I have an old brown leather purse that belonged to my Nan. She died when I was 11 or 12. I;m 59 now and the purse is still in the drawer next to my bed. It has a certain smell and it takes me back to when I used to visit her with my mother. She was in her 80's then and I would sit in front of her patiently like a dog waiting for her to give me some sweets. She always wore the same brown zip up slippers and an apron and her hair would be tied back. A sort of Doris Lessing style although she would never have known that. I can see her wrinkled face now and see her hand dipping into her apron pocket. I used to play with her skin on her hand to see how long it stayed standing up. I do the same with my mother sometimes now. She had one of the old-fashioned hearing aids that she would turn off. Her apron smelled too but it was a good smell - one of warmth and love.
Inside the purse are some old pennies in tiny compartments held together by tiny clasps.
One day she was there and the next she was in a home and then she came home for a time and then she was gone. I was too young to see her in her last day or go to the funeral. She's still here in my heart and I'm starting to well up a little now as I type. I'm going to get the purse out again later and take a look and a smell. Go back and see her again. I miss her.
Peter - what an incredibly moving piece, and so beautifully written. That tangible, loving quality I go back to again and again in Laurie Lee is here in your writing too. I read it aloud to my husband, who was as moved by it as I was. And it's your first piece for the project too I think! I do hope you'll try other prompts in the archive: all stay open for contributions.
I love all of it, and find this sentence particularly powerful, coming as it does with vertiginous as well as poignant perspective, after all the preceding ones which are so closely focussed in on your gran and all you loved about her and the purse: 'One day she was there and the next she was in a home and then she came home for a time and then she was gone.'
I will make the new month's page on the cure for sleep book site tomorrow all being well, and yours will be the first piece I curate on it. Once I've done that I will come back here to comments to give you your direct URL so that you can include in any posts you want to do or if you have a website or writing course application where having it will be of use to you.
Heartfelt thanks. I think I've been waiting to write that piece for many years without the courage. I think seeing my aged mother, 95, brings back memories too. We used to visit my auntie who she lived with together on the bus. Happy yet poignant memories. Little do we know when we are at such a tender age how things come back to haunt us. Thank you also for being my first subscriber who is not a relative or a friend. Perhaps I have made a new friend in a way. I look forward to posting on your other prompts. Peter
It really is a beautiful piece, Peter. And I will look forward to more contributions from you, as you have time and interest to take part. Here, as promised, is your direct link to your words in the story archive. Very best, Tanya
Oh I'm glad you told me that! My usually rigorous notification system for spotting all new stories has something failed me this week then as I haven't seen that other one come through. I've got tired eyes now tonight, but I will search for your other piece tomorrow mid morning! Something to look forward to! And then I will use the comments over on that theme to give your link and my response. Thank you Peter!
Written by Fran Pollard. I'm from Surrey UK, l live in Cambodia, but currently in Portugal for a couple of months.
Frayed and burnt at the ends, the red thread coils on the wooden table I sit at. I haven’t discarded it, but I don’t know why I keep it. It lays dormant.
Her eyelids flutter like she’s dreaming, plumbing the depths of another world, at end of the video call. She’s propped up on a pile of books to level the angle of my chin. It’s evening, moon rises in the darkening sky; shadows sweep the walls. She takes her time. She opens her eyes, trancelike, and shifts her focus to mine. “Your grandmother is here.”
I reach for the thread and spiral it around my index finger.
“She liked her freedom. Grey hair, slightly curly. Short; rounded figure. Eyes exactly like yours. She was a loner, like you.”
51 days earlier, I’m in Nepal, looping string around my wrist. In the Linga Devi temple in Kathmandu, before the heat of the day, I make a promise: to honour the divine feminine- her strength, her power, her creative force. I make a 40 day commitment.
The medium speaks slowly, purposefully. “She wants you to put the red thread back on your left wrist.”
Shit.
“Put it back on as a sign of commitment: to yourself; to loving yourself, to protecting yourself; and as a sign of your connection to her in blood.”
I sit cross-legged atop a white washed wall. My back to the 50m cliff drop into the Atlantic a mere meter behind me. I face Maria: Senhora da Rocha, in Portuguese- the lady of the rocks. Mother Mary to me; the Virgin Mary to my grandmother with her Catholic upbringing. The snake of red thread in my hands. In a different temple this time, I reclaim the serpent as a sign of my commitment to myself, to her.
Fran - thank you so much for joining the project, and with this soulful piece.
Among the deep roots of this project is a book called True Tales of American Life by Paul Auster, that meant a lot to me in the time of my own beloved grandmother going from me back in 2005/6: they were true stories the author collected from people across the US, with the brief 'true stories that feel like fiction' - having some element of fate, mystery and so on. I felt that one day if I wrote anything myself, it would have to be in that mode, as so much of my life has felt unaccountable by western rational standards. And once I became published myself, I wanted to make a project in the lineage of that book by Auster, feeling sure they were others out there with similar experiences to my own. Your story is so deeply the kind of experience I care about, in my own life and others. Thank you for sharing it.
It's also beautifully written. I do hope you will try other prompts in the archive from the last three years. All stay open without deadline.
Here is your link to your piece in the story archive...
Thirty years ago I visited Skye with a friend. It was a raggle taggle holiday, we slept in a damp, wheelless camper van marooned in the garden of my friend's friends house. One day we visited the site of a cleared village, the people thrown off their land so the laird could bring in sheep. I got out of the car and was struck by a wave of sadness and longing so strong that I didn't want to go further, the residual emotional charge was like an elextric fence keeping me out. My friend went exploring. She came back with a strange piece of rounded granite with one shiny flat side. It was the size of a large egg. She gave it to me and for the next thirty years it was placed on a shelf in every one of the many, houses, flats, rooms and sheds I lived in. I felt a strange reverence for it, that small granite enigma.
One day watching some tv archeology programme I realised what it was. The knowledge was sudden, profound and immediate, I went over to the shelf, picked it up, noted for the umpteenth time how well it fitted my hand and knew it to be a hand quern. A woman on Skye had used it daily to grind grain on a flat stone, hence the flat shiny side. I could see the dark mark her thumb had made through many hours of holding it, her hands must have been about the same size as mine.
A few years later I looked at it one morning and had another sudden realisation - it wanted to go home. It was a struggle to let it go, we'd kept company for half my life, but i contacted a museum in Skye, picked at random. Wouldn't you know it they had just got funding for an exhibition of hand querns. It was part of a wider movement to acknowledge and document the daily lives of women on Skye through the ages. So I boxed it up carefully, wished it 'Mar sin leibh agus gabh turas sàbhailte' and sent it off. Now its back home in Skye, gone but never forgotten.
Stevie! What an utterly compelling experience, and I love how you've written it. I rushed to find my husband and read it aloud to him - he shared my goosebumps-sensation. How soulful, how satisfying - for you experiencing all that, and for us here reading you. Thank you. Here is your link:
I spotted it with a kestrel’s eye. In a flash, I was on it. I’d been hovering in the museum shop – ‘Street Life’ they call it. It was on a trip ‘home’ with our then young children. A toy bus, but not just any toy bus. Navy blue and cream livery rushed me back to my childhood. EYMS: East Yorkshire Motor Services. And then I noticed the details. A 1970s Daimler Fleetline double-decker: my era. ‘59C Circular via Preston/Hedon’: my route. My ‘not my’ village named. Registration plate AFT 784C. I can’t be certain of that accuracy.
