Category Archives: Parenting

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Changes

Now there’s a tree watching over the bed, birds scrabbling for food, people darting in and out the Costas just off to the right and if they looked up from their latte they’d see me in the window looking out.

I didn’t like yesterday’s room though, felt too far tucked away, almost a sense of punishment, of neglect.  Broken thinking on my part, of course. Tiredness doesn’t help.

Of course the care was on point and Senior Sister Gemma enfolded me with her reassuring London tones, her voice and her words and her ways. She called me darlin’ and we joked about the room upgrade. She should have been pulling pints but she was pushing beds instead and I was grateful .

And when the upgrade came, when trees were administered, when the relief of natural light came into view, I relaxed (a little.)

A ward with a window over green and the bole of the tree stands guard, steady, constant, dependable bark that’s been there a hundred years watching people change.

I feel like I’ve been there a hundred years but it’s only day seven or is it eight?

Maybe that’s why the previous room took me down, floored me with an echo of late pregnancy, of no privacy, of people poking and me hanging on. Propped up, out of time with a job to do, concerned faces, waiting, willing. Praying. 

I think that’s it, the silent magnolia walls, the speckled ceiling, just a little too high for my liking and a view, (if you can call it that,) over the scrag end of the buildings. 

Still, that’s not now. 

I’d better get up, I’ve got a job to do. I hope Gemma’s on today. I like her long black pony tail. When she walks, it swings like a metronome on her back, keeping me steady with her rhythm.

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The Lady from Upstairs

Do you know how much I hate the relative’s room? I know hate is a strong word, maybe I resent it, is that better? Of course, I’m so grateful for it too, its functional furniture, its token flowers on the windowsill as if to say don’t worry, things will bloom again.

Do you know how much I feel for The Lady from Upstairs? She visits us twice a day, in her clouds of dementia, has a little walk with the nurse who tells her she can’t go any further. That’s the men’s ward, she repeats but The Lady from Upstairs doesn’t care, she protests, she says hello regardless and we wave back until she turns around to go again. She’s on repeat – as am I.

It makes me sad, it makes me grateful, it rams home our essential life affirming interconnectedness and all I want to do is bundle her up in my arms and hug her until all the things she struggles with will seep away, until she’s a young lithe girl again, giddy, in fresh love and her mind is as crystal clear as her young eyes. 

I turn away, I look towards the bed I sit by. I want to do the same for all the patients. I want to make us all ok, but I can’t. 

And on the way in for the nth time this week, up the endless polished corridors, I passed the brand new parents, the father clutching a warm thing to his chest, he murmurs ‘it’s ok young one,’ as as I go past, although I know he’s not talking to me. And as I reach the place where I turn off, where I brace yet again, an elderly man pushes his wife in a wheelchair, and I feel the invisible threads between us all. The elderly woman and baby swap places, meld into each other and I can’t tell where either begin or end.

This morning I took time out in the relative’s room, I looked out past the sprig of freesias to the claustrophobic slabs of brick. I know this place. I’ve got form.

I throw my damp tissues into the bin and head back to the ward. The Lady from Upstairs will be back to see us soon. I hope she feels happy in her world, somehow, in some way.

Why is everything so blue in here? I guess it’s designed to bring calm but it doesn’t really work. I don’t like blue concertina curtains. They unnerve me.

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Make the Links – Weather Bird (Rag)

Following myself along is sometimes confusing. I do get lost at times. I start out down by the river by the ancient bridge. I wonder how I’m connected to the woman in the photo from 1905, with her skirt brushing the pavements. I jump-cut, I fly.

But I know how I’m connected to the woman in 1962, sipping strong tea, exhausted and her brand new warm pink baby has a heavy head, it makes her arm ache, her thin arms that would entangle mine on-top of Pendle Hill, years later. You know the hill? That hill, her arms, that baby, this life.

You know how it goes. So I keep following myself. The river flows over rocks, timeless. There are words in the river. I wander by waters. Fluid.

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27 Million Degrees Fahrenheit

Back in November 1895 someone was feeling the warmth of their new born baby. Someone whose name I do not know. And I wonder if she watched the sun come up like I do, if she saw the edge of a winter’s sky bleed into the day. Soft, quiet bleeding like the pulsing that bought my grandmother into the world.

And I wonder about this woman I never knew, did she look up into the velvet sky, streaked with tangerine, did she pause from staring into the eyes of her baby to wonder about her descendants, did she listen to the birds, in their agitation, sensing gentle heat to come.

