passes it now, we are there years back, younger, smaller with sparklers in our hands and friends who don’t live near now, whose hands have turned round clock faces like ours, who’s changes have carried them away in time and we all hang in the air, like a scent of jasmine or lavender, like the not quite forgotten lyrics of a song.

And at the junction near the main road the cars pick up steam, they knit and weave between each other, giving way or scowling and in the far off greens behind him, the rolling downs fade up through lilac and grey, under flat bottomed clouds, cropped just for him today and a sky we used to know.

And at the lights again in the push and shove of morning ready, for the almost starting day, he will be there, bag getting lighter as last lessons come and go, his lunchbox lid has spilt across the middle, a diagonal tear in red plastic and it hangs on. Each day the split grows more but it will make it, the lid he’s held for years is almost at its end, like his own phase. And it’s tucked away in his lunch bag, next to his exam pencil case which he will need today.

And through the gates now, I imagine, with the heartbeat slightly raised, there, passed the drama rooms he use to visit on Saturday mornings when we sat in the coffee shop downstairs.

The blossom is coming out on the tree outside my window, like every year, like years ago on the early walks to primary with hot hands and book bags and the spelling hill to the roundabout – and now.

Now even his blazer is getting small and I watch the leaves on the tree outside my window, so still today, so quiet as though it’s holding its breath, as though it’s wishing him well and in every leaf at a cellular level it buzzes, particles whirr like his neurones and in every atom I see the image of him growing and forging out through time.

Our son, preparing, and today every leaf and every insect wing, every photon of light knows his name.

xxx

 

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Categories cycles

Entropy

November 15, 2016 //
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The tree outside my window is showing berries now, it’s so proud of its changing form. The leaves have turned; they crumble and slime on the lawn that I haven’t cut and winter’s near. I can hear the neighbour’s daughter outside my window, on her way to playgroup, full of joy. Her high voice filters through the glass and I can see our son sat by a bookcase years ago on a bright duvet cover, surrounded by new friends. His playgroup still ticks and churns near our home, welcoming and nurturing, then letting go of tiny hands as they move onto the next phase.

I saw someone I used to work with, the other day. She hadn’t seen me in years and as I gave her snippets from our life now I could feel myself being scanned, being checked to see what the years had done to me and there, in the hours in-between us, on the bus, we chatted and told each other the little pieces of our life that we wanted to disclose. And after the bus ride we laughed and joked with our son by my side, taller than me now and somehow in the words that passed between us, in the early evening chill I saw myself, leaning up the radiator in the hall at the pre-school where I worked, next to my colleague and we laughed while children played. It would have been a Friday lunchtime in my mind and we’d have talked of our plans for the weekend, before everything was packed away with care, in a community centre cupboard until the Monday. She invited me to go back to the group and have cake and tea with the faces that used to fill my day but I doubt I’ll go. I know where they are, I know that now, just after nine in the morning, as I type this, that they’ll be having a last coffee before they let the little ones through the door and their aprons will be ironed and the toys set out for play but I don’t need to re-immerse myself in the old world, maybe coffee in a café but not there, en mass surrounded by a life I used to live.

And now as people outside leave for work, I am waiting, waiting for a call about a bed. I remember a Saturday in Southampton years ago. In the pine furniture shop and amongst the cupboards and bookcases we found his bed, a dark wooden one for his new room. He found a toy car underneath, separated from the hand of some unseen child, left and lost to them but an exciting find for our younger boy and it served him well. We emptied drawers yesterday and tucked at the back behind bedding and clothes we found old things, boy things, the secret bits you need to keep and some arrows.  He s been watching a new YouTuber, sing Acapella Science, parodies laced with science fact and his favourite, the Arrow of Entropic Time plays around the room as we undo the entropy of years and turn the arrow forward and fire it from the bow. I watch our boy, his mind buzzing with potential as he sets up his music system while I brush up.

Now, waiting for the men to take the bed away, to fill the stairs with their loud feet and the rustle of plastic and boxes and by the time he gets in from his last week of mocks, his room will have changed, like our home changed back then, when men came in, loud in the grey February morning, their fluorescent jackets an insult to my mind and then they left. They left us with a new world but one we hadn’t ordered, one we hadn’t scoured the Internet for, a world that forced itself in around us and took the old us away when they left.

