capturing a robin

The forest opposite my childhood home

I'm reading my favourite book for the third time. It is a buoy in an unsettled and uncertain moment in my life. The story so captures me I forget about this day, and am transported to an age before cars, before World War 1, when a passing bicycle would create such a stir that folk would run to their gates to gawp and wonder. The book is Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson. 

A memory was sparked as I read of a village woman catching birds for the sport of it. Hidden, patient, holding the end of a length of string in her hand, the string tied to a stick, which had a sieve propped upon it and a sprinkling of crumbs beneath as bait. When I was small my father taught me how to catch a bird using such a method, just once, crouched behind our honeysuckle hedge, capturing a robin red breast and letting it go. Now I understand, from the vantage point of passing years what he was teaching me. My father didn't give me much in the conventional sense of what fathers are meant to be for daughters but he taught me something beyond words that day, a childhood in rural Scotland, a childhood where he hunted to eat, a childhood of ingenuity, responsibility and patience, of soil, and rain, and cold. 

My dad drew a circle on our dust path once, explaining that the Earth was hot at its core, together we uprooted a dead tree for our fire, we caught a robin and then let it go and all these things cause this 47 year old woman's heart to ache. I was born a month before his 55th birthday. Sieve, stick, string, crumbs. My Dad was odd in Essex, always mistaken for my Granddad, rake thin, venturing into the forest to drag home trees to burn.

At school, I excitedly shared capturing a bird with my father, writing about it or telling the teacher. I remember my confusion and shame as the teacher told me it was a horrible story and cruel, with classmates pulling faces. As is the way of small children I wasn't able to ask why she said that and became withdrawn and quiet, realising something of otherness, oddness and unbelonging. 

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.

alone

Without the green of the forest I don't know how I would have turned out. Crossing the road from my house and entering the wood did not scare me, it was simple. 

This summer I created new work and entered the woods alone once more. This time I experienced fear and trepidation. I was nervous. While sitting on a fallen tree amongst a copse of young birches it dawned on me that this was my first time alone in Epping Forest since childhood. My fears about being vulnerable, unprotected, far from others were present.

Still, close to the forest floor, I breathed in constancy, timelessness, rootedness. No one disturbed me, not even a dog walker. On some unseen path beyond my trees children pelted through the wood on bikes, voices raised in excitement. As I arranged my work Army of Me by Bjork played in my head and I thought of my twenties and my friend Marianne. 

Hand stitched arms, 2015
Wanstead Flats, London

This image is a prelude to the work mentioned above. I wandered over to the Wanstead Flats and found this secluded spot to test my idea. 

parents

The only little girl in the woods, she liked it that way. Young, very young, safer here than there and not recognising the tragedy of that yet. The forest provided clear sight lines and space above her head, the opposite of hemmed in. Her fledgling mind was safe there. Not that she had thoughts of safety, this is the adult retelling, reframing a natural inclination for a calm environment.

The green-ness felt as home, her favourite colour in so many shades and textures, cosseting her tender body. So small, so lost and yet settled within herself in this place. When older she was told that green was her grandmothers favourite colour and that she would have liked her. By this time she was tall, startled at her woman's body, so much did she feel that small girl inside herself.

There were no rules in this space. The earth beneath her feet did not ask anything of her. The trees stood in their places, unchanging, their moods stable, predictable unlike anything else she knew. The forest was constant and her heart needed that.

Her mothers leaves shimmered in the slightest breeze, she was slight, delicate, glowing silver in the forest. Her skin smooth, pale, her trunk easily encompassed by small arms. The girl felt shy with her, tender, careful. Her father was tall and broad, he touched the sky. Cracked and fissured, her arms when pressed against him held his texture for a time, he impressed her skin. The canopy he provided was a home, a shelter. She did not marvel at his great age, his acorn beginning 300 years before hers, before the estate was built, before anyone living was a twinkle in a long dead eye.

new work

Army of Me, 2015
Large Format Photograph
Epping Forest

jam tarts

As I age I am aware that alongside the current me are my younger selves, the eight year old, the sixteen year old, the twenty eight year old. I often catch her younger eyes peering out of my face, and welcome the hopeful girl, the girl with the sensitive and compassionate heart. The younger me could run barefoot and whippet fast on the grass of the school field, winning all races. When she springs into action now she is confused that this body doesn't move with such ease.

With good fortune, I am at the midpoint of my life, my awareness continues to develop and deepen. I stand on this road looking back at my past and turning my head towards the future, how will I view 'here' in the coming years? Working with children of all ages I am reminded of my own childhood, the things that were mysterious and unknowable that I couldn't share with an adult, one of these things was BREASTS. As a girl of eight I knew they were my destiny, but how?

It was a summer day and I was standing in the front bedroom wearing a flowery sleeveless dress of some 1970's synthetic material. Studying my reflection in the full length mirror I focused upon my chest, maybe running my hands over it, knowing 'it' would change. Having prepared for this moment I popped two empty silver jam tart cases up my dress to create neat little mounds, not pleased, not happy with the results. Puzzled, I wondered were breasts like camels humps? Did they hang? I didn't have a scooby do! Time solved this particular mystery, it didn't take many more years as I was one of those unfortunate primary school girls who develop early, too early.

Sadly, my childhood was unsafe, with adults who were out of control with addiction, depression and their own deep wounds that made them unavailable. The girl and young woman within me is still hurting, still heartbroken, but also cheeky and bright and hopeful. The girl who pushed jam tart cases up her dress, the girl who took her fathers bottles from their hiding places around the house and lined them up along the garden path, the innocent girl who spoke the truth and suffered for it, she is here.