This bus took me home, every school day in the second half of the 70s. A circular route for people who never left. Dad’s patients. Shopworkers and shoppers. But a basket empty of school friends for this direct grant boy, the only one at the ‘posh’ school from my backwater village. Left to my top deck devices, I discovered a love of language forms and structures – irregular verbs, subjunctives, indirect speech. Yes, indirect speech, which I see now as a metaphor for a largely remote, if unhostile, teenage existence, where nothing seemed direct, close, or intimate. Instead, I found companionship in the reliable patterns of accidence, and security in the sounds of the ancients.
I’m looking at my toy bus now. It sits in pride of place on a middle shelf, beside a pot of raptor feathers, one of which is from a kestrel. I used to spot them from the top deck of the 59C, on the stretch beyond the lime trees. The bus is a quasi-talismanic die-cast treasure I’d give away last of my possessions. It tells me where I came from, where I went to, and – fittingly for a circular route – what I never managed to leave behind.
Oh Paul. What a story - and so so beautifully written. All of it but especially these lines, where the beauty of description - a tale told - deepens and expands into new perspectives on past times:
'Yes, indirect speech, which I see now as a metaphor for a largely remote, if unhostile, teenage existence, where nothing seemed direct, close, or intimate.'
and
'It tells me where I came from, where I went to, and – fittingly for a circular route – what I never managed to leave behind.'
This feels like a piece you could publish beyond this project. I do hope you'll look for some print or online publications to send it to...
My mom and I would have terrible fights as is typical of most teens going through the growing pains between childhood and adulthood. Our fights would devastate me, leaving me feeling very unsafe. I would go to my grandparents house and spend the night often during our fights. I slept on a floral upholstered sofa in the living room, under a crisp white sheet, folded in half and a blanket. I would turn with my face towards the back of the sofa and pull my arms and legs up into a semi-fetal position, cuddling the back of the sofa. I would stare up at this painting in an ornate gilded frame. The painting was of several women and men dressed in Victorian clothing standing and sitting around a Victorian room talking to each other. I spent sleepless hours escaping into this painting. I wondered at the feel of the blue dress on one woman and what the man whispering in the ear of another was saying to make her look so engaged. Sometimes if I half closed my eyelids, through the blurry tears, I could see myself in that room, talking and laughing with those people. When my gram passed away, I took the painting and it hangs today over my sofa, where my little granddaughter looks up at it and asks me to tell her what the people are saying to each other.
Charly.. thank you so much for joining the project, and with this fascinating piece. What a sense of time and place and emotion you've created in so few words. I will be very glad to add this to the story archive. Before I can, could you reply here please with a last name or last name initial I can use please? Tanya xx
It gave me another chance to read your words. How moving, how vertiginous, that you are now the grandmother, and able to share your gram's precious painting with a granddaughter of your own.
On the landing windowsill in my grandparent's house, there was a red glass chalice, shaped like a brandy balloon, but much larger. The light shining through pooled red on the white gloss sill. It was just the right size for a child to put a hand into – very carefully. This was precious.
And I have a memory of putting my hand inside it, and drawing it out covered in blood. My hand, gloved in blood. It’s one of the most vivid memories of my childhood.
The thing is, it’s not true. It never happened. None of the adults remember it, and there’s no way I could have hidden all that blood. Or not panicked and run for help. It’s a strange, false memory. I don’t know where it came from. A dream? A fantasy? A mixture of the image of red light on my hand and other memories of bleeding (I stood on a cucumber frame, I fell off my bike…). It’s strange that this image - so visceral, so real – has somehow inserted itself into my brain and lingered there. How did that happen, and why? Why?
Oh my. This is the kind of story, and writing, that leaves me thinking about it long afterwards, like passages in Lawrence (who I'm rereading now compulsively in these weeks after my mother's death: he seeming to have the gift of writing about a person's unique set of compulsions and memories, from the youngest child to the eldest elders in a family line).
Have you approached this in your poetry too? If you haven't yet, and do, I'd be so fascinated to read it, and see how it alters from this compelling prose telling...
Intriguing Sarah! The mind is so powerful, and it can be almost impossible to determine the truth of things sometimes. I haven't experienced anything quite like you have here however there have been countless times where memories and dreams have become interwoven, and I am left bewildered and unable to shake the feeling of it all.
The dust sticks to the velvet, round and around. The needle glides on to the oil slick vinyl, a familiar crackle and the music builds quietly. It’s a satisfying ritual remembered.
My Auntie was the coolest. My mothers youngest sister, she was closer to me in age. My godmother, charged with looking after me if anything happened to my parents. To my 11 year old self, she was a confident whirl of red lipstick, leather pencil skirts and fishnets. Slightly punk hair, eyeliner. Musky perfume mixed with cigarette smoke. A red beret and bright 80’s jewellery. Sang in a band. She used to babysit me & my sister and bring her spanish boyfriend & her Talking Heads records. The vinyl was exciting, weighty, full of future possibility. They would sit and discuss the latest song and then she’d sing along in our lounge and I was amazed by her. I’d tell my friends about this band they’d never heard of. Super cool.
Years later, I took her to see David Byrne play at Brighton dome and it was joyous, alive elation.
She left suddenly, dramatically, horribly. Gone in a second. They said she wouldn’t have known. Cerebral haemorrhage at 49 while her husband walked the dog.
When she died, I needed to find a way to be close to her, to believe that she was real, that she existed. To hold on to something physical, to feel her. To hear her. To also remember myself before the violent shock of loss.
The Talking Heads vinyl with its musty yellow cover and dusty surface still felt exciting. Carefully slid out of its cover. Make sure you don’t scratch it as the needle goes down, a forgotten act. I hear the familiar crackle and opening notes and I am 11 years old, watching her sing in her red hat and lipstick, visceral and alive. Ready for the possibilities before death and tragedy took over.
Helen, this piece from you is stunning. Such a vivid, living portrait of your gorgeous-sounding aunt... which makes then the sudden loss of her shocking to we you readers, as it was to you losing her so fast, so soon. I'm moved that this month's prompt has given you a way and a place to celebrate her, and this object that holds her memory. Thank you. And I wonder how writing this piece has left you feeling afterwards: it's a rare and wonderful thing to write this kind of tribute to a person so long after their passing. Here is your link:
Ah thanks as ever Tanya for your comments & time- I find this project to be such a positive, revelatory experience. I was really moved also by the words about your mum & how she was buried with the hankerchief from her lost love - so beautiful xx
Thank you - touched by how you think of this project. And for your words about Mum. Yes - beautiful that she was buried with it, but a bit poignant too. What a strange choice she made all that time ago, to turn away from him. She said more about that in her last days, so that I finally understood - even while wishing she'd thought differently. xxx
I can see your dear aunt so clearly, and almost feel her, such is the power of your writing Helen. I too had one very dear and quite magickal aunt who has now passed, she has also left such a mark upon me as your aunt has upon you. Thank you for sharing! x
I brought nothing from that place, I wanted nothing from that place. What I did bring I have long since set aside, sentimental tokens that were quick to lose their value, false currencies from a previous world.
