The Centre Cannot Hold

5th June 2011 Sunday

After our ‘Course in Miracles’ morning, seven women, talking, sharing, laughing and learning; and our feast of a lunch - carrot, apple and cashew soup, olive bread, quinoa broad bean salad, green salad, potato salad, followed by black grapes and chocolate brownies - we sit in my car in a lay-by - my sisters and I - for a few minutes before they have to leave.

They ask me ‘How is it for you - really?’

I say I’m alright and of course I am - really - but my centre is wobbly. I know it’s not like being in The Great War - I just looked up that phrase

‘Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold’

from Yeats’s poem, but it describes my world today.

Most of my life I have been pursuing safety and certainty, looking to root myself somehow, somewhere, to feel at home in my skin - pointlessly as it turns out - searching in the wrong place. Now it seems is the time to start another journey - to walk with uncertainty by my side - a wolf snapping at flies in the air but not eating me. I could choose my companions - willingness and trust instead of fear and loneliness.

After today and all the loving kindness showered on me by these dear women I can see a good place to start this journey is to make my husband right. Instead of wrong. About everything. And to ask for the grace to give up my own certainty that I always know best. As a wise person once said,

‘Would you rather be right or happy?’

I’m so so grateful that I have another tomorrow to find out.

Now my husband is calling me for supper - his wonderful poached eggs on toast.

A Gazebo for a Daschund

4th June 2011 Saturday

Listening to the radio this morning at breakfast - the interviewer, talking about pet accessories, says,

‘You are talking to a man who once bought a gazebo for a Daschund.’

My husband says, ‘I have no idea what that sentence means’.

In the night the heads of elderflowers and sliced lemons steeping in their sugar syrup turn into a deep pink sloppy gloop. I still follow the recipe, and pour ladle after ladle into a bowl draped with a hot j-cloth and squeeze as much as I can through the mesh with my hands. It feels like milking a soft leaking heart. The liquid that seeps out is the colour of clear pink rose petals. What’s left is a mass of tiny pale stars clinging to the cloth. Although it’s more like thick syrup than cordial it tastes like the perfume of a hot summer’s day and it makes enough to fill three empty wine bottles.

I take two of them to share for supper at my sister’s. My newly retired but still working elder sister, her daughter and her two longtime friends who feel like dear family members now, are visiting for the weekend. We arrive to the smell of asparagus risotto being lovingly stirred on the stove by my nearly Italian niece and her Italian friend. She is the one who taught her, and now me, that the risotto is ready when you stir it with the wooden spoon and it’s ‘come un’onda’ - like a wave. We laugh when I remind her and she stirs the pale creamy sea in the pan but says it’s not making waves today. Still, when we sit down later, after glasses of gin and tonic and pink elderflower champagne, the risotto tastes perfect - like love on a summer’s night.

We leave early - for me - because my husband has been working on the allotment all day. And because it is very tiring for him to follow conversations now, which could be full of words like gazebo or daschund, which trip him up and leave him on the edge. His world leaking into the dark.

Hot and Bitter

3rd June 2011 - Friday

I am hot as a volcano core all day, swallowing tears. More cards from clients for my husband. One of them makes us both cry. I know their names. My husband says,

I don’t know who they are.

I boil up 2 kilos of sugar and pour it over of thirty pink elderflower heads that I picked last week, along with sliced lemons, their pared zest and a spoon of citric acid - Sophie Grigson’s recipe for Elderflower Cordial. I don’t have that much sugar in the house so I use some jam sugar that I find at the back of the cupboard. But I think I’m going to end up with Elderflower jelly tomorrow.

The last asparagus spears from the allotment - I grill them and we eat them with boiled eggs and bitter lettuce leaves while the sun scorches the garden. My husband says he’ll take me to the dentist as he doesn’t have anything to do. I say lets go for a walk afterwards - but it must be somewhere shady.

We wander round the ancient hill fort at Blackbury Camp where the bluebells are all green budded now and the oak and beech trees tower above us like a cathedral dome. It’s totally deserted and so hot even the birds are silent. It feels like a magical oasis. I lie down on a long flat log in dappled shade and nearly fall asleep. But my husband is restless so we walk away and the gap of our differences widens between us with every step.

Tonight I feel as hot and bitter as the purple mustard leaves he grows on the allotment.

