Archives for posts with tag: travel

Pilot

August 15, 2013 //

I always liked compasses, as I child I coveted their slick shined domes, arrows twitching mysteriously. I can’t see them from my youth but I know they were there. I can only see the recent one, bought in a gift ship at end of a walk, half for our son as he chose the green one. And the image flips me to another shop buying up bits while you rode the mud together and I met you both by the front low wall as you screeched up and leaned by the side. I remember the tyre marks on the back of his top worryingly strong and clear but he’d only been leaning up the wheel as you stopped for juice from the little carton with a ‘stwor’ and he was smaller than now and the wheel was big. And I can see you bombing off from the carpark up the dusty road while I wandered to the shop and once, just once, I came with you and stood by the wooden bike hire shack, trying to find the one for the fit and wibbled and wobbled with you through the undergrowth, by the station and booted it over gravel before my knees gave in.
And my compass banged up and down on my small red rucksack, the one I bought for the Alps from the old sports shop where my hiking boots were a size too big to fit my fuzzy socks and our son wasn’t made and my jacket was red and yours blue. The rucksack lasted on all the walks, a tardis of treasures that you both teased me about, in the forest, in the teashop, warm butter and china mugs, laughing at me as you ticked off the things I’d carry while I triumphantly pulled out the ubiquitous banana. And the table was wide old walnut, just up the road from the horses where you clopped down the lane and I followed.

August 10th

In this world a proper summer has returned, like those from 70’s of my childhood when you were back in the North and I sweltered in the South.

I wake, the overnight fan blows strong and loud, its confident whirring sounds like a plane. I’m up high somewhere in metal hurtling but directed, the pilot knows where he’s going.
On land in my bed I’m muddled in memories, the morning before the birthday meal, tipping up the old camp bed and laughing in the hours before the quotes. The quotes around a different table at the last meal, the last Sunday, four days before this one. Rushing back from school now to the start of the end and although I know where the dates are leading me, I’m sticking with the thought of flight, watching us in my little room pack and prepare for this journey. Younger eyes knowing much less, a different world view from this Unknown.

I bounce all over in the turbulence finding things that I’d forgotten, peering through old windows and looking carefully through the fragile and delicate, the solid and permanent, the moments of our world.
The engine’s strong, directed. I may go into the cockpit have a word with the pilot. I’d like to know what he does but maybe I’m not allowed, maybe I have to stay here in my seat, bump along the air pockets and look down, observe the scenery with awareness be in the moment of flight.

He has his altimeter, I have my alethiometer still heavy, strange, a precious responsibilty. But it was given, this gift, in its rust velvet sack, the chord golden and twisted.
I know when to hide it, I know when to fetch it out, to tap its crystal screen, watch the needles spin and twitch, then feel. Feel where the symbols are pointing, lift up into their meaning, let the images dance and shift until they make sense.

Then I move, then I act, reading the symbols, wrapped in fur on my journey North. The snow bites as I follow bear prints. It’s cold, it’s confusing but I’m learning through the dials.

Guided, driven.
In this plane, on this journey.
Here in my bed on this day, drifting and watching. The fan burrs out across the room. I’m lying flat watching ceilings, just like back then.

Such a strong sense of travel.
I am everywhere. I grab the compass.

Time to get up.

August 14th

I remember being lost in Valencia with our end of trip verve we branched out and split from the herd. Our insurance policy was the guide ordered taxi who would whisk through new streets to the cathedral. With a tour pick up from there with bright buses to show us the way, we couldn’t go wrong… So we peeled off and piled in our rattle trap taxi, bouncing on the low soft sprung seats, our son unsure of the steps we were taking but we reassured him, we had instructions, we knew what we were doing.

The driver dropped us in his appointed place, I can see it now, light, heaving, chaotic with tourists and sights and though the cathedral shouted out to us from its gothic spires, it was quickly obvious we weren’t at the right side. Amongst concerns from our son about what we would do if we missed the boat and all our possessions sailed without us, we hid our concerns and stumbled into tourist information. In broken English with biro stabbed maps we grappled to find the direction and as our clock ticked down we rushed and flustered to a different street, clutching our son’s hot hand, to find the boarding point we needed later.