And wherever she lay and breathed on this winter’s morning 128 years ago, her breath made me possible. Her cries of pain enable my words now, allow my thoughts as I watch the street waking up, my neighbour scraping the blush of frost off the windows of his car. He doesn’t look up though, he doesn’t see the soothing sky, the swaddling clouds around me now, around my great grandmother back then.

And I think of her, reach out to her, wonder about her joys and losses, the places in herself where she felt most alive, as though she was the only person to experience such intensity. And could she imagine this world 128 years ahead?

I look up, nothing is still. The birds quiver, the steam leaves the flue of my boiler, spiralling, dissolving into the air like the unseen atoms of all the generations before me, holding me while I’m here.

And my thoughts seep out, a snapshot of a moment, of all of us alive right now, now as I put these words out into the universe, now as you read them, all of us doing our best to find certainty in this unending change.

And just before the sun spills over the rooftops, just before I’m dazzled in its spitting helium, I wonder about our world 128 years from now.

Will someone be looking up, watching the heat and light come back, will someone know my name, will someone remember me at all? And the planet spins on its axis, chemical reactions take place and people affect each other. 

And in the photons dancing all around me I feel the echo of my great grandmother, the gift of new life in her arms and the capacity for love.

And people busy themselves with work and commitments, responsibilities, rushing into the day. I want to shout to them from my window. Live, just live NOW.

128 years from now the sunlight will come back, there will be dawn to melt the frost on a winter’s morning and I wonder who will be grateful that I lived.

And 96 years ago last week that tiny baby girl at my great grandmother’s breast, gave birth herself and held the youngest of her three girls in her small strong arms. And 37 years after that moment, one of her daughter’s eggs which nestled in her abdomen when she was born, merged with another force and sparked and burst into life.

And there in the bitter blackness of an early winter’s morning I pushed out. There, on an unknown bed in a hospital that’s long since been pulled down, I took in air. My lungs filling in consequence of a woman I never knew.

128 years ago, and I am grateful for her womb, for her love, her strength and her life.

Grateful for them all.

The women who made me possible.

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Verdant

Lilies grew out of the scar on my tummy, daring, irreverent and girlish. They flung their arms wide; they didn’t care. Lisianthus burst up and out, willowy, confident, pretty and they knew it. They waved at the lilies who nodded in respect. Painted ladies and red admirals fluttered from the same places where the flesh had bled, their damp tissue paper wings felt cool against the air. Meconium pumped out, squirted across the scar as if to say, I love you, I remember. As if to say, all the pain, the hours of spasms, the empty walls I looked at, waiting hoping, are all tucked away and understood.

The nights spaced out, the ceilings passing over me, all locked away with care and when my language broke, when halos caressed each word that left my mouth, when every breath was forged from armour, when the weight of the shields tore my muscles to shreds, I kept on holding. When every cell pulsed with one cause, when no one could help me but the tiger claws that grew, claws of steel against the battle that consumed me.

Then.

Then my scar erupted, then it exploded out in trees, oaks towering from my tiny form, their roots soaked in my blood, fed from my placenta and willows softened out the gash, they wept over the chasm where my abdomen had been, they wrapped their tendrils around the scalpels and the knives, they paved the way, they saved me. They dropped leaves into my hollow and from the mulch, from the deep rich earth inside me, petrichor filled the theatre, soil sodden with my tears and surgeons took a step back, as I expanded, I roared life into the room.

Eagles flew out of me, feathers caked in green and red, they soared around the room, under their spotlights, singing loud. I remember the golden flash of their beaks, they winked at me with eyes that saw more than I could and, in the crater, where my abdomen used to be, a forest thrived, birds cheered, creatures danced, insects giggled in the sunshine.

I watched the ceiling smile down on me as I stroked the wound, hand bloodied and joyous. We Made This the corpuscles seemed to say. And my body rejoiced. My body was perfect, my scar came to show me the way.

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Day Tripper

To the woman in the trench coat on the bus, with longer, thicker, darker hair like I used to know, you will be fine. And I watch her from the back seat of the bus, years away from her but she doesn’t know I’m there.

And if I stood up and wobbled with the motion, if I plumped down besides her and took her hand then she would jump. And she’d wonder who the older woman was as I leaned in and whispered in her ear. But she doesn’t jump because she cannot see me sitting there. And I push the hair back from her ear and whisper ‘you’ll be alright’ but she cannot hear me because she’s rushing. She’s stumbling up to A & E while her young boy is at Primary and I watch her hurry as I walk behind her and I know the things that wait for her behind the heavy doors.