I could have taken a piece of glass, something from that tall cabinet where garish clowns looked out with mocking humour, but she had polished them weekly until there was nothing on their cold, smooth surface to offer any emotional purchase, no chip nor flaw that made them any easier to break.
I could have taken something from his box of tools, sweat-browned and polished by his hard and calloused hands, sharpened to a safer edge or point, better to cut and shape white pine or straight-grained hardwoods, but they had only ever been dull instruments that played music loud enough to drown the cries.
I searched the rusting biscuit tins of phtographs, looking for one that still reatined some sweetness, but they were bitter with dead relations who stared out at guilty cameras with eyes unblinking and unconscious of those years to come. There were some of me that I wanted to rip and scatter but chose to burn with scathing laughter.
In the end I left with empty hands, a hollow heart that boomed like the bell that warns of a dangerous tide, and skin that bit thicker than the one I wore before, better to contain what feelings might remain, impervious to cuts from the splintered glass of clowns or the strop-sharp points of ancient chisels.
This is ferocious writing, Geoff, sharp with truth and pulsing with energy. I feel I'm getting a glimpse here into what you are working with in your memoir? Exciting if so. And the language! the sweat-browned tools. The strop-sharp points of ancient chisels. I'm rereading the early Lawrence novels like essential nutrients in these weeks after my mother's death, and although some of the references are precisely of their time and place, I'm astounded anew by his ability to describe a place, a people, through their work gestures and the words that go with that. I see that same energy running through your piece here. Yes, unnerving, exciting. Thank you. Here is your link: https://thecureforsleep.com/impossible-objects/#geoffcox
These objects, these pieces of clay, paper and stone. My talismen. My connections with the past, control of the present, and hopes for the future. Silent, inanimate objects, that scream for attention when I least expect it.
First is a palm-sized fragment of pottery I found on the beach, wave-washed between water and sand. Made from pale clay, it is unrefined, coarse grains visible in its thick broken edges. But once flipped, there’s the embossed face of a man crowned with thorns. I touch and hold it, though I’m not religious. I pray with it clasped tight in my hand. When all hopes seem extinguished, it’s my go-to ‘you never know’ lucky charm.
Beside it is a framed black-and-white photo. Four people standing at the brow of a hill, descending from left to right in size and age. First is mum, then my sisters, Christine and Diane. I'm on the end, the little one, half their size. We’re wearing flared jumpsuits, flower-power dresses and happy faces. Thumbs raised. It’s the way I want to remember us, ‘the girls’ posing for dad and his precious box-brownie.
Last is a cat. Tiny compared to the other objects, two-centimetres high, jet-black with ruby-glass eyes and a silver collar engraved with wiggly lines. It’s a nod to some hoped for Irish gypsy or witchcraft family blood. Carried everywhere by mum in a kid-leather purse as she dodged doodle-bugs during the London Blitz. Now it's mine.
Three ordinary objects with extra-ordinary significance.
I enjoyed reading this piece Jane, it made me think about the ordinary things I have that have extra-ordinary significance. I find it so fascinating how these things can hold such stories within their energy! Beautiful, thank you.
Gorgeous writing again from you Jane. How tangible you have made each of these three ordinary/extra-ordinary objects. Every detail vivid but in particular I got goosebumps at the thought of your mum as a girl carrying the little cat in kid-leather as bombs fell. And how you place that detail after describing such a delicate, intricate object - that's where a memory joins with story-telling to make art. I love how you and others make that alchemy happen so much within this very short form I invite you to try. Thank you.
Thank you. I sometimes spend days thinking about your writing prompts before putting pen to paper, remembering things, wondering about my opinion on something, playing with words and meanings as I walk. Occasionally, something happens and I think ‘ooo, I hope I can use that one day on Cure for Sleep’. See what an affect you’ve had on us! Take care xxx
I really didn’t have room for any of it in my already over-laden suitcase, but my dear aunt was very dogged and turned a deaf ear as she pushed her half-worn paintbrushes, blunt pencils and a pretty paint box down the sides of the case.
Laying the sketch pad on the very top, she paused for breath, and I took advantage quickly pulling the lid down, and hurriedly locating the zipper.
Laughing quietly to herself, my aunt left the room and reappeared triumphantly with her old wooden tabletop easel. I couldn’t believe it! There was absolutely no hope of fitting that in I gently but firmly stated, not wanting to seem ungrateful. I tried to remind her that with family, studies to complete, and work, creativity had to remain a long-lost dream for now, maybe forever. So, I really wouldn’t be needing an easel anytime soon. I would see her again in a year, I could take it then. Couldn’t I?
My words fell on death ears and the decision was made; the matter settled as I sat down upon the suitcase forcing it to close.
My auntie, just like my Nan, didn’t find the time to paint until she was in her sixth decade, (my Nan was in her seventh). This was driving my aunt’s determination. I would be different she said.
Oh, how I treasure her things as I paint and remember my dear aunt who knew before me that I would return to my painting. Painting that was left long ago when my desire for Art College wasn’t to be my journey in life. I was in my fifth decade when space allowed for the paint to flow, so yes, I was different.
Oh, how wonderful. As you say, your aunt knew you'd need it. I loved reading this; it had a great flow (like your art now?) and naturalness to it. Thank you for writing it.
Thank you, Jane! This memory was triggered by one of the other participants writing about their aunt. It is the first time I have written about it and I really enjoyed doing so. x
I think that's one reason I love 'the cure for sleep'. I often read something that someone else has written, and it reminds me of something from my own past. Food for thought.
Thank you so much for your kind words, Tanya! They mean so much to me - your encouragement always does. I will act on your final nudge, be assured.
Of the many blessings since I committed to creativity and decided to do the Travel & Nature Writing MA, becoming a small part of what you do in this project has been one of the richest. Your example - it started with reading TCFS - has shown me what it means to write with bravery and sensitivity.
Either today or tomorrow my finger will hit ‘Submit’ - and send my MA portfolio to its destiny. Within it sit some pieces that began life as responses to your prompts. They are pieces which are dear to me. Thank you for inspiring them - you are their midwife, I guess. Paul x
You will know how much your words mean to me, from having read my story of how isolated I felt for so long in my love of books, and the kinds of conversations about how to live and what to live for that I yearned to share with others beyond my husband, my diary, my communing with dead authors. To be part of our growing community of writers is a joy. So thrilled for you to have reached Submission day. Tan xx
I walk at night to my friends’ door. It’s been raining heavily; now it is just damp and cold. Every surface is shiny with rain. I walk past a bush thick with dark leaves and jet-black berries. It shines like jewellery. My Nan had a necklace of black stones, and the evoked memory is sharp and powerful. I was entranced by that necklace as a child. It was almost certainly plain glass, but I adored its dark glint. It lived in the same place as the rest of her jewellery: an old chocolate tin. Brooches, hairpins and clip-on earrings – none of it of any value, but every piece chosen with care and impeccable taste. A green brooch to pick out her eyes; ivory-coloured earrings to match her ancient hat. The same hat she wore for 40 years, its threadbare lining having gone through so many repairs, it was the millinery version of the Ship of Theseus.
