As I think about my dad departing this life I wonder upon his description of me on my entry into it...
My dad said I looked like a skinned rabbit when I was born - v e r y long, pink, reminding him of his boyhood past hunting for food. While my mother laboured, dad was in the pub. Mum has no memory of the time of mine or my sisters birth. She was cut, forceps were used, alone and quiet in her labour.
Me the skinned rabbit
Him the hunter, with trap, with sling shot, with arrow?
Hope for a son
But a daughter, watchful, reflective, brave
LOOK AT THIS, LOOK AT YOU
As sensitive as him, him before
Wednesday 30 March 2016
nicotine
My memories of the 1970s are stained with tobacco. The upper deck of buses were for smokers and I remember the fog and stink of smoke, of my travel sickness and puking into see-through plastic bags. At home dad smoked, in no doubt helping along my childhood bronchitis and later, asthma, which has left a weakness in my lungs today.
Dad stuck polystyrene tiles onto the living room ceiling, the only way to conceal the spidery cracks that polyfilla was no match for. These tiles soaked up nicotine, each month deepening in colour, giving the room a sepia and nostalgic feel. When I was old enough and with money from my Saturday job I would buy a tin of white paint and erase the last years worth of roll ups. In that unhomely home I tried my best, did the jobs my parents couldn't see or have the power to do anything about. I made do, mended and now I work to forgive.
Later, aged 19 I watched dad's health decline and him spend the last three months of his life in hospital. The night before he died, oxygen deprived and confused, I gave him his last sip of water and fed him a grape, my final acts for dad. As I said goodbye I put my face close to his and he looked into my eyes and frowned, as if meeting an acquaintance he couldn't quite place. Walking to the train station that night I prayed he would die, please die. He obliged the following morning, alone.
Sitting next to his body, my way of saying goodbye was to touch and take the measure of him in a way I couldn't while he breathed. I placed my thumb and forefinger around his thigh and felt the sheet below - he weighed 7 stone at death. Flattening my hands I patted his still warm chest and looked into his eyes which were beginning to discolour. Discovering that it is not possible to close the eyes of the dead I felt cheated by the films I'd seen where so easily, so obligingly the deceased close their eyes. His remained open, him absent, body empty. No faint rise and fall of the chest, so still. Unnerving.
My ritual complete, I turned my head at the sound of an anguished cry of 'Dad!' as my little sister rushed into the hospital ward. It was heartbreaking.
Dad stuck polystyrene tiles onto the living room ceiling, the only way to conceal the spidery cracks that polyfilla was no match for. These tiles soaked up nicotine, each month deepening in colour, giving the room a sepia and nostalgic feel. When I was old enough and with money from my Saturday job I would buy a tin of white paint and erase the last years worth of roll ups. In that unhomely home I tried my best, did the jobs my parents couldn't see or have the power to do anything about. I made do, mended and now I work to forgive.
Later, aged 19 I watched dad's health decline and him spend the last three months of his life in hospital. The night before he died, oxygen deprived and confused, I gave him his last sip of water and fed him a grape, my final acts for dad. As I said goodbye I put my face close to his and he looked into my eyes and frowned, as if meeting an acquaintance he couldn't quite place. Walking to the train station that night I prayed he would die, please die. He obliged the following morning, alone.
Sitting next to his body, my way of saying goodbye was to touch and take the measure of him in a way I couldn't while he breathed. I placed my thumb and forefinger around his thigh and felt the sheet below - he weighed 7 stone at death. Flattening my hands I patted his still warm chest and looked into his eyes which were beginning to discolour. Discovering that it is not possible to close the eyes of the dead I felt cheated by the films I'd seen where so easily, so obligingly the deceased close their eyes. His remained open, him absent, body empty. No faint rise and fall of the chest, so still. Unnerving.
My ritual complete, I turned my head at the sound of an anguished cry of 'Dad!' as my little sister rushed into the hospital ward. It was heartbreaking.
Tuesday 29 March 2016
sloe
My heart was full of joy as I strained the sloes after three months of melding with alcohol and brown sugar and bottled my first ever sloe whisky and sloe gin. I LOVE making things. These bottles are now in the cupboard to mature until christmas 2016. The sloes are in the freezer as apparently they can be made into a boozy crumble. Thank you hedgerow.
Sunday 20 March 2016
1916
My dad was born on the 11th of March 1916. To commemorate this I traveled to Scotland, walked to the cottage he was born in and planted daffodils by the front door. Soft rain fell, garden birds chirruped in the hedgerows and squawked my approach from the treetops. Snowdrops in their prime lit the way, turning my thoughts towards hope and renewal. Standing in the garden of the derelict cottage I felt very at home, though my father left this home in his youth the place echoed him. A shed full of rusting nails, bare gnarly apple trees, a slab path running the length of the cottage. HE was palpable.
I knocked on the door and considered time, of my grandmother Alexina birthing her last born on this day 100 years before, of me peering in the windows, haunting ghosts. Crouching down to dig I found rich dark soil, the sword like spikes of the daffodils pleasingly green against this earth. I left a note written in green ink, knowing it would wash away as rain pattered down, spreading, erasing my heartfelt words. I think of these daffodils now, hoping they bloom brightly, a token of life lived now as I acknowledge my father, my roots.
Elgin
Plant associated with Clan Logan - Furze (Gorse)
Road to Easter Calcots
Joynters Cottages
Falkland Islands penny
Haunting the long dead and gone...
Geese
Memorial
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