It doesn’t matter that the sun has slipped behind my view for a while or that the amber hyacinth glass has lost its bright light. And then returns, irrepressible as though it never went away.
How could it, how could the life force that keeps me here, have disappeared? The taste of my fingernails, just for a second and the bole of my May tree is hidden by the cacophony of daffs, just look at them. They don’t care. They know how to do this, singing out wild and abandoned, accepting the wilt to come. I suppose I do the same.
I pack boxes, I run fingers over ornaments, I caress the dust and breathe it in, greet it, welcome in its stories.
Sometimes just for a second, it’s as though I understand. I feel the ecstasy and terror simultaneously, as though looking at the sun bringing gold to my amber glass, as though, in this moment I am everyone.
I want to hold them. All of them and tell each of them it will be ok. It will get better. I know it will and my daffs dance on the windowsill and my hyacinth reaches up to the light.
Everything is golden. like honey. And a hive for the honeybees.
If you study the shellac on your nails and lose yourself in its luminous magical lights, in the rainbow shot silver sparkle, it will take you back.
Take you back to just before, in the hours, in the safety, in the warmth before the sense of separation came.
And there in the shimmerings is your father, walking home in the dark, your mother in the care of the midwives and the waiting. And he slept but she didn’t and later, hours later when the phone rang in the early light, the timeless spaces on your nails flash you to his side, to him sat on the edge of the bed with your grandparents who’d come to help.
And his words spilled out in the chill January morning, we’ve got a little girl and they cried.
They hugged and they cried and your father fought his legs into his trousers and blurred across pavements to your mother’s side. She slept and you slept although you didn’t know it.
And the sparkles on your fingertips now are the snowflaked halos around the street lamps then and the warmth of the first cup of tea when your mother woke up. And your father said she was a king to how she was before, rested yet weak, strong in the release of primal blood.
And the lights shine off your nails like sparks of magic bringing hope, like your eyes opening in the dark, your tiny newborn body still curled and warm, womb shaped.
Your father looked at the rows of incubators, directed towards yours. They all look the same, his tired voice drifting up, his breath on glass in the dim light. But yours was the face he came to know, yours was the life that filled up theirs.
Decades ago, and the shellac on your nails now seems to dance and sing, liberated, joyful like their arms, arms that held you tight, fluttering and glistening, arms that set you free.
The brightness of your snowflakes, the moonlight in your eyes. And if you look into the shellac of your nails now you see and feel the wintering, the gratitude of the place and time where you came in.
In my warm mug of hot lemon and honey, the specks of cinnamon and cayenne pepper float about, they collide with the chunk of ginger and bounce off to the sides. I watch them try to make sense of the swirling forces, giving themselves up to the motion and the heat.
I think about the woman I brushed past at the hospital, the hug I couldn’t give her despite her need and my mind spins to the other woman who budged up so I could sit down, who changed seats to make room for me at the funeral directors and she held on tightly to her mug, the tea they’d made for her, the heat pushing through the ceramic, trying to reach her fingertips, trying to tell her she’ll be ok.
I hold my mug now, I can feel the pressure where its smoothness meets mine. I watch myself watching it, feeling it.
We lock eyes, the woman on the end of their sofa, and both take a deep breath together. I pass her a weak smile and say ‘out breath’ out loud and we nod, we understand. I’ll never see her again.
I wonder if she’s thinking of me this morning. Or if the woman in the hospital remembers rushing past me, remembers the paleness of my face and how my eyes caught hers for a split second.
I wonder what these women are doing now and if they’re sitting quiet in the still sparkle of the lounge, if they’re holding their mug close to them, watching the moments spin.
I’d better shower, better seep into the day, note the sensations as they move through me and feel the connections I can’t see.
The heat disperses into the morning, the kick of ginger wakes me.
I made my bed yesterday. I’ll make it again today. I’ll fold the weight of white bamboo sheets across the bottom of the bed and smooth it out. I need to smooth things out. And I wonder about the woman who’s preparing for the service on Tuesday.
I’ve decided it’s a woman, though it might be a man, might be both, might be many I suppose. But for my purpose, she’s a woman and I imagine she makes her bed too, though maybe it’s a shared bed and someone else has made it today. But I won’t go there, not right now.
Is she counting days like me and will the sound of fireworks forever tie her to the day she’s yet to have? Will she, like me, years from now watch the fizz and sparkle in the sky? Will she jump a little from the bangs and will she hold the scattered colours on her retina, aching not to let them go but then they fade?
I don’t know her but I want to hold her close, want to feel her warmth, the blood charging round her veins. I want to hold her tight as she sobs it out into my arms and maybe in a week from now when it’s my turn, then maybe she’ll come round here and do the same for me?