So much of my Nan was encapsulated in that tin. The lack of pierced earrings (terrified of needles dear!); the obsessive care taken over looking after things. The pride taken in always looking her absolute best. Sadly the tin disappeared at the same time she left us. But remembering it now, I can recall how I loved to trawl through it as a child, imagining every cheap trinket to be an enormous precious jewel.
She was the most anxious and worry-prone person I have ever met, but also the warmest, kindest and most affectionate. In times of family emergency, it would be her who stood up with resolute courage to salvage something from the chaos, and that something was love. I still have photos of us together, and of her as a young woman, and I cherish them. And I cherish her.
"I don't want to sell it." Mum was quite clear about this, when someone offered to buy her beautiful ink drawing. It sat in a pretty frame, pride of place at the art exhibition in the local assembly rooms in town. She had been invited to exhibit some of her drawings ,which were always drawn in pen using various scraps of paper she found around the house, by an artist lady who lived just around the corner from my childhood home. This lady also taught young people to play guitar, myself included.
At the time of this exhibition, I couldn't understand why she wouldn't sell the drawing as it was probably the best thing there.
Over time, I have come to understand that was kind of the point - it was her best work and she wanted to hold onto it, thanks very much. Now, it sits on a bookcase in my home and I am so grateful that she would not part with it. The portrait, of an actress portraying Maid Marion from a television adaptation of Robin Hood, stares back at me, reminding me of the circumstances of it's non purchase all those years ago.
There's something so rare and refreshing about this story: a woman, a mother, making art on household materials, but knowing its worth, prizing it beyond what price gallery-goers would put on it. And yet not deprecating and refusing to risk sharing it either. Yes, I think that's rare in my experience. I love how you've shown us your new view of it too. Thank you as ever, Sharon, for being part of what we're doing here: our word gallery, look!
Actually, I wanted to say more to your response. It is so encouraging to get these reflections. As quite a novice writer in this space, I find my initial response to the prompts is "I don't have much/anything for this!". Oh how untrue that often is...
My parents were evicted from my childhood home in their fifties, rendering them homeless.
The object that holds most power for me from that house is a robust white jug with blue stripes and a pure white handle. Extracted from the texture of that house into my possession for years now, this jug is a kind of portal weighted with the love and pain of my childhood. There are times when I look at it and all I see is a void, a hollow glaze, a no thing thing.
My mother kept our baby bottles warm in this jug. It feels as though I have used it for nothing in particular and yet, it has had many uses. I have used it to rinse my children’s hair at bath time, I have used it to store their bath toys, to pour champagne from on my 40th birthday, and in latter years as a holding vessel to soak reusable menstrual pads.
Now it is an ornament I guess, and sits innocuously beside the bath.
I have guarded the jug closely, (despite myself as I thought I was above nostalgia), having announced more than once to my kids, “Careful of the jug!”
“Huh, why?”
“Because it means something to me”
How vacuous that must sound I think, how mealy and anaemic an explanation . And yet to tell them more would break my heart.
I know it doesn’t make sense but there are times when I will the thing broken. I suppose it’s something to do with the familiarity of loss, the inevitable finality of things, the desire to get it over with so I can add it to the grief section of my heart and stack it neatly among the bones of the other losses, quietly shushing it up.
Aoife... thank you again for joining the project and with this very moving piece, in which you do so much with the few words I give you all to work with. What you say about the jug as portal as well as everyday domestic object... you haven't just told us that, you've shown it. It holds the story of your parents' eviction, your mothering years in a home of your own... and then you've also used that last paragraph to striking effect: so that I found myself agreeing with you. Even though I have a horror of breaking things after a childhood where too much was broken in temper or lost in too many moves with unhappy adults, yes there comes a time when we almost wish these containers for too much would break and us be no longer in loving thrall to them. I will be fascinated to read more by you and perhaps in some of the prompts to learn more about your parents lives before the eviction and afterwards... but for now, here is your link to your words in the story archive:
Im humbled by your response Tanya , for the words and for the time you take and for your priceless encouragement; This is virign terrtitory for me sharing my words so publicly so a heart and soulfelt thanks to you. Your words "Containers for too much: and "in loving thrall" speak volumes to me in relation to this object I wrote about. Best wishes to everyone else here also xx
Smiling. Humble is good and useful - I've made lots of fine work from that place - but never let anyone in the writing world humble you if you know what I mean! You've contributed a really strong and affecting first piece; it's going to be great to have you contributing to future themes and ones in the archive too xx
When I was a child I believed in the world of my dolls and teddies and toys, that they had a real visceral life, no one else could see this but innately they were living an existence, their lives, just getting on with it, running a riding school, having families and so on.
Now I am old and have put away dolls and toys of my childhood, but conspiratorially my children and I talismanically imbue their toys to life. That there is a whole society of teddies and soft toys resident in one half of my sons bed. There are brothers and cousins and friends and rivalries. At bedtime we will talk about how they are doing, who is friend with who, what they get up to when the human backs are turned. When a new soft toy arrived they are introduced to everyone else due ceremony, sometimes they are nervous and shy with so many other toys to meet. These soft toy lives are the measure and reflection of our lives, soaked in our emotions and hesitancies. And whois to say that toys aren’t just objects, that they have a whole existence indiscernible to the human senses, but playing out our minds and emotions.
Oh Jenni, this struck such a deep and warm chord with me. What you say, I feel too. It was the joy of my early mothering years to do what my Granny had done for me: to make the teddies move their heads in listening and concerned ways while I conversed with them as the children listened; to help my daughter take school registers of all the rowed-up 'softies' as she called them. And I had a strict rule that some of my friends found quite eccentric but for me was a really deep value: that no toy that was shaped like a baby or an animal ever be mistreated or handled as one wouldn't a living, breathing child or creature. The one or two times each of my children tried that, I kept a neutral face but said very clearly: 'We don't do that. We treat toy versions of these things as we would the living ones: this is how we learn to be kind and caring.' Perhaps I was too serious about it: but your beautiful piece makes me think it was worth caring about.
And you've given us such a rich and loving insight into your family life here: it feels like a place so many of us would be at home in. I love what you've done with this month's prompt. Thank you.
I have an old brown leather purse that belonged to my Nan. She died when I was 11 or 12. I;m 59 now and the purse is still in the drawer next to my bed. It has a certain smell and it takes me back to when I used to visit her with my mother. She was in her 80's then and I would sit in front of her patiently like a dog waiting for her to give me some sweets. She always wore the same brown zip up slippers and an apron and her hair would be tied back. A sort of Doris Lessing style although she would never have known that. I can see her wrinkled face now and see her hand dipping into her apron pocket. I used to play with her skin on her hand to see how long it stayed standing up. I do the same with my mother sometimes now. She had one of the old-fashioned hearing aids that she would turn off. Her apron smelled too but it was a good smell - one of warmth and love.
Inside the purse are some old pennies in tiny compartments held together by tiny clasps.
One day she was there and the next she was in a home and then she came home for a time and then she was gone. I was too young to see her in her last day or go to the funeral. She's still here in my heart and I'm starting to well up a little now as I type. I'm going to get the purse out again later and take a look and a smell. Go back and see her again. I miss her.