In our noticeable relief you found an outside table serving Guiness while confident of our directions, we plotted where you were in relation to the shops and spires, straight up passed the fountain and swung our rucksacks in the glare of Spanish sunshine to find a fairytaled sweetshop. The owner who appeared like Mr Ben from behind a twinkling curtain helped me part with the last of the euros in exchange for a plastic cement mixer loaded with marmallows (such an obvious souvenir). And though the clock ticked we didn’t care because we knew where we were, we knew where you were sat and we knew where we were going.

Sweets in hand, under the loud blue sky we made our way back to you and in the carefree moments before the jostle of bus, we took a final photo, you and our son by the fountain, shining into the light, him in holiday brightness and you in the same alluring pose from that first ever photo all those hours ago, from the world before I knew you, when you sat infront of Niagra in those vile and zany lemon shorts.

We caught the bus in time despite our fear, despite out foolish challenges, despite losing our way for a while. Travelling, testing ourselves, finding answers on our path.

Two and half years ago tonight I was shoved off the path, knocked down and smashed my compass.
Still clutching our son’s hot hand as we fell inexorably towards tomorrow.

August 15th

It’s raining today, I can hear its hiss through these thin windows. The drops are quite uniform, speckled on my glass, varieties of wishes upside down in each one, a world turned on its head under the breaking grey of sky.
My back’s playing up, just like 13 years ago in the month before I gave birth. In today’s careful steady steps I remember those movements, the inching along and I flip around to the memories locked away.

Our son is messing with the sprinkler, firing droplets into the trees. The sun pushes through, I tell him he may make a rainbow as the water flys and dances in photons. He tells me ‘Yes, but you need to sit inside the raindrops to see it…’

Pointing towards Polaris, through the rain and rays.

Ps
And now a word from our sponsor – our son…
Hello viewers of my Mum’s blog. I need your input on my next post. Please look back at my post called The Final Frontier,

https://thetaoofgrief.com/2012/06/17/the-final-frontier/

pick out your favourite episode, then leave it as a comment on this post. I will then describe it in a much detail as I can, in my next post entitled
‘To Boldly Go Into As Much Detail As Possible’
Thank you:-)

Tags anniversary, his dark materials, the forest, travel

Categories Loss, parenting

Interlinked

April 30, 2013 //

I’m away in the back of a taxi and the foreign radio bleats out some news and we’ve learned the rhythmic qualities of their accents as we travel from Oost to West or was it West to Oost?And I remember a long barren train station, hanging around for the last one back and the mountains that came into view and the snaked hill houses, chaleted rooves on either side and the path waves up and out of the village, away and up to the clearing.

And I remember the photos tucked away somewhere now, with that close up through the trees and later downstairs in the empty wooden restaurant, where the wicker chickens were made just for me and we guessed at the meal and laughed when we were right. And somewhere I have the little wooden carved out frame with the postcard that doesn’t quite fit and I remember the feel of my top and your new watch, the one that got scratched the last Christmas.

And I see us at tables, white cloths and plans and the air was so thin it made you dizzy and we sat somewhere high, by smoked glass, looking at the view and we bundled in cable cars with your proper camera and we got to the top and I screamed.

And I stood up there with you, dazzled by heat and light and the shapes went on forever, peaking to the horizon, in an unreal distant place.

And the camera caught us, young and new, me wrapped up like Greta Garbo and the moment itself, frozen like us, just before I chucked snow.

And I’m surrounded by it all today, as I was then and I flip to the top of Norway with our son in this world and the shapes were familiar but the coordinates had changed and I looked out and down at the path we’d negotiated when we were just at six months. And I tried to hold the pain as I stood there but went back to Zermatt and in the warm coldness, in a high improbable place, I took my brittleness to the souvenir shop, empty fingers fiddling with change.

And it weird. This place, this road, this journey. I have lots to do today, now, in this still low land but I’m flipping through the images, head bouncing to keep up and we sit in the carriage and I hold onto the scene. The colours, white iced down through blues, pined angles rich and deep, to the twisting web of sparkles, the stream by the side of the track, dotted with coloured spots of flowers, juddering on our way. And the window surround is old and chipped, like me now and our backpacks are full, our trainers new but tired, breaking them in as we walked, as we made our way back, then, in that world, with those faces.