I noticed the calendar recently, how this month, the days and the dates are the same. I don’t count much these days, months come and go, hours play around me but now when Monday is the 14th and Tuesday isn’t far, I go back there. I see our home as it was the week before, with all the old things in their places and our settees as they were. And upstairs, our son’s old bed with him there, sleeping, as the strangers knocked the door.

And I must go. I need to parcel up the old mattress and hoover up once more. It’s nearly time. Today on the 14th as I remember conversations, faces morphing with alien words and I look out of our son’s window, over his music system, to the shedding leaves outside. Our garden coated with old things, crumbled things and trees becoming bare. Winter is close, a silence before the Spring and I am waiting, waiting for the new bed, the changes we have chosen, waiting to fill his room with the next stage and our neighbour comes back.  She’s dropped her little girl at preschool, she’ll be sat on a bright duvet somewhere, scrabbling around amongst bricks. And they build next door, their extension is growing despite the greyness of the cloud and it creeps and it spreads out, a widening of their world as we prepare ours here.

I look out for pigeons, they like the berries on my tree, to land fat and clumsy and the branches wobble under their weight and they eat. They peck and burst the ripeness, it floods their bellies with what they need.

We did well yesterday, we found so many things to look at, to remember and let go and we laughed as we sang to his new favourite songs. And as the pigeon lands on cue outside my window, I see our boy, scrabbling under a pine bed in shop miles and years from here, he comes out with dust stained knees, holding up his find, like a trophy, like a staff to lead the way. And here, now, in the quiet of the house, as he sits at school, head down thinking, studying – he leads the way again.

The heating has gone off; I need a drink.  It’s nearing the end of Autumn and I have a mattress to wrap.

xxx

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Categories beginnings, cycles, Loss, parenting

The Final Frontier – Part 2

June 15, 2014 //
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A special post today, from my favourite blogger – our son xxx

It’s here! It’s arrived! And just time for Father’s Day! My very favourite episodes from Star Trek Deep Space 9 and Enterprise, enjoy:

Star Trek Deep Space Nine.

Move Along Home
Series 1 – Episode 10

A new species boards DS9 (the Wadi) they bring gambling games and Quark is naturally interested. But as he plays the game, the senior officers vanish in a maze of death and danger. Can quark save his friends or will they die when eliminated?

If Wishes Were Horses
Series 1 – Episode 16

In this episode a strange energy force consumes the space station causing every member of the crew to experience exactly what they think. The promenade becomes a blizzard, Rupelstilskin turns up and the space station is uncontrollably sucked into an obliterating anomaly (capable of destroying solar systems).

Crossover
Series 2 – Episode 23

Who remembers the TOS episode Mirror Mirror? Where a transporter accident creates a parallel universe full of death and violence. Well, Bashir and Kira have a plasma leak inside the wormhole, this sends them to the parallel universe, where the empire is at war with the Klingons and DS9 orbits Bajor.

The Way of the Warrior – Parts 1 & 2
Series 4 – Episodes 1 & 2

After the destruction of the Enterprise D (Generations,) Worf joins DS9 to assist Sisko with a fleet of Klingon ships helping the Federation to prevent a Dominion attack. However after Worf uncovers a plot to attack Cardassia he tries to stop General Martok (Second in command of the Klingon Empire) from doing so but when accords get out of hand Sisko must prepare for a full scale Klingon attack on DS9.

Trials and Tribble-ations
Series 5 – Episode 6

After Kira finds the Bajoran Orb of Time a runaway miscreant of the Federation steals it and sends the Defiant back in time almost 80 years to deep space station K7 where a well known TV hero is dealing with tribbles. Sisko and the crew must blend in to stop a bomb disguised as a tribble from destroying the U.S.S Enterprise and all her crew.

Call to Arms
Series 5 – Episode 26

In the outbreak of the Dominion war Sisko and crew are forced to abandon DS9 and retreat to safer territories. But Sisko won’t hand DS9 over to Gul DuKat that easily. He minds the entrance to the wormhole with self replicating bombs and bar obliterating DS9 he utterly ruins all systems leaving just Kira, Quark, Odo and Jake to greet the unfriendly arrival.

Sacrifice of Angels
Series 6 – Episode 6

Out numbered by two to one on Sisko’s riskiest plan ever against over a thousand Dominion and Cardassion ships, the Federation tries to retake DS9 from the Dominion.

