The last time I saw you was October 2019, she said looking through my file. Yes, it has been a while. It was good to see her. She looked well, prettier and lighter in countenance than when I last saw her. And yet she has so much family stuff to carry. The little shed she takes me to at the end of her garden is always warm. I lie there on the couch and look at the wooden ceiling and it reminds me of a sauna. I yield to her and drift. Yesterday it was if my body had become architecture and I was a series of arched clear-paned windows.
You look tanned, he said when I came out. Do I? I said looking at my face in the car mirror. And he was right, the colour had returned.
There is controversy over when is the real Twelfth Night. I like to follow ritual, it holds me in place. The radio presenters I heard yesterday seemed to ally with the notion that it was yesterday so the decorations came down. It wasn’t a complicated procedure – though the thought of it was a heavy one. I prefer our home without frippery and yet I have enjoyed, as has he, the sparkling lights. We have little. There is my stylised tree, a white wire tree shape with tiny red lights, 4 sets of fairy lights, an unadorned birch heart shape wreath for the front door and some pine cones sprayed silver. That is all. And I like that. So there is no dying tree that has to be dragged, gracelessly to the bins leaving browned pine needles in its wake (though the bag with the pine cones did burst sending them tumbling down the stairs scattering flecks of silver dust – what did you say? he asked. Bloody hell, I replied. Though I must admit the sound of the tumbling and the sight of the shining pine cones littering the stairs and shared hallway (such a memory of her she was always spraying things silver for Christmas) was rather delightful). The house is empty now. And I like the vacancy.
It’s a grief for me. And I don’t see how I can change it. It frustrates him, I know, for he cannot see it as I do. He lists my achievements in an attempt to change my default view but it makes no real impact it is too inbuilt. The grief for me is that fact that each time I begin something I have to pull myself through such a sludge of fear and worthlessness. It sounds melodramatic but it is true. There is nothing there, no memory of what has gone before, no plaudits, just a blankness. So be it, I should say, and just accept it, even turning it to an advantage. At least there is pleasure in doing it – whether it be writing or drawing or sewing or making – for I do like being it the act of creating. It’s just the afterwards, that heavy blow of judgement. Let it be. Acknowledge the lack and keep on doing the doing of it.
I think of him. I walk through what I imagine to be his last days in my mind. I lay in my rather dirty bath (Welsh Water are doing things in our area and the water is brown) and thought about the age gap between him and his mother. She must’ve been 28 when she had him. And he died at 74. Just like my mother, my father dying at 75. So young for these days. I hope he wasn’t in pain. Was there more he longed to do? I know he loved to travel.
We walked in the sun yesterday, an unexpected pleasure. And we emptied out the last of his mother’s ashes (he had kept some remnants of her in the big large ugly plastic magenta pot the undertakers had given him – there is still a little urn remaining that he keeps on his windowsill) on the flower bed facing the sea where she loved to sit in his car and gaze at the water her head barely seeing over the dashboard.
He died on the 23rd of December. He met his brother and mother and asked them. They said it was peaceful and that his daughter was with him. I am sorry for it. We didn’t know him well but he was a presence in both our lives. We ask the brother what will happen to their mother, who is now 104. She is very frail, he says. (She seems just the same to me, he tells me later.) She will have to acquiesce to what they decide for her, for she clearly can’t stay in that flat on her own, and they her other sons (and daughter though we’ve never seen her) have their own lives to live. It is sad. (I hate change, he says.) I think of him and hope that he was content for his life to end. I wish him rest and peace.
She articulates how I sometimes feel. We are so different but we share much. I hold her tight in my mind’s eye and my heart. She is hurting as I sometimes do but she doesn’t have the support and care that I live with daily. And yet we both cannot help but compare. It’s a hurting thing to do and does not help. Give her strength to make something of her life, however small. And give me the grace to do the same.
I thought he knew her, but it seems he doesn’t. Yesterday was the first time he actually had a conversation with her. I thought she had a New Zealand accent but it is in fact South African. And she has a cattery. He didn’t hear that bit. There is much that he misses. What did she say? he asked afterwards. So I filled him in. Neither of us thought that it fitted her, though what someone who runs a cattery looks like, I am not sure. But she is so pretty, he said.
I make resolutions. I have always done so, though as I grow older they are quieter, less ambitious ones. I have what, ten years of vital (ish) working at my practice (and trying to earn what living I can)? I hope for the energy and verve to see this through. And for some success, if only to carry me through into those inward years that lie ahead. But mostly I think I hope for an inner (and thus outer) serenity born of self-acceptance. Oh, how I have battled with that through my life. The curse of never feeling good enough (though what good enough actually looks like I’ve never known). Isn’t it time to let all that go? He thinks I am. He has told me often enough. Do you think I’d be with you if I didn’t? he says time and time again. And I can see it. My being here makes him happy. Isn’t that good enough? I think so, yes.