And I lie here trying to start the day
but I’m not sure where I am. I feel spread out across it all, this thinly stretched life, rich and brittle, still rattling along.

still travelling.
xxx

Tags Alps, anniversary, Norway, travel

Categories Grief, Loss, parenting

Southern Comfort

February 15, 2013 //

Been Looking back over words written months ago when our son made a trip to Southampton and later when we passed through again, together, in a time machine and the images fragment and crackle with who we used to be and it’s all here, in these words from that town. The town that started my journey to here…

Last summer

I’m in our old places, in a new way and head down, tapping, full on avoidance. Can’t see the trees, hide from the ponies and moments. And I hear our son’s voice still with his young idiosyncracies that take me back to our Sundays before school. And the car park’s familiar but I have to do it, glance up quick, then head down from the roaming animals and I ignore the swerve of the roads, trying hard not to and think where we are, I can’t be in any of it at all.
I stay quietly tapping, hurting in silence, aiming but losing the moment, while I’m back at our first ever Sunday. Ice creams from the tiny shop, dressed in red, trying to find the bin, teeming river and the current cattle grid shakes my presence and I’m tired of memory. Sun crashes through, the suspension rattles me and I’m lost in the trees somewhere.

I feel blown by the day, sleepy and crushed. Can’t find the image for the thought but it’s close to a broken cobweb, holed and stretched, at the mercy of the weather, stale prey, cocooned limp hanging. And while I’m spinning in sticky thread, a flash of rain crackles the light and we crawl through under the bridge of colours, bringing hope by the dismal tower block.

Same morning – earlier

Back at the bench it’s cold and I feel strange. Just left him kitted out, off to Southampton for time in the world that he’ll grow into and I feel odd but ok. He’s as prepared as me and I can’t see much beyond the rooves, the sky hangs thick and low as I go back eighteen years to my own careful packing for the first trip south and our conversations move around me in the wind. The horizon blurs purple, the spring flowers pushing higher as I drift forwards and back to the forest, the first glimpse of ponies and the laughter of a townie running out of bounds.
I’m knitting it together, his presence of challenges unmet and a world we’re stepping into, with my tentative steps back then. This all belongs to someone else, someone I used to know. I need to unravel this carefully, think I’m too much in the present to look at the past but it will come, as the hall fills with suitcases and they wait for the coach.

I took the train south, was it really that long ago? And you showed me your town and the places I’d come to know.
Familiar haunts on Saturday mornings, crossing over the water for baguettes,
carefully filled bread, in the cafe that never had enough seats and we’d sit in the front, watching people, opposite the shop we bought the rocking chair from, a couple of years later, before the stool got stained by family and life.

And Waterstones after, ending up at the camera shop and evenings on the edge, at the Frog and Frigate and stories and tales of the land before. Before I crossed over into permanence and your friend came back from sea. And we felt the force around us and I can feel his excitement as the coach pulls up now, as I boarded the train back then and he’s going to test out the waters, near our country park. And as it starts for him I see us racing back up the long smooth road, cutting angles off the roundabouts as we hurried to make my connection on time.

And I did and I came back again, became a local girl, a platform regular, until the habit became away of life. And he’s bundled up with all he needs for now, all shiny and new with extra chocolatey bits on top but sepia stained for me, dog eared and torn with love.
And as he burbles from the coach, I go back to all our moments, visits and integration, the things to tolerate, the things I came to own and we’re freezing on Western shore, standing guard in the playground, in the dark, waiting for the ship to come in, peeled back layers of a time before it was our turn and they stood and waved at us.

And forest teas with the Midwich cuckoos, when he wasn’t allowed to touch toys, to buying essential nonsense from the tinkling hippy shop, magpie-ing my way around ephemera, through the incensed air, in the chromed up glossy mall, the one we revisited that last Christmas, when the Apple store hummed helpfully as your watch repair went wrong.
And I flip back and round like the waltzer our son hated, memories blurring as the colours of our years bleed into each other and I’m sick with the intensity and my head spins till I heave it out.

And it keeps coming at me, Portsmouth road on the bus, passed the Cod Plaice, while you worked, around the complex island, enjoying my freedom of feeling new and the eagerness of the short lived perfumed job and I can smell their shallowness and see me by the busy road, flat shoes, achy feet with discarded heels banging in a plastic bag. And I was so young, so improbably young, and I hear our quotes at Dad’s party, the day we mapped out the future.

And I remember Buffalo Bills, with our friend and his friends, meals with Nelson and his funny little ways, shining talk and us, full of stories from New York and the walls were plastered with film memorabilia and the toilet was a jungle. And I wore my favourite t-shirt, rushing past the Mayflower on the right, when I wore the black shoes with jeans and we parked round the back somewhere. And I was driven passed it recently, think it’s a coffee bar now or was it the place next door, boarded up, out of time?