One Little Ship
Series 6 – Episode 14

Starfleet gives Sisko a break from the front lines and tells them to study an interesting astronomical phenomenon, fly into it and all sense of size shrinks by a hundred and fifty percent. But when O’Brian, Dax and Bashir get stuck at finger nail size, can they do anything to stop a Dominion invasion on the Defiant and more importantly stop being the size of half a paper clip?!

Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang
Series 7 – Episode 15

After a new interactive hologram programme malfunctions, can the crew do anything to help the new holographic counsellor from going bust?!

Star Trek Enterprise

Shock Wave – Part 1 & 2
Series 1 – Episode 26
Series 2 – Episode 1

After destroying a planet, Enterprise is ordered back to Starfleet Command where a special visitor reveals what is actually happening and when the Enterprise is over run by the Suliban and the Vulcans want an end to Earth’s space programme, Archer is dragged to the 31st Century because he’s the cause of a drastic change in the temporal war.

Regeneration
Series 2 – Episode 23

When Starfleet find a perfect sphere and a frozen cybernetic body buried deep on the Arctic circle,
Enterprise is recalled home to investigate. They unfreeze the bodies to see if they are friendly but what they find is far worse than mean.

Twilight
Series 3 – Episode 8

After a shock wave causes a piece of the bulkhead to land on T’Pol and Archer rescues her, an unusual infection causes Archer to be unable to form any new memories. Almost 35 years into the future he wakes up in a camp where T’Pol explains his condition and the dreadful outcome of the Xindi conflict. Can Phlox eradicate the virus and ultimately restore the timeline?

In a Mirror, Darkly – Parts 1 & 2
Series 4 – Episodes 18 & 19

In the 700th episode of Star Trek ever to be broadcast, we find Archer in the evil parallel universe. The uniform has been changed, the Vulcans are in slavery and there is an all new title sequence! Archer find a rip in space time going to an alternate universe (the original universe). He also finds that the rip goes approximately 150 years into the future. He decides to enter it in the hope of finding second Empire but what he finds is the U.S.S Defiant (as seen in original series episode, The Tholian Web). Archer uses this new found power and attempts to become Emperor of the Empire but it’s not just him who wants to grab futuristic weapons…

These Are The Voyages
Series 4 episode 22

The crew faces one final mission to rescue Commander Shran’s kidnapped daughter. After a mostly successful mission but the unfortunate emotional death of Charles Tucker 3rd (Trip) Archer makes a speech that will be the beginning of the Federation as we know it. Which is then memorised by 24th Century grammar school students.

This marks the end of great series of episodes and even though J J Abrahams continues with his films it will never be the same as good old fashioned Gene Rodenberry’s Kirk.

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Categories Grief, Loss, parenting

Final Frontier (Film Extravaganza)

December 24, 2012 //
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At our second Christmas our son writes about their beloved films…xxx

Following on from my favourite star trek episodes I have decided to
list and describe all star trek films / movies because theres not enough to list just favourites.

Star trek the movie: (2009) (2030)
An insight into how the crew got there rank!

Star Trek The Movie 2 (2013) (2059)
It hasn’t come out yet!

Star Trek The Motion picture: (1979) (2100)
Kirk and the crew must battle an unknown life form From taking over the galaxy. The plot thickens when the enterprise is engulfed in it!

Star Trek Wrath of Khan: (1982) (2140)
Chekov finds an old crashed ship on a deserted planet. However he realises it’s khan’s ship and khan is less than happy to see Kirk and the crew.

The Search for Spock: (1984) (2180)
Following on from Spock’s death at the end of “The Wrath of Khan” a ship detects a life sign on a deserted planet where they are going to commit ‘Genesis’ (a highly experimental project designed to make a dyeing planet new again.) Trouble looms when the molecular structure of the planet breaks down and Kirk and Spock must get off the planet before they fall into lava!

The Voyage Home: (1986) (2239)
A probe designed to listen to whale songs is killing the earth so the Enterprise goes back in time to go fetch some whales from the 21 century, in a Klingon battle cruiser, bring them back to the 23 century and then let the whales do their jobs. Simple as that, but its not!

Final Frontier: (1989) (2270) Spock’s insane emotional half brother takes control of enterprise and hurls her where no man has ever gone before!

The Undiscovered Country: (1991) (2310)
After a super nova kills thousands of Klingons, the Klingons ask for a Safe haven in federation space. However, on the verge of peace they are also on the break of war…!