Peter - what an incredibly moving piece, and so beautifully written. That tangible, loving quality I go back to again and again in Laurie Lee is here in your writing too. I read it aloud to my husband, who was as moved by it as I was. And it's your first piece for the project too I think! I do hope you'll try other prompts in the archive: all stay open for contributions.
I love all of it, and find this sentence particularly powerful, coming as it does with vertiginous as well as poignant perspective, after all the preceding ones which are so closely focussed in on your gran and all you loved about her and the purse: 'One day she was there and the next she was in a home and then she came home for a time and then she was gone.'
I will make the new month's page on the cure for sleep book site tomorrow all being well, and yours will be the first piece I curate on it. Once I've done that I will come back here to comments to give you your direct URL so that you can include in any posts you want to do or if you have a website or writing course application where having it will be of use to you.
Heartfelt thanks. I think I've been waiting to write that piece for many years without the courage. I think seeing my aged mother, 95, brings back memories too. We used to visit my auntie who she lived with together on the bus. Happy yet poignant memories. Little do we know when we are at such a tender age how things come back to haunt us. Thank you also for being my first subscriber who is not a relative or a friend. Perhaps I have made a new friend in a way. I look forward to posting on your other prompts. Peter
It really is a beautiful piece, Peter. And I will look forward to more contributions from you, as you have time and interest to take part. Here, as promised, is your direct link to your words in the story archive. Very best, Tanya
https://thecureforsleep.com/impossible-objects/#peterhamer
Thank you for including me. I have posted another piece in the Stay This Moment part.I hope you like it.
Oh I'm glad you told me that! My usually rigorous notification system for spotting all new stories has something failed me this week then as I haven't seen that other one come through. I've got tired eyes now tonight, but I will search for your other piece tomorrow mid morning! Something to look forward to! And then I will use the comments over on that theme to give your link and my response. Thank you Peter!
Oh how beautiful Peter! I enjoyed reading this very much.
Many thanks Tracey.
Oh, I forgot to say I live in Sussex. Peter
Written by Fran Pollard. I'm from Surrey UK, l live in Cambodia, but currently in Portugal for a couple of months.
Frayed and burnt at the ends, the red thread coils on the wooden table I sit at. I haven’t discarded it, but I don’t know why I keep it. It lays dormant.
Her eyelids flutter like she’s dreaming, plumbing the depths of another world, at end of the video call. She’s propped up on a pile of books to level the angle of my chin. It’s evening, moon rises in the darkening sky; shadows sweep the walls. She takes her time. She opens her eyes, trancelike, and shifts her focus to mine. “Your grandmother is here.”
I reach for the thread and spiral it around my index finger.
“She liked her freedom. Grey hair, slightly curly. Short; rounded figure. Eyes exactly like yours. She was a loner, like you.”
51 days earlier, I’m in Nepal, looping string around my wrist. In the Linga Devi temple in Kathmandu, before the heat of the day, I make a promise: to honour the divine feminine- her strength, her power, her creative force. I make a 40 day commitment.
The medium speaks slowly, purposefully. “She wants you to put the red thread back on your left wrist.”
Shit.
“Put it back on as a sign of commitment: to yourself; to loving yourself, to protecting yourself; and as a sign of your connection to her in blood.”
I sit cross-legged atop a white washed wall. My back to the 50m cliff drop into the Atlantic a mere meter behind me. I face Maria: Senhora da Rocha, in Portuguese- the lady of the rocks. Mother Mary to me; the Virgin Mary to my grandmother with her Catholic upbringing. The snake of red thread in my hands. In a different temple this time, I reclaim the serpent as a sign of my commitment to myself, to her.
Fran - thank you so much for joining the project, and with this soulful piece.
Among the deep roots of this project is a book called True Tales of American Life by Paul Auster, that meant a lot to me in the time of my own beloved grandmother going from me back in 2005/6: they were true stories the author collected from people across the US, with the brief 'true stories that feel like fiction' - having some element of fate, mystery and so on. I felt that one day if I wrote anything myself, it would have to be in that mode, as so much of my life has felt unaccountable by western rational standards. And once I became published myself, I wanted to make a project in the lineage of that book by Auster, feeling sure they were others out there with similar experiences to my own. Your story is so deeply the kind of experience I care about, in my own life and others. Thank you for sharing it.
It's also beautifully written. I do hope you will try other prompts in the archive from the last three years. All stay open without deadline.
Here is your link to your piece in the story archive...
https://thecureforsleep.com/impossible-objects/#franpollard
Tanya xx
Lovely, absolutely lovely Fran!
Thirty years ago I visited Skye with a friend. It was a raggle taggle holiday, we slept in a damp, wheelless camper van marooned in the garden of my friend's friends house. One day we visited the site of a cleared village, the people thrown off their land so the laird could bring in sheep. I got out of the car and was struck by a wave of sadness and longing so strong that I didn't want to go further, the residual emotional charge was like an elextric fence keeping me out. My friend went exploring. She came back with a strange piece of rounded granite with one shiny flat side. It was the size of a large egg. She gave it to me and for the next thirty years it was placed on a shelf in every one of the many, houses, flats, rooms and sheds I lived in. I felt a strange reverence for it, that small granite enigma.
One day watching some tv archeology programme I realised what it was. The knowledge was sudden, profound and immediate, I went over to the shelf, picked it up, noted for the umpteenth time how well it fitted my hand and knew it to be a hand quern. A woman on Skye had used it daily to grind grain on a flat stone, hence the flat shiny side. I could see the dark mark her thumb had made through many hours of holding it, her hands must have been about the same size as mine.
A few years later I looked at it one morning and had another sudden realisation - it wanted to go home. It was a struggle to let it go, we'd kept company for half my life, but i contacted a museum in Skye, picked at random. Wouldn't you know it they had just got funding for an exhibition of hand querns. It was part of a wider movement to acknowledge and document the daily lives of women on Skye through the ages. So I boxed it up carefully, wished it 'Mar sin leibh agus gabh turas sàbhailte' and sent it off. Now its back home in Skye, gone but never forgotten.
Stevie! What an utterly compelling experience, and I love how you've written it. I rushed to find my husband and read it aloud to him - he shared my goosebumps-sensation. How soulful, how satisfying - for you experiencing all that, and for us here reading you. Thank you. Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/impossible-objects/#stevie
Txx
This is fascinating Stevie! What a wonderful memory of something so special!
59C
I spotted it with a kestrel’s eye. In a flash, I was on it. I’d been hovering in the museum shop – ‘Street Life’ they call it. It was on a trip ‘home’ with our then young children. A toy bus, but not just any toy bus. Navy blue and cream livery rushed me back to my childhood. EYMS: East Yorkshire Motor Services. And then I noticed the details. A 1970s Daimler Fleetline double-decker: my era. ‘59C Circular via Preston/Hedon’: my route. My ‘not my’ village named. Registration plate AFT 784C. I can’t be certain of that accuracy.
This bus took me home, every school day in the second half of the 70s. A circular route for people who never left. Dad’s patients. Shopworkers and shoppers. But a basket empty of school friends for this direct grant boy, the only one at the ‘posh’ school from my backwater village. Left to my top deck devices, I discovered a love of language forms and structures – irregular verbs, subjunctives, indirect speech. Yes, indirect speech, which I see now as a metaphor for a largely remote, if unhostile, teenage existence, where nothing seemed direct, close, or intimate. Instead, I found companionship in the reliable patterns of accidence, and security in the sounds of the ancients.