And it continues, all the places from when we drove around, you showing us where you used to live, when you first moved down and how you’d gone to find digs, walking for miles, coping with a broken arm to accidental biking by the QE2.

And on and up to the Cowherds, stuffed with roasts, by the park up the avenue, where we watched the balloon festival, chasing the Desiderata song.

And sometime later driving by containers and freight, just like we did back then. That first trip, when the car was full of us and the gardener’s children and he told us the trip was ‘pregnant with possibilities’ to wind us up, like he always did.
And I see the shiny buildings, chromed up high to the air, where I got a job that I didn’t take because we moved and chuffed up the motorway.

And some time after, I saw our journey north, into the sun, leaving there for the new home. And as we skirted it’s edge I looked carefully right, past the cut through that you showed me, by the car park where I crunched gears and the bus stop that released me on the road to Hamble.

It was all there, like a film set, soft focussed and it happened and it didn’t. And I stared through it all, at the sun beating off the leaves, in a courtyard garden, near to where we used to live, in a world away, in times gone by, in a distance place, in another land before.
Beyond the now and up the hill, like your pick ups from St Marys with the red and white eyes lighting up out of the greyness and it’s all still there just around,
just beneath,
just existing, in it’s own plane, safe and untroubled from this reality.

And I need to leave this for a while and come back to the present and see how it jigsaws together, me then, him now, knotting the images, tying them tightly, harnessed securely in past and present. Someone I used to know, someone I used to be and her ways and their words, feeding into who I am.

Now.

Right now,
in this moment,
in this world, with these challenges, with this love, with these layers, with this knowledge, with this truth.

In this reality.

Now.

xxx

Sun setting over my merlot, ruby light pierced raspberry. Blood rich shards dance out, splintering pink into my room. I’ve travelled today, through years and space, pain and growth and memory. I’m disengaged now, displaced, confused. Carrying heavy, vivid luggage with me, till I can place it down again somewhere, somewhere safe and protected. For now I’m in it, wrapped up totally and lost, feeling who I used to be with love from who I’ve become.

Tags anniversary, friends, our son, Southampton, the force, the forest, transitions, travel, Wine

Categories Uncategorized

White Materials

January 18, 2013 //

It’s the first snow I think, don’t remember it last year, I know I took our son to town for the bright blue plastic but it came to nothing and I shoved it in the cupboard.

And the year before there must have been some but it’s very hazy, that winter just before, just before the last trip north, just before the meal with Nigel, just before the blues with Al. And now the blues are dark and not quite black, it’s early and school’s closed. I’ve told him to go back to sleep before another of those days of childhood, days of innocent whiteness, numbed red fingers, heavy crunched wool and a bite you don’t feel for hours because you’re out in it, laughing and the freeze tells you you’re alive. And I popped outside, not fully dressed, scrunched out my mark and stood in the pinpricking bitter. A dawn somewhere out there an expanse called to morning, not quite yet, beyond blue beyond white.

A black shape startles me, looking for food, a disappointed flash into the trees.
And I want to get out there, wrapped up in sealskin layers, huddled in arctic softness, a silky rub against the cracks of time, with tennis rackets on my feet and steaming huskies panting our way. And it takes me everywhere, to the last garden I remember, when you were tapping away upstairs, working from home while we constructed three snowmen. Out the back and we wrapped them warmly, one for each and I have the photo somewhere, our son on the edge and proud, an expression of an older face to come though we still had a year but didn’t know.
And our snow, squealing up the Jungfrau when my hiking boots were stiff and I beamed at the top of the world and we were new and cold and the air made us dizzy.
An under it I’m in Svalbard on a quest I’ve just begun, tapping my compass and watching the twitch, pointing a route to the lights. And I drift back to now, conscious of my elbow as it leans on a book, that book and the blue has faded grey. There should be Alps out there somewhere but this changing light brushes up a hint of green, a weak shade undercover and down the lane the little angled rooves shelter one small dot of orange, a tiny slit of warmth shining, someone else looking out.

It’s strangely familiar odd, dusty iced specks, a distant whiteout but no blizzard, not yet.
Think I’ll finish this in the garden, force my feet into fur, the pond will hold a mirror out there, in the quiet mist of dusted fields, the charcoal etch of trees, the endless sheet of sky and mountains beyond it that I can’t quite see.