Star Trek Generations: (1994) (2378)
After an energy light where past and future collide swarms through the galaxy and an addicted man destroys a solar system to get back to it, jean-luc and captain Kirk must team up to save the destruction of all of mankind

First Contact: (1996) (2397)
The Borg invade sector 001 (aka the Solar system) and go back in time to prevent earth breaking through to develop warp drive and making first contact with the vulcans.

Insurrection: (1998) (2450)
Star fleet command has a crazy idea of taking people from a planet where they live eternally, to study them so its up to Jean-Luc and his crew to put things right!

Nemesis: (2002) (2530)
The Enterprise E discovers an alien life form that happens to be an exact duplicate of Jean-Luc Picard but completely evil. Meanwhile and very shockingly, Lore has been somehow reassembled and is going to destroy Data. Who will destroy who? Who will outgun who? and who is hiding something?

My final contribution to my Mums blog will be called “Final Frontier Part 2” look out for it coming soon!

Leave your comments at the bottom.
Thanks.

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Categories Grief, Loss, parenting

Regeneration

November 15, 2012 //
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Saturday October 20th, early.

Stood here with cold air dribbling in on my toes, looking out into this odd place of history and newness. Dinosaur carcasses barricade me in and the day peels slowly under a heavy soft grey. The approaching unseen howl of engines, unknown in this white out, some break through and roar into my mirage, eaten by the metal landscape. My life is a Herzog film.
And as they threaten again but come to nothing I consider yesterday and our day ahead.
The easiest way is that it’s just not real. I’m not preparing to take our son over there to meet your hero, we can’t possibly be about to stand next to the actors you watched together, shared moments with and laughter over and I teased you because you insisted it was a documentary and totally believable despite polystyrene to the contrary. And yesterday he didn’t really shake hands with an omnipotent being who chatted and smiled amongst the hoards grappling for their moment.
And although none of it could have happened, our son was beaming at the prospect and had it have been real we would have managed the masses, the lights and the queues. And now my thoughts are broken by engine din ripping through and I watch it fly overhead with the wonder of a country girl, as though I’d never ventured to the big city before. But I’ve lived in towns most of my life, why is this all so surreal, so distorted and I keep waiting for you to come out of the bathroom because the room is very similar to all those other places but it’s not there, back then, it’s here on this other planet and the room is slightly Japanese and you’d have really like that and I do, as I wait for our son to wake. And I sip my hot earl grey and consider how to manage this long day. I still can’t get it, you know. Maybe I’m drawn to the movement of the place, the relentless energy, a purpose I’m trying to hack into. I don’t know.

The morning’s building up, a town starting over. Abstracted dog barks, solitary man stands by the railings, looks out to something he can’t see, wanders off with hand deep pockets and I want to cry but can’t quite, not now, stuff to do. Going to beam down soon with my away mission, making it safe for our small party on this strange hostilely appealing planet. The aliens are moving in down there, thick and fast, need to check my tricorder and go.
Another bizarre moment of being in this imaginary world.

And later,

just about survived the hoards and moments, the challenge of finding the right place and time and ticket and managing our sons needs and strop with my gossamer thin exterior against the desire to stand there, drop bags and scream. Surveyed the mix of the dedicated, interested, obsessed and good natured but struck with the disease of celebrity, their search for meaning, the exhaulted ivory tower, living a life through something else. But is it wrong if it makes them happy for a moment? Living out life in proxy, needing to connect, to belong, to be part of something bigger, all here in a big white cage on the edge of redundant docks.

Sunday 21st, earlier

Leaning up window in blackness. The coldness on my forehead and nose slightly comforting as my breath obscures the view. Without my glasses the lightscape dances and sprays with fractured patterns of neon, glowing emptily while some sleep. The horizon peppered orange, outside of my feelings. A beautiful band of unseen candles, lined and lit for anyone who cares to look. And it takes me back to New York and that holiday and I can’t go there, can’t get into that memory, not now. Keep moving like this place beneath me.
Better get ready, I suppose, lost in alienation as the dawn forces into the night.

I watch them. The Suits, standing nearby, handling their charge like fine china, looking out, scanning the crowds for things to fend off. Thousands focussed on a moment, their own seconds, their dinner party chat about the look, the laugh, their little snatched piece, their prize and we both had our own. Our son’s interaction and the Captains comment back to him, and mine? I managed to tread on his foot… You know who. And I keep our moments locked away, our timeless treasures queued for, held hands for, pushed through hot fans for, to fill his room with memories as we seek out our new life, ourselves in this new generation of being.

