Me Me Me

Gemma tagged me last week (or was it longer than that, sorry Gemma, I’ve lost track of time) for this fun meme.

Rules:
The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
Each player answers the questions about himself or herself.
At the end of the post, the player then tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
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Here we go……

What were you doing ten years ago today?

Ah, that would be May 1998. I remember it distinctly. My son was almost two and we were talking about trying for another child. But I was admitted to hospital with severe bleeding and had to have what they call an endometrial ablation. The doctors wanted to perform a full hysterectomy but I was terrified of the side-effects and of dying on the operating table(one of my greatest fears/phobias) so I refused. I was told at that point that I would never be able to have any more children which devastated me at the time because I had been dreaming of having a little golden-haired daughter. Real dreams, almost every night. It took me a few years to come to terms with it because the dream had been so vivid. Then a really odd thing happened. My sister, Shelley had a baby girl who looked just like the little girl in my dream. I don’t know why, but I was finally able to put my disappointment at not bringing another child into the world to rest. That little girl in my dream had come into this world another way. When I met my niece for the first time she looked at me as if to say: ‘I know you.’ It was uncanny.

5 things on today’s ‘to do’ list -

Finish the next chapter of my book about the homeless girl

Get through a day of work without plotting to make a pair of cement shoes for my boss

Visit all the blogs I love to read

Make chocolate banana bread as a little end of the week treat

Spend the evening watching the DVD of Atonement I got for my birthday. Can it possibly be as good as the book? I mean, in my eyes Ian McEwan is a god!

5 Things I’d Do If I Was A Billionaire -

Buy a house

Leave a little aside for a rainy day

Set up my own publishing/film production company and give deals to all the great writers I know who are constantly rejected by the mainstream publishers

Give at least ten million to all my favourite charities

Distribute the rest of the money among my family and friends. No point in keeping it all to yourself, is there? So I probably wouldn’t be a billionaire for long. Then I’d get a T-shirt made that said : ‘I used to be a billionaire but now I’m happy.’

5 bad habits -

what, only five?

Leaving books all over the place (I read a few things at once)

Not always being able to say NO straight away even if I really want to

Letting depression de-motivate me

Fearing success (I think that’s why I have so many unfinished writing projects. I don’t fear rejection, I fear success. Sounds odd, I know, but I am used to being rejected. Success would mean looking differently at the way I view myself)

Jumping to conclusions and overreacting

5 places I’ve lived -

Glasgow, Scotland

Donegal, Ireland

Italy (for a year as a backpacker)

Sydney, Australia

In my head on Introspection Street (yeah, I used to be a Goth)

5 jobs I’ve had –

Teacher

Editor

Waitress

Gardener

Fiction buyer in a bookshop

So, that’s it. Thanks, Gemma, that was fun.

I’m not going to tag anyone but if you feel so inclined, please feel free to indulge.

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Please spare a thought or a prayer over the next few days and weeks for the people of Parkersburg, Iowa, who have been badly affected by a tornado. Dear blogging friends of mine – Britt and her Mum – are in the midst of the devastation right now.

I am so sorry, dear ones. What an awful thing to go through. I am thinking of you and praying for you every day.

Moments Of Sadness

I mentioned in a previous post that my friend, Andie, had passed away from breast cancer, leaving behind two children. Her ten-year old daughter was ill on the weekend with a sore throat and Andie’s husband rang me in a panic to find out if I knew how to make Andie’s lemon soother drink. Lizzie wouldn’t settle without it and was kicking up a fuss. He was distraught, so I immediately drove over with lemons, honey, ginger and on the off chance that Lizzie liked the same type of drink as my son – lemonade.

Thankfully, I was right. Lizzie was pleased with hot lemonade with a teaspoon of honey and a tiny twist of fresh lemon. She sipped it in her Sailor Moon mug with tears in her eyes. ‘Daddy doesn’t know how to do anything,’ she said. ‘He can’t even iron my school skirts properly. I want Mummy back but I know she can’t come back. She used to read me stories when I was sick. Now Daddy does but he doesn’t do the voices. I liked Mummy doing the voices. She used to call me Chick. She used to say ‘What’s happening, Chick?’ Now no one calls me Chick. Do you remember when she used to call me Chick?’