Looking out through the frozen water to the aching backs of snowboulders caked in slimed leaves and twigs that we shaved sides off to shove through the gate and the early morning rushing when I got him up before the alarm, to cocoon ourselves out there, for a quick grab and roll, the wet gloves before school and you saw us from the window in the days of the old world when the snow blanked out a different place and I usually wore red, but not now.

7.59a.m – in it, forgot this noise, the soft burning pittering on my hood, the fired up hands, nose and eyes run in the cold soft fall of memory.

The first snow – I don’t know where I am.
X

Tags books, nature, our son, the weather, travel

Categories Grief, Loss

Fermenting

January 15, 2013 //

Stood here feeling the ache in my legs, the pressure of the floor under my boots, the sun increasing heat through the glass, warming up my neck, see the shadow I cast on the bed, my shape distorted, stretching out to the other side of the room near the wardrobe barricaded with time. Feel the coldness of my hand as I rub my cheek, a sense of looking out from within, of pushing at my edges, of being contained in something, like a fine wine, fermented over time, in rich old kegs, oak warmed flavours roasting the berries, rolling the fruits till they burst and pop from their shells, bleeding goodness into the black stained crimson.

And I’m bottled, held, contained for now, waiting to be poured and consumed, tipped into another place drenching the throat I don’t know and becoming part of a greater thirst. Moving and changing from bud to grape to bottle to mouth and I’m here in the sunlight, in my mass, in the photons, just waiting to be drunk.

Deep, warm, contained.
For a moment,
before the rush.

Ps I know why I wrote this today x

Tags anniversary, books, the force, the weather, travel, Wine

Categories Grief, Loss, parenting

Duality

January 11, 2013 //

I’m not sure where this is going, not sure what I’m trying to find. Taking a moment to think, to feel where I am, up away, out of the bookcase, where I’ve been looking carefully for something. Need a quote, something to anchor what I’m working on and it may be in there somewhere but I know what I need and I keep coming back to them, more and more frequently.

It’s all there, lined up and ordered in the corner of our room and it contains your thoughts, your processing, your ideas and beliefs and the new stuff I’ve taken over. But it doesn’t hold some of these new theories, some of the places I’m getting into, though you’d have skirted close to them.

I’m moving into new concepts and watching the edges blur, the osmosis between yours and mine and the unfolding landscape infront of me.
It’s still standing, just, weighted down with it’s accumulation (like me) and I was in it again rummaging recently, umpteenth look for the book that wasn’t there, but then, there it was, on a lower shelf, filed where it should have been filed, (of course) and I was focussed on the wrong part of the title, of course, and it was right where it belonged, where else?

And I’m looking out at greyness, feeling the thoughts swim around me, taking me back to our not so brief history and our time of understanding stars, in the universe that preceded this one. And my joke about you and the cat and how you quoted it in your battered old scrapbook, in the days when things were written down and paper curled and time coloured it’s elements and your thoughts raced and gathered energy, crackling overhead like a time in Svalbard. And I’m swirling with it all myself, my coloured particles dancing in a new position, velocity changing as it needs to and I’m darting in and out of things, familiar strangeness on the edge of something else and I sit next to words in the comfort of concepts, waiting for this to settle and I’m back on the phone in that other world on Mum’s dining room chair, the one that they’ve still got, that messes with my head when I look at it. And I’m sat there in my youngness and the phone is dark blue, push buttoned and new in it’s oldness from here, and it’s late but the words keep coming. All the things you bought that I didn’t understand, that I grew to love, that filtered through into this place, that I hold, that I explore, that give me a springboard now, sat there and here, late in the dark, on a timeline that moved towards now.

And it’s quite messy in here, in my head, in my life, still quite me, but there is ordering, there are cycles, there is filtering going on and I need to leave this really, need to get to the library, need to work on my references, need to stop thinking.
I’m taking it on, your words, your thoughts, but allowing the shift encouraging the process, sitting back and letting them shift into mine.

Just like our cat before we open the box. Just like then, with dust from a distant sun, like now, with colours refracting through the photons, spinning as we observe ourselves still moving through time.

Milky grey out there, heating clicking in here, hunger calling me downstairs. Should go and boil up the molecules.

In our place with those words, writing on my birthday.
Joy and pain.