Firsts

2nd June 2011 Thursday

A momentous day - he has arrived - our great nephew. The text with the news finally comes at 12.27 but I don’t get it till 2 pm while we are sitting outside under the sun umbrella after our sweet potato salad lunch. He’s 7lb 12oz - mother and baby safe and well. Tonight they send us a photo of him sleeping with his perfect minature fingers curled on a white blanket, a soft gingery down on his head. Not even a day old but it’s as if he has always been here - the first of the next generation - breathtaking in his beauty.

My father is so happy when I tell him this afternoon - I can see the tears in his eyes - a great grandson carrying his name into the future.

Some more firsts - the first really hot day of summer. I eat the first ripe strawberry at the allotment. I pick the first broad beans. For the first time we play scrabble outside on the patio after supper the air still warm at 9 pm. But not the first time my husband wins the game - even if he doesn’t know the meaning of some of the words he lays down.

Trusting

1st June 2011 Wednesday

10 am - In the hospital waiting room I read a text from my niece in law - her baby has started his journey into the world. I think of her while I’m lying on the plastic couch, the doctor injecting my leg with anesthetic. It hurts a lot and I take deep breaths. But I know - even though I haven’t done it - that having a baby must hurt much more than this.

The doctor is young, red haired and freckled with alabaster white skin. She is the same doctor who took out the BSC on my father’s ear several years ago While she cuts out the small round carcinoma on my shin, I keep my eyes fixed on the ceiling and she tells me about her recent holiday in Croatia. How they are still repairing the bombed buildings in Dubrovnik, trying to match ancient roof tiles in the old part of the city even though it’s sixteen years since the end of the war. I feel her tugging stitches in my leg. Sewing me up.

Afterwards the nurse says I should rest today, keep my leg elevated. When I get home the house is echoey empty. Just a row of coloured pens neatly placed on the table and a hand written note on my pillow from our sweet nine year old nephew. I strip the beds and put on a load of washing. My husband is in Bristol all day so I make myself lunch from left overs - tomato tart from last night and bitter lettuce leaves. And I dig into the bowl of chocolate fudge sauce hardened in the fridge to the consistency of thick honey. Three spoonfuls is enough. I feel wobbly and tearful.

Now my leg is throbbing sore. I’m not supposed to get the dressing wet but I’ll find a way to have a bath. No news yet about the baby. I’m trusting all is well and keep thinking about this new little being who is coming to join our family. This could be day one of his life.

Peacock Shimmering

31st May 2011 Tuesday

While the family queue for pedal boat rides at Woodlands Leisure Park, I take five minutes out and sit alone in the sun on a picnic bench outside a cafe, with a bottle of water, watching the half term holiday world go past. I hear the mournful shriek of a peacock splitting the air long before I see it. Then suddenly it’s walking directly, purposefully, towards my bench trailing long turquoise tail feathers. It stop inches away, turns its back to me and displays, raising the shaking fan of its tail into the sky - a huge shimmering arc of underwater fishes, glinting in the sun. I follow it with my camera and it seems oblivious as I take photo after photo while it preens its glorious sea green feathers and cocks its head - certain sure of its role as king of the park.

I can’t help feeling it chose me today, alone, briefly, at my picnic bench, to say,

‘Look at you. Let’s see the colors of you. It’s easy - just open your arms. And shimmer. - even when you think you are waiting in the wings.’

Waiting in the Wings

30th May 2011 Bank Holiday Monday

12.30 pm I turn the oven off. The chicken is perfectly cooked in its heavy Le Creuset pot, lemon stuffed, fragrant with melting onions and garlic, spiked with rosemary. The potatoes are rough edged, crisp brown roasted. Gravy made, carrots and spring greens chopped and waiting for boiling water. The meringues are crumby chewy, fruit salad chilled, cream whipped. But our visitors are stuck in traffic at Stonehenge. Nothing to do but wait.

3.15 Suddenly the house is full of children’s squeals, little shoes in the hall, a clear plastic football, raincoats and suitcases and soft cuddly toys. And so it begins - a switch flicks in my solar plexus and my life goes into standby mode, waiting in the wings, while my heart flows out to these dear people, tired or hurting or bouncing with delight. We become Auntie Trish and Uncle Bobble for a few precious days. Luckily no one seems to notice that the chicken is a bit dry.

The pussy cat slinks under our bed, his tail low, his eyes wide, and stays there till late into the night when unfamiliar voices are finally stilled.