And if she could sense me, she’d look behind her and wonder why the older woman followed but she wouldn’t stop to question because there was no time.

And I watch her as the doors to A & E swallow her up whole leaving nothing but the memory of her rushing through. And I’m waiting to take her hand and squeeze it tight, I’m ready to catch her when she faints as she will do and as I cradle her younger body into my arms I’ll stroke her forehead and tell her she’ll be alright as we both rest there on their sterile scrubbed white floor.

And if she could hear me, if she could look into my eyes, she’d not believe me but I hold her close and keep her warm. She scatters into tiny pieces and I’ll call out her name. I’ll make everything alright for her because it will be, in a way she’d not imagine, if she could only hear me and if she could see my form.

To the woman in the trench coat with longer, thicker, darker hair like I used to know, I promise you, believe me, you will be fine. And somehow, somewhere my words will reach her and I’ll never ever leave her side.

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A Womb of My Own

I grew a seed,

embedded and safe,

charged with potential to be.

I swelled like a spring fruit,

nascent and sun-blushed,

full of juice and tender flesh.

I stretched and sustained,

moulded and flowed,

an insistent present tense.

I blossomed into autumn,

round and lumbering,

a pulsing pod of blood.

I reshaped as the shell, the outer husk,

fierce and ferocious,

fighting tooth and claw, protect my form.

Until I became,

I separated, split in two,

into us, our necessary cells,

an ecstasy of emergence,

bleeding and bonded and whole.

I flooded into his immaculate mouth

as lilies opened in my heart.

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Beyond Glenfield Road

Breathe on me and I will vanish, I will disperse into the air taking my long thick dark brown hair away. And the red fleece of my jacket and the fluff in my pocket will be a memory on the wind.

But you will remain with your calcite core, with your compounds, your glinting similarities to my seashells and my pearls.

And I will shine near the summit looking out to Sabden and Padiham, holding tight to Colne.

While you nestle tucked away, carboniferous in russet, smooth in sandstone in my palm. And I will rub you while I crumble, I will feel the biting wind shriek up my hair.

There with my glacial tilt, my boulder clay which called me. Pick me up and hold me close and I did. I squeezed you in my pocket, I hid you out of sight.

While December chills took my left hand to my ear to keep out the gusts. And the smell of her perfumed cheek and thickness of her winter coat were shutter clicked and frozen to the bone.

We grinned in the cold.

But you will remain with your time smoothed angles, a permanence beyond my emphemeral form. So breathe on me and watch my smile flake to the clouds, watch me scatter in the hills.

And long after the imprint of my trainers has eroded, after my keratin has blown away, you will still feel me. The warmth of my hand embedded in your limestone and your limestone and my secret smile, a fossil of our day.

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Me in Amber

Near the top of Three Maid’s Hill, in the din of russet pavements, light pierced like a diamond, caught the edge of purposeless leaves.

Whipped them, wild. Clattering up in eddies, delirious, absent-minded in the disturbed air between cars.

And it was my eyes which soothed them, which held them as we passed by. As though I were unique, as though the retina stain from a low flying sun could only belong to me.

The hill smiled, outlived me and everyone else, until all that remained were my thoughts, thinking. And may I be a memory of this place.

Our wheels were long gone. Leaves settled in the drains, they bunched up, held on tight to each other.

They knew what to do.

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El Techo de la Iglesias

It didn’t matter to her that she pushed English pavements under her feet, or that the maple leaves which cluttered round her boots were from local trees – she was not there.

And it didn’t matter that the spire which she was drawn towards, or the parapet which pulled her eyes up to the sky, belonged to Saint Peter’s Church or that the gentle whisps of white which framed it, came from her Hampshire sky – she was not there.

And because she wasn’t there it didn’t matter that her English streets were busy with people wrapped and warm. And because she wasn’t there, her form cast no shadow as she passed Saint Peter’s Church because her boots were in Barcelona and her autumn coat was a waterfall top. It billowed around her hips like the soft white fluff above the spires which framed the baby sweetcorn. And it was irrelevant that her eyes looked up to a Hampshire sky because they were not there. They looked out across the park and studied Gaudi’s glory which left an imprint in her mind.

It didn’t matter where her boots wandered in an English town because she wasn’t there. She was striding out across the Carrer de Sardenya as though her small feet belonged on Spanish soil.