A constant of the universe
Inching
Closer
x

Ps.
Out now, sat with sun on my back.
Something buzzing behind me, bird calls I don’t know, a fly bashing itself up the pane, can see a life it can’t reach. The back of my head heats up, I feel it’s warmth with my hand.
It’s peaceful.
I need to go back in, check my word count with a bibliography to do.
I’m here.

(I left the door ajar, the fly might get out.)

Tags anniversary, books, the weather, travel

Categories Grief, Loss

The Christmas Express

December 23, 2012 //

Watching it all speed past me through mucky caked train windows, the days of previous years, out there in the blurring girls, the fields I used to be.

It’s the day before the day before and I’m drawn to write but feel empty, drawn to not write but feel full, stuck on my train, rattling through it, passing by old stations, chipped signs, platforms aged with wrappers, screwed up junk jangled sounds, streamed laughter, conversations behind pillars and thundering along to the next one, shaking me as I hold on tight, fingers clasped cold round the pole, eyes trying to focus on something familiar, to find a foothold, anything to click, to remind me where I am.

I wander through carriages on look out, the nap rich first class, pristine seats not for me, and hip bash my way through oldness, spilt coffee, crushed polystyrene, stuffed with cold cuts and things on sticks and sounds twirling cheap poppers around me. And I’m fizzing, blitzed in tinsel, it cuts into my neck as I pull myself along it’s crunchy scratchy glitz, back to my corner by the door. No waiting till the light comes on, telling me to stop, press here. This is my old door, wooden door, metal edged, stiff thin window, heave down on it, quickly, need to get my arm out, air cold, grab and twist the handle with care, as the door swings out and wide across my mind, mind the gap, but I can never to do it. Stay inside, closed, fast and rapid.

The landscape chunter judders, I bounce back off the sides as we pick up speed into a clattering reflection of darkness, hurtling out through streaked greens and gold, bright bows and ribbons, ripped up paper between my toes, stuffed stockings, the constant rumble thump of motion, of images of moments, of warmth and sparkle shooting round my windows, my rattle trap steamed journey, riding the route, swaying the way along relentless rewinds. Without a ticket, without a seat, nose pressed hard to a glass of memory. Jiggling, lurching with my passengers, corridors decked in pain and love.

Travelling, with no destination.

And our son calls down that we need to do the tree today.

There’s no stopping,
No stopping at all.
x

Tags Christmas, our son, travel

Categories Grief, Loss, parenting

Crystalline Entity

December 15, 2012 //

December 15th

Just over a week to our second Christmas, (really?) Time messing with my head, walking in tandem with all the moments that bought us here. Jangling behind me like the relentless festive shop music. A lightless bulb in our permanent tangle of wire. And while I try to find some energy in today’s empty flatness our son is busy upstairs, narrating a Lego tale, splashing in our newly softened water…..

September 5th

Listening to the sound of our old water softener hiss, pop and crackle it’s salty job. Been thinking about changing it for a while, it’s 15 years now since Mr K sat on your creaky old pretend settee in our sparse newly moved into lounge. We bought it second hand, lovingly looked after, he told us, by an elderly lady. And he described it’s features with the pride of a show winning dog owner. He visited us a few times with laminated options and spiral bound charts. His full case packed with the trinkets of someone enjoying their work and we smiled at his delight, for the salt tablets that he turned in his hands with undisguised pleasure. He always wore that tie, slightly too short, slightly too thick a weave, a blue that announced itself as he ambled up our path with his aimable, helpful air.
I remember our chats as he became an infrequent visitor, servicing the slimline creature that lived at the side of the sink. He always had a tale to tell, a good natured anecdote about some customer event. He always gave more than was asked, jiggled appointments to seamlessly remove and re pipe in the beast after we moved here. He ran his small company through recession with the dedication of someone who’d got there without the expense of others. And we nattered and laughed as he plumbed and turned while I filled the cupboards and worked round the crates. And we joked about your DIY skills and were grateful for the magnets he screwed to the swinging cupboard doors. He had some in the van, it wasn’t problem.
And I’ve booked for him to come round on Friday to look at new models, alone, to find something that will fit the space and do it more efficiently. And I remember that he was widowed back before we knew him and I remember his son was 15 and he talked about his wife as he tightened our taps and I told you in the evening.
I have a feeling he knows as I’d referred his services to Mum and Dad and I heard his tone at the end of the line, months back, salt ordering, but neither of us said the words.
And on Friday he’ll be in our kitchen and on Friday I’ll go back in time.