I should make my bed. I wonder if the woman who’ll be at the service on the 5th is up? I wonder if she slept ok, or if she had nightmares again?
I’ll think of her on the 6th of course in that chasm on the other side. She’ll still makes her bed, I’m sure. Well, you have to don’t you?
I think about this woman I don’t know, someone else going through the same. Makes me feel less alone, you know?
Better make the bed. I like the feel of bamboo sheets, I like the way they calm me.
The water seems kinder today or maybe I’m just more aware of it that’s all. I wash my arms with consciousness as though cleansing myself from within. It helps.
I wonder about the woman in the black dress . It looked black though its print was of tiny bright flowers, red maybe orange. She passed me on day one, eyes pooling, brimming, hand to nose and mouth as she rushed out. I couldn’t hug her but the feeling pulsed up through me. It would have startled her anyway if I’d reached out, she had enough to deal with. She spilled over as I just about kept it in.
That was last week.
I wonder about her this morning. Is she having a shower, does she have time for a bath, is she thinking in the water like I am? Is she held in its amniotic fluid, giving her strength for another day.
Maybe she has a quick wash, doesn’t bother with make-up, or maybe she needs it as a shield against the world.
Does she feel the tightness in her chest, her tummy flip as she sanitises her hands and pushes through the heavy doors? Has she forgotten she’s even got a body, is she churning in her head, like me.
The water is kinder today, present, healing, it tells me to slow down as it drips off my skin. Little spheres of surface tension, swirling rainbows dance inside. I send them out to the woman in the black dress, I hope she’s still holding up, like me.
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.
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.
She would wear strawberry like tomorrow’s moon and watch it rise, silent in her orbit. But not today. Today was about light and off to her left, her sky had no need for clouds, not even cirrus in her mind.
Her leaves would deal with the heat, like they always did and one day the rain would return but not now. Now it was about light bouncing off her retinas, wavelengths bringing mirrors to her world.
It was fine. Fine, in the sense of a sublime moment. Fine, in the serendipity of time. The light falling across everyone busying themselves with important tasks, while the third generation star raged hydrogen and helium around them, keeping them alive.
The star spitting fire, giving them this day to be busy in, to rush and worry when they could stop and look up, stop and feel the sun on their skin, when they could just stop and Be.
And she looks towards the mirror on their longest day and in the delirium of light she knows she can wear red again. Tomorrow, strawberry red like her rising moon still shining like their sun.
Sometimes it’s the smell of lilies and the look of them boxed on her kitchen floor. Sometimes it’s the fluster of silk on her wooden stairs, how people busy themselves around her as she sits.
Now and again it’s the smell of nail varnish, sharp and clean, almost fruity, cutting through her day. Quite often it’s the thought of her mug of tea to her right, going cold as women fuss. One kneels down and laces her boots while the other stands behind her and sticks clips into her hair.
She notes how the moments jump haphazard, back and forth. The barefoot giggling, the squealing down the phone line, the faces waiting as she rustles down the stairs and then the door.
Sometimes it’s the front door open wide, the look of April grass, sap-full of promise in the sunlight but always it’s the crisp smell of taffeta, the feel of it, the weight of it, the look of it around her form. And then the leaving.
Most times it’s the leaving and her ivory heels on the mat in the foot-well of the car. And everyone who wakes up on that morning, who passes them as they drive by, will notice her, will smile and wave and she will know that decades later, that she’ll recall their faces even though they’ll have forgotten her.
And then the stone path comes into view, her clipping and shuffling into the heavy hush, dust particles hanging in the air like prayers. And most times, in fact all of the time, it’s the haze of photons, marking seconds, as if to say they’re waiting, just like he was. Waiting as she smiles towards him, knowing. And she moves through in slow-mo silence to his side.
Again and again and again. With her shield of flowers.
Sometimes later, it’s the metal sound of the hotel fire escape, as they sneak their way back in, when the guests have waved them off, when the guests think they have gone. High heels and alcohol, such a potent combination but they still make it to their room.
And then the cathedral looms up out of sequence, permanent against drunk daffodils. She tilts, she swirls against the ancient backdrop, arms outstretched with wings of chiffon, secure against the stone, pearlescent in the rays.
In the evening yards of taffeta bunch up to make a bustle and she inhabits it as though it’s intrinsic to her form. Music frays, lights and faces twirl, handshakes, hugs and tiredness falls.
And it flips back to the waiting and then the moving out towards. Always. Moving forwards, always holding flowers, a beacon to light the way.
The waiting there, this waiting here with purpose, with belief and certainty. And this is how it was, how it is.
Janey L Foster 