And on the way back, in the dark, in the raindrops, in the spangled glowing neon, passed old places of my childhood and flashing familiar signs, it came back to me, in all it’s screaming ceremony. It caught up with me and the windscreen wipers had little impact on the force and I dug my nails in hard and deep to try to stop the pain.

xxx

November 15th, in silence

The heating creaking through un bled metal, the clock beats in time with my cursor, under it all my elbow pushes into the space beneath my chin, my head leaning into palm, the sofa warm up my back. My nose stuffed, eyes sore, my hair wisps in front, head shoved against hand against arm of settee against the throw. I study terracotta, looks brown from this angle, in this light, shadows under tiny tufts, darkness over light, rows of waved patterns marching slowly above the new calico I’ve folded myself into. Back starting to hurt, shoulder reminding me this isn’t a good position, the deep blue hair band an accidental bracelet on my wrist, hair down, irrelevant.
My rings flash a moments warm gilt in the subdued fabrics, ears ringing, tummy reminding me there’s been little food recently, nail clicking on the screen. I like the smoothness, the neutral temperature of this hard edged glass, this touch sensitive life.
Ribs will pay back later, aeroplane soft faded hum over my morning.
Half drawn tree shapes out there, gentle beyond the curtains, a wiped out November, shaken, quiet.

I push tip myself up,
approaching kettle.

Make it so

X

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Categories Grief, Loss, parenting

Boldly going

September 4, 2012 //
0

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1st September

12 years on from when I was due to give birth he unpacks the plastic bags and crunchy cellophane, clambers into the new clothes and shrinks and grows at the bottom of the stairs. Everything has room for change and I manage the feelings until the look is completed, as he sits on the bottom step and shove stomps his foot into new leather, just like you used to. He sits bundled up wearing rucksack as we test ourselves out, tiptoe through some honesty and hug in a crumpled sharp creased moment until he says he’s hungry.
I need to iron in the words like I did the first time, back in the old house in the old world in a pain that seems quite simple now.
Right now I just want to play and bake and not think ahead and we’d all have our chat together reminding him what’s important but now I do both parts. I’ll get the ironing board out in a while, he’s bought down a collection of Bionicles, I need to sit on the floor and find us in the battered box.

8.15, 4th September

He left slightly early wrapped and ready and everything said, with our special trick that only we know about, prepared and firmly in place. And he bundled off looking left and right and I snatched one last photo as he strode off on his path. I stood my post at the bedside where you put your shoes on but it was his own shiny black that reflected our world today.
And while they trudge in unison, nattering with excitement and nerves, prepared and unprepared for the road ahead, I look out of our window at the quiet dark path. He didn’t pause today, much too smart for the tree swing. I can see an early autumn flower from here or maybe it’s leaves shifting colour. I’ll have to walk down there and check. Everything looks heavy, milky grey sky, looks like rain but it’s not happening.

Probably halfway now, I wonder if he told them the joke? The one he rehearsed last night while we chatted and I tried to sneak in a few extra bits of bolstering for today. We’ve done enough, both of us, somehow. It’s all there, the groundwork, the understanding, the careful words chosen, the words left unsaid but felt at the deepest level.
If I stay here for a while I might see the primary dribs and drabs of faces that I knew. Such a loud stillness, a contrast to my old hurried pattern, my old shapes, an energy of movement.
Leaving now, I’ll carry the bottle and panniered p.e kits when necessary. September was always for reflection, a change of pace, a re-grouping. Marking time and feeling the momentum and that odd combination of familiarity and apprehension, everything the same but different. Same colours different sizes, sharpened pencils, new lunchbox, crumb free corners for a while. Catching up with old faces and noting the reinvention, the fresh haircuts and glossy dyed strands of new look teachers.

He’ll be there soon. I miss the change in energy, the stretched elastic at classroom room door, the last chance words, the look. The turning away and walk back, noting more in the silence or the footsteps of friends whisking me to somewhere else. I won’t see them today, any of them or that life. That’s not my world now.
The elastic is stronger, deeper, wider and is at full stretch as he will be amongst a swarm of controlled chaos feeling everything with enough inside to make it so.