I remembered. Andie called all the women she knew Chick, all the girls too. It was her thing the way some people use Honey or Sweetie. A term of endearment. I can’t tell you how sad I felt thinking that dear little Lizzie would not hear her mother calling her Chick again. Ever.

Andie’s husband was sitting at the kitchen table when Lizzie finally dropped off to sleep. Slumped, defeated.’ This is the hard part,’ he said. ‘ The every day stuff that I don’t know like how Lizzie is supposed to take her trumpet to school on Tuesdays and that she starts at 8.30 instead of 9AM on that day, and that she likes little notes in her lunchbox and a dollar on Fridays to buy popcorn from the school canteen. Andie did so much with the kids and she never wrote it down. There is so much I don’t know. I feel so guilty like I’ve been an absent father for years but all I was guilty of was working and providing a good life for my family. Lizzie was in tears the other day because I wouldn’t let her feed a pigeon that came into the garden. Apparently Andie had let her feed it. They had called it Kenny. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.’

It’s the everyday reminders of what the person we have lost was which colour our grief. What they knew. What they did. What they were. How they interacted with others in a way only they could. It’s the little things that are hardest to get over – the way sandwiches were made, or coffee was prepared, or that song that was always turned up when it came on the radio and danced to in the kitchen. It’s the little things that were real. And just as they make it difficult for us to forget, they can also help us to remember. And as sorrow eases with time, to remember can be a comfort. I hope that one day Lizzie finds comfort in remembering the woman who used to call her Chick.

Fatigued

Occasionally my anaemic state catches up with me and energy is in short supply. It’s a bit of a crash and burn situation.

It hit me during the latter half of this week. Feet-dragging, neck-lolling, frayed nerve-ends exhaustion. My doctor has been on at me for years to manage my time better. I tend to be one of those gung ho, in boots and all kind of people with little regard for how much sleep I’m getting or whether I’m eating properly. It is not a good idea to go, go ,go when one’s normal energy levels shatter at the smallest jolt.

Towards the end of the week I could feel the familiar haze descending; the lassitude, the sense of pointlessness, and the stubborn resistance of my mind telling my body to keep on going. No matter what. But the body wouldn’t oblige.

All I wanted to do in the evenings was sleep. No reading. No TV. No blogging. Sometimes that’s the way it works. There is a shutting down of sorts. Sometimes too much effort is required for everything.

I tried to motivate myself today by going for a walk. I stood at a point overlooking the harbour where there is a wrought-iron fence you can link your fingers through. I stand there often, pretending I’m a princess at the entrance to a castle, looking out at the world but unable to participate because my father refuses to let me leave the castle so that my position behind the fence is a kind of prison. Just as fatigue is.

But you gotta respect fatigue. All that spirit is willing but the flesh is weak stuff has a ring of truth to it. It’s a busy, busy world we live in. There is always something to do, people to see, places to go, blogs to visit. Fatigue knows what it’s talking about. It is the motherly type, shaking its finger at those who disregard the signs it throws in our path.

The fence left a gritty sheen on my fingers, smelling metallic as blood. A young man, dressed entirely in white called to me as I gazed out to sea, indicating the stairs leading to the road. He must have thought I was a tourist, he must have thought that if he didn’t call out to me I would stay, stranded forever behind that fence. He must have thought that I thought use of the stairs was forbidden.

So I walked down those stairs, black-tinged sandstone with lines of moss at the edges, throwing out my arms as I reached the bottom as a child does when they cross the finishing line in a race. There was a chill wind coming in from the bay but there was the clean touch of triumph in the air.

I saw the young man look back and I indicated my descent with a flourish. He adjusted his collar, laughing to himself, his white clothes billowing like sails. I took my eyes off him for a moment as a boat sounded its horn, and when I looked back, he was gone.

Happy, I walked back up the stairs and headed for home. My fatigue for the moment, forgotten, blown apart unexpectedly by the white-clothed stranger. All I could think of as I headed for home was something my son always says when the daily routine has been abandoned:

‘Normal service will resume shortly.’

And with fatigue currently at bay, I know it will.