I’m looking at my toy bus now. It sits in pride of place on a middle shelf, beside a pot of raptor feathers, one of which is from a kestrel. I used to spot them from the top deck of the 59C, on the stretch beyond the lime trees. The bus is a quasi-talismanic die-cast treasure I’d give away last of my possessions. It tells me where I came from, where I went to, and – fittingly for a circular route – what I never managed to leave behind.
Oh Paul. What a story - and so so beautifully written. All of it but especially these lines, where the beauty of description - a tale told - deepens and expands into new perspectives on past times:
'Yes, indirect speech, which I see now as a metaphor for a largely remote, if unhostile, teenage existence, where nothing seemed direct, close, or intimate.'
and
'It tells me where I came from, where I went to, and – fittingly for a circular route – what I never managed to leave behind.'
This feels like a piece you could publish beyond this project. I do hope you'll look for some print or online publications to send it to...
Your link below. Txx
https://thecureforsleep.com/impossible-objects/#paulgamble
I love the energy of this Paul and how it changes too. Pulls one in and along for the very interesting ride!
My mom and I would have terrible fights as is typical of most teens going through the growing pains between childhood and adulthood. Our fights would devastate me, leaving me feeling very unsafe. I would go to my grandparents house and spend the night often during our fights. I slept on a floral upholstered sofa in the living room, under a crisp white sheet, folded in half and a blanket. I would turn with my face towards the back of the sofa and pull my arms and legs up into a semi-fetal position, cuddling the back of the sofa. I would stare up at this painting in an ornate gilded frame. The painting was of several women and men dressed in Victorian clothing standing and sitting around a Victorian room talking to each other. I spent sleepless hours escaping into this painting. I wondered at the feel of the blue dress on one woman and what the man whispering in the ear of another was saying to make her look so engaged. Sometimes if I half closed my eyelids, through the blurry tears, I could see myself in that room, talking and laughing with those people. When my gram passed away, I took the painting and it hangs today over my sofa, where my little granddaughter looks up at it and asks me to tell her what the people are saying to each other.
Charly.. thank you so much for joining the project, and with this fascinating piece. What a sense of time and place and emotion you've created in so few words. I will be very glad to add this to the story archive. Before I can, could you reply here please with a last name or last name initial I can use please? Tanya xx
Hi Tanya, thank you, happy to be a part of it. Last initial S.
Hello again Charly. As promised, I'm back to give you your direct link to your beautiful piece in the book's story archive: https://thecureforsleep.com/impossible-objects/#charlys
It gave me another chance to read your words. How moving, how vertiginous, that you are now the grandmother, and able to share your gram's precious painting with a granddaughter of your own.
Txxx
I utterly adore this piece. The honesty and clarity of it, it's beautiful.
Thanks Paul, I appreciate the feedback. Being vulnerable in my writing is new to me, it is encouraging to be heard and understood.
On the landing windowsill in my grandparent's house, there was a red glass chalice, shaped like a brandy balloon, but much larger. The light shining through pooled red on the white gloss sill. It was just the right size for a child to put a hand into – very carefully. This was precious.
And I have a memory of putting my hand inside it, and drawing it out covered in blood. My hand, gloved in blood. It’s one of the most vivid memories of my childhood.
The thing is, it’s not true. It never happened. None of the adults remember it, and there’s no way I could have hidden all that blood. Or not panicked and run for help. It’s a strange, false memory. I don’t know where it came from. A dream? A fantasy? A mixture of the image of red light on my hand and other memories of bleeding (I stood on a cucumber frame, I fell off my bike…). It’s strange that this image - so visceral, so real – has somehow inserted itself into my brain and lingered there. How did that happen, and why? Why?
Oh my. This is the kind of story, and writing, that leaves me thinking about it long afterwards, like passages in Lawrence (who I'm rereading now compulsively in these weeks after my mother's death: he seeming to have the gift of writing about a person's unique set of compulsions and memories, from the youngest child to the eldest elders in a family line).
Have you approached this in your poetry too? If you haven't yet, and do, I'd be so fascinated to read it, and see how it alters from this compelling prose telling...
https://thecureforsleep.com/impossible-objects/#sarahconnor
Txxx
Intriguing Sarah! The mind is so powerful, and it can be almost impossible to determine the truth of things sometimes. I haven't experienced anything quite like you have here however there have been countless times where memories and dreams have become interwoven, and I am left bewildered and unable to shake the feeling of it all.
A fantastic share, thank you.
‘The world was moving
She was right there with it
And she was’.
The dust sticks to the velvet, round and around. The needle glides on to the oil slick vinyl, a familiar crackle and the music builds quietly. It’s a satisfying ritual remembered.
My Auntie was the coolest. My mothers youngest sister, she was closer to me in age. My godmother, charged with looking after me if anything happened to my parents. To my 11 year old self, she was a confident whirl of red lipstick, leather pencil skirts and fishnets. Slightly punk hair, eyeliner. Musky perfume mixed with cigarette smoke. A red beret and bright 80’s jewellery. Sang in a band. She used to babysit me & my sister and bring her spanish boyfriend & her Talking Heads records. The vinyl was exciting, weighty, full of future possibility. They would sit and discuss the latest song and then she’d sing along in our lounge and I was amazed by her. I’d tell my friends about this band they’d never heard of. Super cool.
Years later, I took her to see David Byrne play at Brighton dome and it was joyous, alive elation.
She left suddenly, dramatically, horribly. Gone in a second. They said she wouldn’t have known. Cerebral haemorrhage at 49 while her husband walked the dog.
When she died, I needed to find a way to be close to her, to believe that she was real, that she existed. To hold on to something physical, to feel her. To hear her. To also remember myself before the violent shock of loss.
The Talking Heads vinyl with its musty yellow cover and dusty surface still felt exciting. Carefully slid out of its cover. Make sure you don’t scratch it as the needle goes down, a forgotten act. I hear the familiar crackle and opening notes and I am 11 years old, watching her sing in her red hat and lipstick, visceral and alive. Ready for the possibilities before death and tragedy took over.
Very evocative, I can imagine myself there too. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks! I found this topic quite a tricky one to write about!
Helen, this piece from you is stunning. Such a vivid, living portrait of your gorgeous-sounding aunt... which makes then the sudden loss of her shocking to we you readers, as it was to you losing her so fast, so soon. I'm moved that this month's prompt has given you a way and a place to celebrate her, and this object that holds her memory. Thank you. And I wonder how writing this piece has left you feeling afterwards: it's a rare and wonderful thing to write this kind of tribute to a person so long after their passing. Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/impossible-objects/#helenlouise
Txx
Ah thanks as ever Tanya for your comments & time- I find this project to be such a positive, revelatory experience. I was really moved also by the words about your mum & how she was buried with the hankerchief from her lost love - so beautiful xx
Thank you - touched by how you think of this project. And for your words about Mum. Yes - beautiful that she was buried with it, but a bit poignant too. What a strange choice she made all that time ago, to turn away from him. She said more about that in her last days, so that I finally understood - even while wishing she'd thought differently. xxx
I can see your dear aunt so clearly, and almost feel her, such is the power of your writing Helen. I too had one very dear and quite magickal aunt who has now passed, she has also left such a mark upon me as your aunt has upon you. Thank you for sharing! x
Thanks so much Tracey- it’s nice to write about her!