I feel strange, odd, like I’ve forgotten something, or I should be somewhere else. I’m quietly calm and then a friend texts. My rock, who made the transition through the worlds with me. And she remembers me today and she imagines where I am. I push salt water around my face and reach for the box again.
I’ve moved to his room now where I perched on the edge of the bed on that sharp flurescent morning. When he got up quickly and sat on the stairs while the winter air chilled my pale unwashed face. And now I’m here with the collection, the pieces of a childhood and My First Bunny whose been with us since he was three months old. He looks how I feel, unravelled by hours and love battered, nap scrubbed up the wrong way, pink threaded nose rubbed brown with time. Smart white collar, frayed and rough, grey and bent. A tear drips down my nose and bounces of the back off his head. I push it into plush and feel the softeness that remains. There’s a tiny hole somewhere in the ear but I can’t find it now, the back of the ears are a finer fabric, gentle velvety, a smooth chocolate to the touch. I remember when we first opened it, bought by Carol and Gary, they moved to Wales didn’t they? she knitted me a beautiful white shawl and came round when your Mum was here, and our son was loud and pink and smelly and I couldn’t stand up. And in the Christmas video, my voice, happy and tired, laughing as he grabbed it the wrong way up and shoved it’s foot in his mouth. And the label. Labels always held such fascination and I study it now, easing me round the dial of the clock.

He’ll know his tutor group by now as I hear our years and hours playing out over the pain and it’s like a well loved film, quoting it back to front, upside down. Freeze framed loops of a life lived elsewhere, that runs in my head all the time. The noise, the colours, the laughter, the words of an earlier space while I’m stuck at the moment, pressing replay in the toy cupboard of my mind. It all seems so raw like a time travel to back there. I’ve popped out of a rabbit hole and landed in that life and I can observe and feel it but I can’t interact, I can’t make any changes, I can only watch and be.

I’m coming back into the present, a puzzle ball rattles behind me, a horse lies sideways across the bonnet of a car, spy equipment discarded on the carpet, espionage dealt with for now. And all around, surrounded by Lego, favourite then and now, his pedanticness, his attention to detail,
his ability to built, to construct, to make something beautiful from a box of bits. Something fit for purpose, clever, intricate, doing the job it was designed for.

Our son, always a builder, always a plan. Building again right now, just out of sight, just out of earshot, with all the love and the things that we gave him. One brick at a time, solid foundations, a new structure that we can’t see yet.

Constructing in new colours.

He pulls down his top with a sharp tug, we know why.

Back at the front of the house the sun is doing it’s best, it catches the edge of a back windscreen. A sharp line of white breaks through the dust.

I put the toys down.
I’m tired now, need a hot drink.
X

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Tags , , , ,
Categories Grief, Loss, parenting

Father figure

July 5, 2012 //
0

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The recent Fathers day was about our son writing his Star Trek post for you. But I couldn’t get your Dad out of my head and wondered how he felt only getting one card from his eldest son on that Sunday and did it cross his mind as he felt the sharp tear of paper cut across his fingers that he wasn’t getting two, that the other card, the safe, bland, difficult to find one, wouldn’t be up there on his dusty shelves next to the smiling photos of years of pretence. And did he give us a thought as he laughed with his eldest over some other in-joke, did he send us his thoughts through the ether? He certainly hasn’t sent thoughts through the many electronic ways he could communicate. He knows all our addresses and he even understands our new world himself, yet his silence is deafening.

Your Step Mum went quickly and it was our sons first time then for an ironed, starched shirt and I still can’t process the fact that three years later he’s worn the shirt twice more. Your Mums service was our lowest point, and our son sat between us with his small arms barely reaching around us both and we thought we knew pain. We worried for your Dad, losing both women from his life within eight weeks of each other and we made the calls and checked in with him and tried to bridge that gap, to understand, to reach out.

I’m not sure what I expected from him but I didn’t expect this.