I’ve been learning to draw for over forty years now and I still feel like a beginner. Does this ever pass? I doubt it. Though perhaps not for those who are real masters of it. Does it matter? For I know in my heart of hearts that it isn’t about the end result but the doing of it. It is a fluid thing, a momentary sense of something wonderful, a kind of attune-ment that is soon gone. I like, indeed at times crave, the momentum, the energy of drawing from animate life. I love to watch, to really watch people and attempt to capture them with line, wash, colour whatever is to hand. But it is not an exact science (it isn’t a science at all) and it can be gloriously right and terribly wrong. But I work better with that uncertainty – there is something about that rush, that hurling of myself onto the page trying to get a gesture, a detail, a turn of a head just right. The still lifes, the buildings, the landscape I draw do not have the same effect on me. I need that testing. And yet when it isn’t there, or doesn’t feel like its there, like yesterday, I am brought so low. Keep going, he says, looking over at me from above his glasses. This doesn’t help, he continues, as he can tell I long to throw a tantrum. So I keep going making clumsy marks and not attuning. It has to be so. The learning is as much in ones failures as it is in the successes, perhaps more so. I think of van Gogh often at such times. His early drawings were lack lustre and unfelt but his later ones became sublime. Did he see the changing? How did it make him feel? Must we have others to tell us how good we are?
The sea-swimmers fascinate me. They come into the coffee shop most days, swamped in their towelling lined coats, their woollen hats, scarves, gloves and big boots. Yesterday one of them had a hot water bottle peeking out of the top of her coat. To be in such cold. To immerse oneself in it. I’ve done it in Cornwall, in November and the cold of the water terrified me. My heart felt like it was going to cease beating altogether. I’ve done it in the Med too. That was equally cold but at least one came out into the sun. And my body did feel exhilarated. Perhaps that’s why they do it. There is such camaraderie amongst them, as they order their hot chocolates and plates of toast. I miss feeling such vigour.
They woke me at just after twelve, disorientated and still in sleep I couldn’t, at first, work out what they were. I banged and burst and hissed well beyond 12.30 am and I struggled to regain my sleep. Oh, well, I thought, I wish them a happy party.
New Year never feels joyous for me. And certainly not this year. It’s all this bleak, though necessary, paring-back of everything (typified by the pictures he sent me of me drawing in the café. I sit alone, huddled in my layers of coats, and no one comes near – all the previous, precious camaraderie and noise gone). I am wearied by it. And the fear it instils drags me down. I miss exuberance. Or perhaps I never felt it really. I don’t know. Is this an age thing?
Oh forgive me. I wish you all well. And though I don’t feel like sending my usual salvo of texts of new year wishes, I do think of you all and send you joy.
Another new year comes. And we are all a bit older. Have we learnt much? Are we kinder? Are we more loving? I don’t know. We try don’t we? Life is out of our hands, the only thing we have some control over is our actions towards others. I work, I endeavour and I love. Sometimes furiously. There are so many for whom I feel deep deep care. As I do for those I will never ever meet. We are one. We are the same. Can we try to remember that in 2022?
Charles Dickens referred to the meal delivered to Old Sol and his nephew in Dombey and Son by the nearby tavern as ‘the entertainment’. I dreamt of such an entertainment last night. It was something my mother was hosting and I was helping to serve the vegetables. I had a huge platter in my hand of an assortment of carrots and greens and was taking it around the table, under my mother’s guidance. However, there clearly wasn’t enough and she seemed uncertain, unusually, as how to manage the deficit. I saw M and was about to give her some when she asked if she could have some from the other plate with the ‘chilli foam.’ I looked around the room and saw that there were more and more trestle tables of people all waiting to be fed. Shall I put some more vegetables to cook? I asked my mother, suggesting sweet corn, peas and broad beans (even in my dream I knew that I had some in the freezer – but would it be sufficient ?). She acquiesced and I went to set them boiling but was faced with too much of a choice of pans to use. There were huge kettles, jam boilers – all copper and shining – some hanging some on shelves beneath. I woke before a decision was made. Was it a dream about nourishing all those parts of myself that are hungry for sustenance, perhaps?
The coffee shop opened an hour later so we walked instead and got drenched. And I threw a mini-wobbly because my drawing was so bad. He told me in the kindest way to get a grip and not indulge myself. I tried and it improved a bit. So much change, even in our little world. Must just keep steady. More rain today.
We passed one of the waiters who used to work in the Shilam, an Indian restaurant that we would frequent, virtually every Monday night until we stopped doing so and then it shut. We couldn’t remember his name, though we knew his face. They were mostly from Goa (if that is indeed the Portuguese territory in the Indian Ocean that I am thinking of) and had been given these rather surprising names (for us, perhaps not for them). I remember there was a Shubert, a Wellington and the infamous, and roguish, Ronaldo, and Mohammed was the boss, a terribly sprightly, energetic man, very go-getting for this small town. The one we passed with his eternally smiling face was called by another name, I believe. What lovely men (though more like boys) they were. They brightened up a Monday night and we liked going there, though the food was pretty crap and the building as cold as an iceberg. And many had wives and families at home. So far away.
Oh, how I miss my walking out. We did walk yesterday and the sea was rolling and alive and wonderful and it didn’t rain. But, and there is this but, I miss exploring the courage it took me to go out there in the dark alone. And being on the harbour, standing at the end of the Perygyl staring out to sea. And those thoughts. All that writing in my head as I walked. But I was giving my body pain by doing so. So this temporary cease is no bad thing. And I can sit in here, my bottles on my tummy, Radio 3 on and think about work. Gosh, how blessed I am. I never forget it, you know, never. But I do miss him asking me as he wakes from a dream, ‘What’s it like out?’
