Honey for Fear

8th August 2011 Monday

Yesterday I Googled Manuka Honey and ordered a medicinal tube - it is reputed to have wonderful healing properties for deep wounds and ulcers that won’t heal. Like the one on my leg. This morning at the clinic when my lovely nurse removes the dressing she says the hole - which turned heart shaped, and then diamond shaped as it opened up - is still a bit mucky.

I say I want to try Manuka honey.

She says, ‘Oh yes good idea, we use that here.’

And she squeezes some dark sticky goo into the cavity. Now I feel hopeful that it will clear up. So long as I keep letting out all the other gunk. I like the idea of bee sweetness as an antidote to fear and anger.

If only that could soothe all the deep wounds and burning rage in Tottenham tonight.

Nadir and Zenith

7th August 2011 Sunday

The eye drop angel turns out to be my dear sister. She manages to explain to my father how to use the blue plastic contraption that holds the bottle that he has to squeeze into his eye. But when my husband and I visit him this afternoon for a game of scrabble both the little bottles are empty except for two drops. One for now and one for tomorrow.

This morning we walk along wide gravel paths through a forest of ramrod pine trees. My husband always notices the clouds whenever we are out walking. He says,

‘Aren’t they beautiful?’

He says it a lot. We stop and gaze at the sky which today is rolling grey smudged over glimpses of blue and cotton wool white.

He says he is happier than he has ever been. More real. More emotional. That clouds and music and animals touch his heart. That he doesn’t mind really about losing his vocabulary. That you don’t need words to feel the beauty of the world.

‘But you do need them to communicate,’ I say. ‘ To share it.’

When we leave my father this evening he says that the late afternoon is usually the nadir of his day. But today our game of scrabble made it into the zenith for him.

Later I ask my husband if he knows what they mean - those words - nadir and zenith.

He says, ‘Why would I?’

Because he used to.

But he knows he made my father happy. And he enjoyed the game - he won it with a huge score. He doesn’t need to know that canny means cunning or spume means froth. It’s only me feeling lonely now racketing around in the rooms of my big useless vocabulary. Which isn't that big - only a cupboard really compared to the palace that my husband used to live in. So now I'm downsizing it, choosing the words I think he’ll recognise. So I won’t have to stop and explain. My everyday nadir.

But he’s right - there are lots of ways of saying I love you. Without words. And anyway his heart is as big as the sky. I don't need to translate that.

A Single Step

6th August 2011 Saturday

I wake early - my head a kaleidoscope of worrying - the sick pussy cat, my father’s eye drops, a friend in crisis, the husband of my niece in Syria, what to do with the feast of blackberries in the fridge.....

We treat ourselves to croissants and blackcurrant jam for breakfast. The morning is already slipping through my fingers - unused. We make non urgent plans - to clean, to shop, to allot, to cook, to garden. I feel tearful and glued to the chair with apathy. My husband makes it easy for me. He holds my hands across the table and says he’ll go Sainsbury’s and we don’t have to pick all the plums till tomorrow and we can’t garden because it’s raining. And then I find I can stand up and start loading the washing machine. I think about that phrase - ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’.

Sometimes doing the next thing in front of my face can hoick me out of my resistance. But sometimes it makes it stronger. I wonder what it would be like if I didn’t try and resist my resistance and just stayed with it - sat at the table a bit longer and allowed inspiration to bubble up - like forgotten happiness.

Later the sun filters through the clouds and I take my secateurs into the garden and start hacking at the thatch of ivy clawing its way up the wall and into the gutters. I marvel at its tenacity, the strength of its tiny fibrous rope roots. The voracity of its life force - considering the impoverished soil it lives in, how far it stretches. How far it is from home.

My Teacher

5th August 2011 Friday

When I come downstairs this morning I’m sure I can smell cat spray in the pussy cat’s area in the kitchen. Maybe that black tom is back. I clean everything down including the cat flap and the boot rack and the walls and units. I can still smell it. Then I see them - right by the back door - the two pots of purple basil my husband brought back from the allotment the other day. I laugh and push my nose into the leaves - and there it is - a strong smell of cat pee...

We are out all day - walking and talking with a new friend along the coastal path high above the sea at Brixham.

We don’t get home till nearly seven. No pussy cat to greet us. He hasn’t touched his food. I search the house. Call him in the garden. I start to worry. Then I have an idea. I check the cat flap. It’s locked. I must have slipped the catch closed when I cleaned it this morning. I open the front door and there he is. He has been shut out all day. I am mortified. He eats a bit of tuna and then he is sick. Four times. But I think it’s his ongoing stomach thing and not because he couldn’t get in the house. Not because he’s cross with me.

He’s sleeping now. He’s endlessly patient and forgiving. He is my teacher.

Not Being There

4th August 2011 Thursday

I don’t want to ring my father too early in case he has gone back to bed. I leave it till 8.30am.