Your Dad continues to be totally absent though in the world physically and while I lie here warm in the duvet listening to our sons steady breathing I feel a growing anger, a distilled mess of my disappointment wrapped up in your rage, your pain at the years of needing, searching, longing for the respect you deserved with every atom spinning inside you. And I remember our first visit and how I geared myself up for his ‘wit’ and wore a ‘meeting the parents’ outfit and curled my hair in the long mirror in your Mum’s bedroom. The bedroom with her little white door to the cupboard of treasures where you found the tiny Santa from your childhood and broke down in the days before it was my turn.
And in the afternoon you’d visited him while I poured over photos with your Mum and as usual you tried to talk to him, to aim to connect, a hope to reach him on that level and as usual made a little progress and we visited later and ate delicately arranged food. And he was in full effect and I was bating it all back, making them laugh, giving as good as I got and you knew I could take him on in my own way and you both liked it. And it was alright as I bought into the long standing issues and we dissected it all into the early hours and we were at the very start.
And the morning afterwards your Mum would quiz us on what happened and what had been said. Always needing reassurance because the second wife could cook and host and the house had doilies and rugs and a little gong to call us in for dinner. But it couldn’t have mattered less, it couldn’t have been more irrelevant, because she was where the love was, the unconditional understanding, immeasurably for you and not far behind for us.
And I couldn’t relate to it, all your issues were alien and strange. It wasn’t a pattern I’d grown up with. You’d already met my Dad, you saw the love, the always-there-ness of a way you craved and all the established visits on Fathers day because they were relatively local and we could. And in all the silliness of presents for Grandad you must have felt the loss of the relationship you sought so much but you focussed on your own job then, receiving your own carefully chosen or handmade card and some bit of nonsense that would get lost in the house. And the day was marked as you developed your softer punch down the years, as you became the dad you didn’t have.

Now I drift here surrounded by four fathers, yours who still brings out a rage in me, though I have to remember your last chat in the month before, when you stumbled to a reasonable place and shared the book that he quoted from one month later when our son wore the shirt again.
Mine, who has only ever been there, even when he wasn’t. Who has tried his best to support us though these months of hell despite the agony of not being able to make it better and who I just can’t visit on Fathers day because I can’t take our son into that environment of memories, to open cards that underline our pain, so for the second year avoidance was the way through. There’s not much I’ve avoided in this new world but to stay away then made the day more manageable.
And you’re the third father, finding your way, becoming the silly Daddy that only we saw and instilling in him a love of many things that are just showing through now. And now I come unstuck
and can’t find the words, can’t express the emotions triggered by remembered conversations and how you wouldn’t allow yourself to be like him and you were different and we knew it and I’ll make sure our son knows it in the years ahead. And it’s that bit, that part that I can’t compute, doing your part too for you but I can feel you, I can sense you guiding me.

I hold him carefully, filling him with a knowledge, a sense of love and respect and guide him through the love to find who he is growing into, in this world that neither of us knew. My Dad is with me, I’ve grown as an adult surrounded by love with him still there physically, you grew as an adult with your Dad there physically but absent in too many ways but our sons world is very different.
He has a new experience, one neither of us can relate to, he is growing up, growing into the loss, his sense of self is being carved out now, the man he will become is formed of these moments and a world without you physically. But god knows you hold him and encase in him in love at a level we can’t understand and as long as there’s breath in my body I will show him who you were and feed him the love and respect that you gave him without bounds. He will know a different level of love to the lives we lived through, he has a different journey and the years ahead and the love around will allow him to be who he needs to be.

And one day maybe, he’ll be the fourth father, as I hear him waking now on the day he’s going to write about Star Trek, because that helps us both and I think he understands its part of his grieving.
And one day he may take all that we have given him, assimilate the pain and joy and become a father too, feeling the thread that connects us all, imperceptibly, undeniably linking through the life and love he has known, becoming more than his experience, protected by the love that holds us close now.
And whoever he becomes, father or not, he will know, he will feel our pride, our respect, he will feel the love surround him.

There’s more to fatherhood than physical presence.
X

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Tags , ,
Categories Loss, parenting

The Final Frontier

June 17, 2012 //
2

We don’t need an artificial mass produced marketing exercise – every day is Fathers day, because every day we feel the loss and every day we love him.
The following post is written by our son, aged 11.8 (he told me to add the .8)
His idea, his words, his tribute.

X

Due to the fact that Father’s day is today I have decided to create a contribution to my Dads and my love of Star Trek. Additionally, this post will list everyone of my favourite episodes of Star Trek that I’ve seen. I hope you enjoy it.

The Original Series

Season 2, Episode 4,
Mirror Mirror:

In this episode Kirk, Bones, Scotty and
Uhura are beamed into a parallel universe due to a transporter malfunction where violence is the prime directive and killing a superior officer gets promotion.

Season 2, Episode 15,
The Trouble with Tribbles:

In this episode, the Enterprise is called to Deep Space Station K7 On a priority one channel. When they get there they are ordered to guard a type of corn from the Klingons. Trouble arrives when Jones Cyrano
boards and offers the crew a. ‘tribble’ . Due to their molecular superiority of breeding, in just three hours the space station was filled with Tribbles!