Friday

Waiting for him and his van of memories and his face that I haven’t seen for five years. Sitting with the anxiety. Today my Red Indian name is Stands and Waits, oh God he’s here…

His glasses glinted in the sun as he climbed out and his cheery smile at the door told me he didn’t know. He grinned a big hand shake and asked how I am. I mumbled ambivalence. He carried his case into my kitchen, saying ‘family well?’

I explained as he leaned up my sink. It took a while to get to the purpose of the visit but I hauled it together enough to half listen to tales of dimensions and usage. I just went with the one that fitted best. Will it do the job? Where do I sign? And we returned to our connection and I heard our old life in his warm Hampshire drawl. He understood. He knew loss a few times over. His daughter (not a son, memory playing tricks on me) had entered this world herself and he would have known how to support her because of his own pain. And the conversation shifted as he explained himself. He pulled back from the carbon copy, put down the biro and said he sees the experience now as ‘The Builder, not The Destroyer’ and how it forced him to go within and after years he now looks out with new eyes.

I leaned up my oven, bookending him by my sink as this unremarkable man in logo-d top fell away, to open up and fill me with stories of gentle souls in Sri Lanka, of peasants without anything, beaming through joy, rose crystal rivers, a natural source of pure pink water, blushing the lanscape in India’s teardrop. And his energy bounced off the units, a wisdom hidden in his simple frame, messages learned and passed down through generations of pain and growth.
And two hours later we joked on his way out ‘Oh yeah, and by the way I’ll have a water softener’ and he shook my hand, thought better of it and hugged me and it wasn’t what you’d normally expect from a man in a van dressed in blue. But it was right and it was good.
He told me he gets moaned at for not having a big business by now, but it’s not what it’s about. It’s a means to an end for him ‘it’s just what I do on my journey’…
And as he crosses the threshold he seems to morph back into the job and makes some cheery comment about kids at school and I smile at his back, closing the door.

I anticipated the memories and the pain. I booked the installation for a later key date free week but I wasn’t prepared for this. The connection and deep knowledge that he bought. You’d have found him fascinating, you’d have talked to him for hours, but we wouldn’t have known that side of him then because he only came out today, in my new place. This morning, in my kitchen, crammed with the old and new world, with an older face and his words that hang around me now like the limescale in my kettle.
Feeling the thin, trickled stream that leads back to our first river, all those moments ago when I used yellow pages to find him.

Our Mr Blue Tie
And he came back today
With all that he bought
Making the links
Journeys crossing paths

Though he doesn’t wear the tie anymore.

October 5th
I’m up here out of the way while he kneels on his ivy green towel. Not a chatty job this time, all these years later, I leave him to it, I don’t need to see. Need to write.
And he calls me down with an unexpected question. Where did I want the old one leaving as it’s not something he can take away and it’s there unplugged, out of place, emptied, just a shell. I can’t really look at it and mumble something about the garage. I’ll do it later, something else to edge outside, to rest there as a symbol while the work continues in a different shape, it’s essence remaining.
And as the mysterious gurgling sets in downstairs I review my earlier finds from the cupboard clearing. I’d whizzed what I needed to, the cleaning products, now migrants on my worktop but the corner’s hoard threw me. The surplus cupboard creaked out it’s hidden wares, the shoved in ephemera kept for different reasons from the days when I had a choice about endings. And out they tumbled the tablecloths creased in newness, barely used plans from our first home, party napkins, every year a different theme, the last present from Adam in the days when his mum knew what to say to me, the bumble bee coasters, wedding gifts from Diane. And I reach in further, feeling round like helping to birth a calf and in my rush gush of memories, free up pork not beef, with our pig place mats. Just two of them from pre parenthood meals, fat, distorted, distended creatures, naive art you weren’t quite sure about but they were ok with a plate of food on top. And the ever ubiquitous bubble liquid, a dribble of plastic letter cutters, hotchpotch of fish bits, rubber tubed syphoning from our attempt to keep pets and a mug tree Christmas present from your Dad in the days when he spoke to us. Bits of your old life, some wine cooler that preceded me and the sandwich maker I couldn’t bond with, bagged up for then and now. Bits of mine, mix and matched mugs for our son to role play out, fragments of our world and the last two things amongst the dust and plastic lids: a bubble wand, an unlit birthday candle. I study them for a second, their frozen potential, rediscovered, still able to become.