He says,

‘I just put my hand out to the phone to call you and you rang me.’

He can’t get the plastic eye drop contraption to work. It’s supposed to make it easier to get the drops in his eye. He says it’s empty. I know it’s not. I say use the other bottle, the second one. He says he can’t get the top off.

I say,

‘I’ll come over - give me forty five minutes.’

I’m not dressed yet - didn’t sleep well last night.

Driving to Honiton I try and think of who can help him with the eye drops. I’m not sure if it’s in the remit of the housekeeper - who would be perfect as she is kind and competent - and on the premises. But anyway she’s on holiday.

When I arrive I find his wonderful cleaner is there and she has told him how to work the eye drop contraption - ‘ tilt your head right back’ - and she has successfully unscrewed the top off the second tiny bottle.

She is the angel for today.

I ring him again later. He says all the liquid has leaked out of the eye drop bottle and he’s going to order some more from the pharmacy. I wonder what he did. I ring my sister and she says she will go in the morning and help him with the drops. But he is supposed to do it four times a day. Put one drop in at a time. The miniscule bottles are to last for four weeks.

It would take me one second to do it. But I’m not there. So I’m praying for an angel.

Cataract Day

3rd August 2011 Wednesday

Now the sky is bruised with aubergine purple clouds and a hot wind is blowing through the house. I hope the rain is coming. It has been sweltering all day.

This morning my sister and I wheel my father through the doors of Axminster hospital and into the theatre where we leave him to be prepped for his cataract operation. He says he feels like a parcel being delivered. We have three hours before we can collect him - an unexpected treat. I feel the sun burning the back of my neck as we walk the short distance into the town.

The heat reminds us of our holiday coming up in South Africa next January and we sift through the rails of sale clothes in a department store searching for flimsy cotton tops - imagining it will be even hotter then than it is today. Nothing fits. So we cross the road to Hugh’s River Cottage Canteen and order char grilled pepper and courgette bruschettas for lunch and chat to a family of South Africans sitting at the next table. We ask them the best place to eat in Knysna where we’ll be going and they say we won’t recognise it if we haven’t been there for nearly fifty years.

My father is cheerful but tired when we take him home - his left eye covered with a clear plastic shield - to distinguish him from a pirate. He mustn’t remove it for four hours. I want to stay and help him - drip the tricky eye drops in, but he won’t let us. We leave him with a tray of cream cheese sandwiches, tomato slices and avocado pear dribbled with Lea and Perrin’s sauce. And instructions to keep his head up and to press his buzzer in the night if he’s worried.

I lie on the bed with my throbbing leg up against the wall and think about what’s in the fridge for supper. My husband comes back from the allotment with two pots of purple basil, a young stripey courgette, some yellow cherry tomatoes and perfumed bunch of frilly sweet peas. So I decide to make my own version of bruschettas with half a toasted ciabatta loaf smothered in buttery, garlicky, lemony, prawns and all the allotment bounty chopped up and tumbled in olive oil.

We eat them on our laps with the scent of sweet peas mingling with the smell of sauted prawns and the pussy cat leaps up on the sofa beside me, shaking rain drops from his fur like a wet dog. I wish my father was here beside me too and not alone in his room with a sore eye, awake in bed listening to the rain dripping from the window sills.

Getting to the Big Stuff

2nd August 2011 Tuesday

We have been away for a few days in hot wide Wiltshire, walking through chalky downs and vistas of wheat fields and circles of standing stones. We stayed with a dear friend in a borrowed farmhouse - soft deep beds, pristine white towels - chickens to feed, silky eared whippets to stroke, a swimming pool to cool off in, lunch of salmon and salad, strawberries and cream to eat in the shade of an arching white buddleia. And feeling so cherished in her company.

I write this with my leg up on a stool. The small black hole in my shin has turned into a suppurating cavern. I love the nurse at the clinic who has been treating me. She is calm and warm and professional and listens to me. And says she’ll talk to the surgeon who did my operation. I trust her totally. She is also lean limbed and suntanned and wears high strappy sandals and short glamourous dresses. She packs the hole with iodine cream.

The lovely homeopath I consulted this morning says,

‘Take it easy. You have an open wound to heal. That takes up a lot of your energy.’

She also says she will send me remedies for unexpressed anger and being over-responsible for everyone in my life and something for my knackered adrenals.

Later when I’m in the roaring town she rings on the mobile and asks if I have a pace maker or a hip replacement as the remedy she is going to subscribe is to eject unwanted stuff from the body. Which could also eject good stuff. That is a powerful remedy.

I’ve been thinking about ejecting those smouldering feelings. Practising on the small stuff. Like doing some ranting and raving on cushions about the neighbours’ children who scream and shout on and on and on all day in their garden. And their parents allow it. And about my father’s doctor who took him off his diuretic and now he’s all wobbly and breathless.

And then maybe I’ll get to the big stuff - about losing my husband.