Season 2, Episode 24,
The Ultimate Computer:

In which the Enterprise is boarded by a new computer which is said to do the captains job at a much quicker rate. Trouble looms, when the computer malfunctions and takes control of the ship.

Season 3, Episode 1,
Spock’s brain:

In which, a mysterious life form stops the ship, makes the crew unconscious and steals Spock’s brain to use as their new leader.

Season 3, Episode 14,
Let that be your last battlefield:

In this episode, the crew of the Enterprise rescue a different type of life form. After resuscitating it a life form of the same race but completely opposite boards the ship in search of his enemy. They change the ships heading and put the crew of the Enterprise at risk. Then it becomes a battle of wits to see who can out bluff the other.

The Next Generation

Season 2, Episode 16,
Q who? :

In this episode a new type of life form boards the Enterprise D and claims to be completely omnipotent. However the bartender (Gynen) recognises the life form as Q. Q then has a big surprise for the Enterprise D as he hurls them 75 thousand light years to the Delta quadrant to meet a new ‘friend’.

Season 4, Episode 17,
Night terrors:

The Enterprise D is called to look for a missing ship, when they find it all but one of the crew are dead and the survivor is paralysed. As Jean Luc tries to figure out what’s happening the crew begin to experience what killed the others, all except one, Counsellor Troi who only experienced terrifying nightmares. Could this be a sign of their escape?

Season 5, Episode 18,
Cause and effect:

In this episode the crew are sucked into a temporal loop causing them to repeat the last 48 hours over and over again, each time ending in their destruction…..In this episode the crew are sucked into a temporal loop causing them to repeat the last 48 hours over and over again, each time ending in their destruction….In this episode the crew are sucked into a temporal loop causing them to repeat the last 48 hours over and over again, each time ending in their destruction….. !!!.

Season 7, Episodes 25 & 26,
All good things parts 1 & 2:

In this series finale Jean-Luc is stuck jumping from past, present and future in his lifetime. Unurprisingly Q is behind it but not entirely. In this two parter episode Q tells Jean-Luc he is reponsible for the destruction of mankind. Can Jean-Luc save history or will the earth explode?

Voyager

Season 2, Episode 6,
Twisted:

In which the ship is caught in a spatial fragment focussed in holodeck 2, so no matter where you try to go from holodeck 2 you’ll always end up back there. How annoying!

Season 4, Episodes 8 & 9,
Year of Hell part 1,& 2:

In this two parter, the ship is hit by a temporal wave throwing the temporal timeline into chaos. Surprisingly Voyager is not affected but the world around her is. The ship is wrecked trying to continue their journey and around three quarters of the crew lost. Will Voyager be able to restore the time line or not?

Season 5, Episode 6,
Timeless:

In this episode, Chakote and Kim go back in time some 20 years to try and stop Voyagers destruction. With the help of the doctor and 7 of 9’s bio neural implant they can send a message back through time to warn Voyager.

Season 7, Episode 11,
Shattered:

In this episode all but one of the crew (Chakote) and the ship are shattered across the temporal timeline, (aka: the bridge is the past, several decks are early past, and astrometrics is the future). Furthermore, he takes Kathryn Janeway through a temporal barrier because he needs her help to inject the bio neural gel packs to restore the timeline.

Season 7, Episode 19,
Q2:

In this episode Q calls on his ‘dear Aunt Kathy’ for some parental guidance. Q leaves his son with Captain Janeway in hope of taming him, unfortunately things don’t go to plan when Q’s son drags Voyager to the beginning of the universe!

Season 7, Episode 24,
Renaissance man:

In this penultimate series episode the doctor is abducted and forced to work for an alien species, however when his data banks overload with information he starts to decompile. Can B’lana save the doctor or will Voyager be without an EMH (emergency medical holographic programme?)

In conclusion, these were my favourite episodes of star trek so far, I will have more coming soon when I’ve finished watching all the series.
Finally, this is mine, my Mums and my Dads favourite Star Trek line :

‘From 5 to zero no command in the universe can stop this ship from destructing. You may be able to drag this ship to Sharron but I am in command of this starship, MINE is the final command’
Original series, Let that be your last battlefield.

Xxx

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Categories Grief, Loss