I Left With Nothing
I brought nothing from that place, I wanted nothing from that place. What I did bring I have long since set aside, sentimental tokens that were quick to lose their value, false currencies from a previous world.
I could have taken a piece of glass, something from that tall cabinet where garish clowns looked out with mocking humour, but she had polished them weekly until there was nothing on their cold, smooth surface to offer any emotional purchase, no chip nor flaw that made them any easier to break.
I could have taken something from his box of tools, sweat-browned and polished by his hard and calloused hands, sharpened to a safer edge or point, better to cut and shape white pine or straight-grained hardwoods, but they had only ever been dull instruments that played music loud enough to drown the cries.
I searched the rusting biscuit tins of phtographs, looking for one that still reatined some sweetness, but they were bitter with dead relations who stared out at guilty cameras with eyes unblinking and unconscious of those years to come. There were some of me that I wanted to rip and scatter but chose to burn with scathing laughter.
In the end I left with empty hands, a hollow heart that boomed like the bell that warns of a dangerous tide, and skin that bit thicker than the one I wore before, better to contain what feelings might remain, impervious to cuts from the splintered glass of clowns or the strop-sharp points of ancient chisels.
This is ferocious writing, Geoff, sharp with truth and pulsing with energy. I feel I'm getting a glimpse here into what you are working with in your memoir? Exciting if so. And the language! the sweat-browned tools. The strop-sharp points of ancient chisels. I'm rereading the early Lawrence novels like essential nutrients in these weeks after my mother's death, and although some of the references are precisely of their time and place, I'm astounded anew by his ability to describe a place, a people, through their work gestures and the words that go with that. I see that same energy running through your piece here. Yes, unnerving, exciting. Thank you. Here is your link: https://thecureforsleep.com/impossible-objects/#geoffcox
Txx
These objects, these pieces of clay, paper and stone. My talismen. My connections with the past, control of the present, and hopes for the future. Silent, inanimate objects, that scream for attention when I least expect it.
First is a palm-sized fragment of pottery I found on the beach, wave-washed between water and sand. Made from pale clay, it is unrefined, coarse grains visible in its thick broken edges. But once flipped, there’s the embossed face of a man crowned with thorns. I touch and hold it, though I’m not religious. I pray with it clasped tight in my hand. When all hopes seem extinguished, it’s my go-to ‘you never know’ lucky charm.
Beside it is a framed black-and-white photo. Four people standing at the brow of a hill, descending from left to right in size and age. First is mum, then my sisters, Christine and Diane. I'm on the end, the little one, half their size. We’re wearing flared jumpsuits, flower-power dresses and happy faces. Thumbs raised. It’s the way I want to remember us, ‘the girls’ posing for dad and his precious box-brownie.
Last is a cat. Tiny compared to the other objects, two-centimetres high, jet-black with ruby-glass eyes and a silver collar engraved with wiggly lines. It’s a nod to some hoped for Irish gypsy or witchcraft family blood. Carried everywhere by mum in a kid-leather purse as she dodged doodle-bugs during the London Blitz. Now it's mine.
Three ordinary objects with extra-ordinary significance.
But only to me.
I enjoyed reading this piece Jane, it made me think about the ordinary things I have that have extra-ordinary significance. I find it so fascinating how these things can hold such stories within their energy! Beautiful, thank you.
Yes, it's often the most ordinary things that mean the most. Not to others. Just to us. Thank you for your kind comments. x
You are most welcome x
Gorgeous writing again from you Jane. How tangible you have made each of these three ordinary/extra-ordinary objects. Every detail vivid but in particular I got goosebumps at the thought of your mum as a girl carrying the little cat in kid-leather as bombs fell. And how you place that detail after describing such a delicate, intricate object - that's where a memory joins with story-telling to make art. I love how you and others make that alchemy happen so much within this very short form I invite you to try. Thank you.
Here is your latest link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/impossible-objects/#janeadam
Tanya xx
Thank you. I sometimes spend days thinking about your writing prompts before putting pen to paper, remembering things, wondering about my opinion on something, playing with words and meanings as I walk. Occasionally, something happens and I think ‘ooo, I hope I can use that one day on Cure for Sleep’. See what an affect you’ve had on us! Take care xxx
Ah!!! That's a lovely thing to know! xxx
I really didn’t have room for any of it in my already over-laden suitcase, but my dear aunt was very dogged and turned a deaf ear as she pushed her half-worn paintbrushes, blunt pencils and a pretty paint box down the sides of the case.
Laying the sketch pad on the very top, she paused for breath, and I took advantage quickly pulling the lid down, and hurriedly locating the zipper.
Laughing quietly to herself, my aunt left the room and reappeared triumphantly with her old wooden tabletop easel. I couldn’t believe it! There was absolutely no hope of fitting that in I gently but firmly stated, not wanting to seem ungrateful. I tried to remind her that with family, studies to complete, and work, creativity had to remain a long-lost dream for now, maybe forever. So, I really wouldn’t be needing an easel anytime soon. I would see her again in a year, I could take it then. Couldn’t I?
My words fell on death ears and the decision was made; the matter settled as I sat down upon the suitcase forcing it to close.
My auntie, just like my Nan, didn’t find the time to paint until she was in her sixth decade, (my Nan was in her seventh). This was driving my aunt’s determination. I would be different she said.
Oh, how I treasure her things as I paint and remember my dear aunt who knew before me that I would return to my painting. Painting that was left long ago when my desire for Art College wasn’t to be my journey in life. I was in my fifth decade when space allowed for the paint to flow, so yes, I was different.
Oh, how wonderful. As you say, your aunt knew you'd need it. I loved reading this; it had a great flow (like your art now?) and naturalness to it. Thank you for writing it.
Thank you, Jane! This memory was triggered by one of the other participants writing about their aunt. It is the first time I have written about it and I really enjoyed doing so. x
I think that's one reason I love 'the cure for sleep'. I often read something that someone else has written, and it reminds me of something from my own past. Food for thought.
Oh yes very much so 🙏
Thank you so much for your kind words, Tanya! They mean so much to me - your encouragement always does. I will act on your final nudge, be assured.
Of the many blessings since I committed to creativity and decided to do the Travel & Nature Writing MA, becoming a small part of what you do in this project has been one of the richest. Your example - it started with reading TCFS - has shown me what it means to write with bravery and sensitivity.
Either today or tomorrow my finger will hit ‘Submit’ - and send my MA portfolio to its destiny. Within it sit some pieces that began life as responses to your prompts. They are pieces which are dear to me. Thank you for inspiring them - you are their midwife, I guess. Paul x
You will know how much your words mean to me, from having read my story of how isolated I felt for so long in my love of books, and the kinds of conversations about how to live and what to live for that I yearned to share with others beyond my husband, my diary, my communing with dead authors. To be part of our growing community of writers is a joy. So thrilled for you to have reached Submission day. Tan xx
I walk at night to my friends’ door. It’s been raining heavily; now it is just damp and cold. Every surface is shiny with rain. I walk past a bush thick with dark leaves and jet-black berries. It shines like jewellery. My Nan had a necklace of black stones, and the evoked memory is sharp and powerful. I was entranced by that necklace as a child. It was almost certainly plain glass, but I adored its dark glint. It lived in the same place as the rest of her jewellery: an old chocolate tin. Brooches, hairpins and clip-on earrings – none of it of any value, but every piece chosen with care and impeccable taste. A green brooch to pick out her eyes; ivory-coloured earrings to match her ancient hat. The same hat she wore for 40 years, its threadbare lining having gone through so many repairs, it was the millinery version of the Ship of Theseus.