And he calls me again in his broad Hampshire hog, all done and
I head for the stairs.
His delight is back as he explains the
new toy, I like the blue light but I’m not really listening. He tells me the old one is now light enough for the wheelie bin but I doubt I’ll manage that, not just yet.

And we both feel unsure whether to hug again, but this visit was business like, it wasn’t appropriate today. Last time was for sharing, today was for the job.
And he says goodbye with his warm wide smile and I watch from the window as he beetles off in the van, another traveller who plumbed into our world.

He leaves with a part of our history, he turns the corner, eyes on the road ahead. Like me.

I miss his blue tie.
X

Tags nature, the force, travel

Categories Grief, Loss, parenting

Chasing Cars

December 1, 2012 //

November 30th 2012

Tomorrow is apparently December. Today it smells like it,
it smells like Christmas and the roads are full of petrol fumes from earlier engines and the air bites you if you’re out there, easing the lock against the ice with the cold seat up your back, the satisfying connection as it turns over into life. And I used to prepare it for you, always up first, then our son, and while you crawled to the bathroom for another day of their politics and nonsense, I rush outside, in-between breakfast and turn the key. And when you come downstairs to put your briefcase in the back, it’s half ready, steaming up the drive and the morning thawed in the winter sun and we went about our life.
And though I’m very much here with my pillow up my back, strong black reaching the places it needs to, the weather and rhythm of the year draws me away through my wormhole to stuffing the Rover with parcels and weaving up behind tail lights to Birmingham for early Christmasses and you always tried to finish early and that song always played and we got there late to the faces and warmth at the door, with the necessary jokes, the normality of driving home. And the Boxing day onslaught North to the things we wanted and the things we had to deal with, the anticipation, the issues, the doilies, the tall freezer not quite hidden behind the folding screen, the conservatory that was really a lean-to, so he didn’t have to get planning permission, and the storage heater off to my right. And she always winked at me when the conversation went it’s usual way and the meat was beautifully sliced and he always asked how your Mum was doing.
And back to the Travel Lodge enjoying the sickness that I kept to myself for a while and I only had toast that morning and sparkled and tingled on the inside, potential lit up like the decorated trees around me. And back up to Pendle, stark, cold and perfect, weaving up the inclines to find our spot, and we huddled as you took us in your old proper camera that’s under the bed as I tap this, and froze us into a favourite photo, the two small mothers, (your rock before she shifted and me at the point of transition though we didn’t know it then). And we smiled towards you in the beautiful bleakness, a timeline of love, a moment.
And I’m in it now before we head South.
For train filled toddlers who rustled in boxes with the paper strewn floor and we laughed at his sweetness when the carriages kept coming, while I was too organised and you preferred the chaos.
And my memories are scrunched up around me, ripped and messed with half stuck bows, ribbons hanging off. And they’re slippy under bare morning feet with the warm house smelling of cooking, sausage rolls at breakfast time, just because you could, while I sort through the images
coming fast and jangling, a loud insistent jingling of our hours.

And now my coffee’s gone cold and the heating’s gone off and I consider coming back to the present, with the calling of the day ahead, the distant sleigh bells of planning.

The tentative being of now.

The last of November frost is melting and taking my time travel up in the warming wavelengths.

The sun burns white into the back right window highlighting the moisture in it’s brightness, eight years to the day it rolled up outside our old home, after Mike picked up the Rover, I think. Then I remember us sat in the show room, and some issue over insurance, our son feeling sick while you sorted it.
And our cars changed shape today, the ruby lowness filled with balloons that we tin-canned away in, that I creased myself into in labour, that took our newness around the country, Christmas packed with babies by the nearly there lights of Newton Abbot. And it had done it’s job and morphed into your new choice that continued the journeys, took us to other places, thank-yous with high zipped up jumpers, warm, oil swished turkeys on the front seat, steaming up the windows and the endless moments frozen, love etched inside.

It’s cold today
It’s nearly December
I’m surrounded by everything

We are held.

Tags Christmas, his mum, Pendle, the force, travel

Categories Grief, Loss, parenting

Regeneration

November 15, 2012 //

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

Tags anniversary, herzog film, our son, Star Trek, the force, travel

Categories Grief, Loss, parenting

Pilot

Interlinked

Southern Comfort

White Materials

Fermenting

Duality

The Christmas Express

Crystalline Entity

Chasing Cars

Regeneration

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