So much of my Nan was encapsulated in that tin. The lack of pierced earrings (terrified of needles dear!); the obsessive care taken over looking after things. The pride taken in always looking her absolute best. Sadly the tin disappeared at the same time she left us. But remembering it now, I can recall how I loved to trawl through it as a child, imagining every cheap trinket to be an enormous precious jewel.
She was the most anxious and worry-prone person I have ever met, but also the warmest, kindest and most affectionate. In times of family emergency, it would be her who stood up with resolute courage to salvage something from the chaos, and that something was love. I still have photos of us together, and of her as a young woman, and I cherish them. And I cherish her.
I can sense how much you cherish these memories of your nan and these objects that belonged to her. Thanks for sharing, Paul.
Thank you
"I don't want to sell it." Mum was quite clear about this, when someone offered to buy her beautiful ink drawing. It sat in a pretty frame, pride of place at the art exhibition in the local assembly rooms in town. She had been invited to exhibit some of her drawings ,which were always drawn in pen using various scraps of paper she found around the house, by an artist lady who lived just around the corner from my childhood home. This lady also taught young people to play guitar, myself included.
At the time of this exhibition, I couldn't understand why she wouldn't sell the drawing as it was probably the best thing there.
Over time, I have come to understand that was kind of the point - it was her best work and she wanted to hold onto it, thanks very much. Now, it sits on a bookcase in my home and I am so grateful that she would not part with it. The portrait, of an actress portraying Maid Marion from a television adaptation of Robin Hood, stares back at me, reminding me of the circumstances of it's non purchase all those years ago.
I wouldn't part with it either, now.
There's something so rare and refreshing about this story: a woman, a mother, making art on household materials, but knowing its worth, prizing it beyond what price gallery-goers would put on it. And yet not deprecating and refusing to risk sharing it either. Yes, I think that's rare in my experience. I love how you've shown us your new view of it too. Thank you as ever, Sharon, for being part of what we're doing here: our word gallery, look!
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/impossible-objects/#sharonc
Txx
Thank you for your reflections
Actually, I wanted to say more to your response. It is so encouraging to get these reflections. As quite a novice writer in this space, I find my initial response to the prompts is "I don't have much/anything for this!". Oh how untrue that often is...
My parents were evicted from my childhood home in their fifties, rendering them homeless.
The object that holds most power for me from that house is a robust white jug with blue stripes and a pure white handle. Extracted from the texture of that house into my possession for years now, this jug is a kind of portal weighted with the love and pain of my childhood. There are times when I look at it and all I see is a void, a hollow glaze, a no thing thing.
My mother kept our baby bottles warm in this jug. It feels as though I have used it for nothing in particular and yet, it has had many uses. I have used it to rinse my children’s hair at bath time, I have used it to store their bath toys, to pour champagne from on my 40th birthday, and in latter years as a holding vessel to soak reusable menstrual pads.
Now it is an ornament I guess, and sits innocuously beside the bath.
I have guarded the jug closely, (despite myself as I thought I was above nostalgia), having announced more than once to my kids, “Careful of the jug!”
“Huh, why?”
“Because it means something to me”
How vacuous that must sound I think, how mealy and anaemic an explanation . And yet to tell them more would break my heart.
I know it doesn’t make sense but there are times when I will the thing broken. I suppose it’s something to do with the familiarity of loss, the inevitable finality of things, the desire to get it over with so I can add it to the grief section of my heart and stack it neatly among the bones of the other losses, quietly shushing it up.
Aoife... thank you again for joining the project and with this very moving piece, in which you do so much with the few words I give you all to work with. What you say about the jug as portal as well as everyday domestic object... you haven't just told us that, you've shown it. It holds the story of your parents' eviction, your mothering years in a home of your own... and then you've also used that last paragraph to striking effect: so that I found myself agreeing with you. Even though I have a horror of breaking things after a childhood where too much was broken in temper or lost in too many moves with unhappy adults, yes there comes a time when we almost wish these containers for too much would break and us be no longer in loving thrall to them. I will be fascinated to read more by you and perhaps in some of the prompts to learn more about your parents lives before the eviction and afterwards... but for now, here is your link to your words in the story archive:
https://thecureforsleep.com/impossible-objects/#aoifeboyle
Tanya xx
Im humbled by your response Tanya , for the words and for the time you take and for your priceless encouragement; This is virign terrtitory for me sharing my words so publicly so a heart and soulfelt thanks to you. Your words "Containers for too much: and "in loving thrall" speak volumes to me in relation to this object I wrote about. Best wishes to everyone else here also xx
Smiling. Humble is good and useful - I've made lots of fine work from that place - but never let anyone in the writing world humble you if you know what I mean! You've contributed a really strong and affecting first piece; it's going to be great to have you contributing to future themes and ones in the archive too xx
i think i do know what you mean Tanya, thank you !
When I was a child I believed in the world of my dolls and teddies and toys, that they had a real visceral life, no one else could see this but innately they were living an existence, their lives, just getting on with it, running a riding school, having families and so on.
Now I am old and have put away dolls and toys of my childhood, but conspiratorially my children and I talismanically imbue their toys to life. That there is a whole society of teddies and soft toys resident in one half of my sons bed. There are brothers and cousins and friends and rivalries. At bedtime we will talk about how they are doing, who is friend with who, what they get up to when the human backs are turned. When a new soft toy arrived they are introduced to everyone else due ceremony, sometimes they are nervous and shy with so many other toys to meet. These soft toy lives are the measure and reflection of our lives, soaked in our emotions and hesitancies. And whois to say that toys aren’t just objects, that they have a whole existence indiscernible to the human senses, but playing out our minds and emotions.
Oh Jenni, this struck such a deep and warm chord with me. What you say, I feel too. It was the joy of my early mothering years to do what my Granny had done for me: to make the teddies move their heads in listening and concerned ways while I conversed with them as the children listened; to help my daughter take school registers of all the rowed-up 'softies' as she called them. And I had a strict rule that some of my friends found quite eccentric but for me was a really deep value: that no toy that was shaped like a baby or an animal ever be mistreated or handled as one wouldn't a living, breathing child or creature. The one or two times each of my children tried that, I kept a neutral face but said very clearly: 'We don't do that. We treat toy versions of these things as we would the living ones: this is how we learn to be kind and caring.' Perhaps I was too serious about it: but your beautiful piece makes me think it was worth caring about.
And you've given us such a rich and loving insight into your family life here: it feels like a place so many of us would be at home in. I love what you've done with this month's prompt. Thank you.
https://thecureforsleep.com/impossible-objects/#jenni
Txx
Thank you Tanya 😊